CH 13: THREES

The sun had started to set behind the western ridge when Thengel, tired and fed up, said his goodbyes to his friends and wandered through the twilight beneath the beech trees lining the road. Morwen hadn't been at the gate when he passed through.

Domestic sounds of the servants cleaning up drifted in from the kitchen when Thengel entered the hall, but the main room stood empty. He crossed by the table where Guthere had been tended by the healer. Someone had scrubbed the blood away during those first difficult days. He paused and considered the table.

Curiosity over a grassy road in a shaded wood had led them all to this table. When they first arrived, the house and the inhabitants didn't have a story, but slowly he had come to know Lady Morwen and her folk. Today he felt the story had jumped ahead a chapter and that Imloth Melui contained more than trees and deer and a few backwoods cottagers. What part the story marked out for him he didn't know. Perhaps no part at all.

He left the table behind for the study door. The hall behind him looked deserted as well as the corridor. But the instinct that had deserted him in the orchard had returned and told him that though he could not hear or see anyone he had entered occupied space. Carefully he opened the study door. Darkness shrouded the chamber except for the glow of a low fire. He looked across the room through the shadows and saw the figure of a man reclining on the couch against the wall.

At first Thengel thought Halmir was asleep. He cursed under his breath. But Halmir stirred on the couch when Thengel let the latch clink against the door. The man groaned and clasped his head, which gave Thengel some satisfaction. He lit one of the candles fitted in a sconce on the wall. Halmir winced at the small light it made.

"You don't seem well, Lord Halmir," Thengel said wryly.

Halmir groaned pitifully. "I suppose I should thank you for the wetting," he muttered acidly, leaning forward to bury his head in his hands, "rather than sticking my head on a pike overlooking the orchard."

Thengel's breath stilled at those words that seemed to echo back to him through time and space. A grey wooden fence covered over in moss arose in his mind. It surrounded a crooked hill that rose out of the plain like a nose on slat-cheeked giant. At the top of the hill sat a golden hall that housed an aging man with the greasy remains of his meal congealing in his beard. Those words, that threat, had been the last thing he ever said to the king, his father.

Béma, he hadn't taken Halmir for a tactical fellow, but the man knew how to upset Thengel's balance with expediency. Judging by the brightness in his eyes, Halmir knew he'd made a hit.

"Yes, I heard that is your preferred method of dealing with men who get in your way," said Halmir. "Not very delicate with your threats, are you. Heads on pikes. Morwen might not know that she is harboring a traitor, but I know what you are."

Thengel bit his tongue, as it tended to be the root of any trouble he landed himself into, and stared down Halmir with little love until he could think with a semblance of clarity.

"Your rooms are down the hall, I believe," he managed to say with an even tone.

Halmir snorted. "Yes, but how else am I to have a word with you without your Tulkasian thugs hanging around?"

"I would suggest you avoid it entirely," Thengel replied, keeping his tone detached, "before you wade too deeply into matters that do not concern you."

Halmir shrugged and rose from the couch. "I will make them my concern if you continue to meddle in mine. This is your only warning."

Thengel felt the prickling of fine hair on the back of his neck at Halmir's pretentious tone. Who did this pretender think he was? And just how did Halmir imagine Thengel was meddling, as he put it?

"I will do as I please, lordling, without deferring to you," Thengel replied. "Your threats mean but little."

Halmir's eyebrows twitched upward over his ferrety face, which looked even longer when his hair hung dankly around it without the fabricated curls.

"Are you certain? You see, Prince Thengel, Morwen devoted herself to her father. She cannot fathom how a man with any human feeling could threaten to murder his. Do you really believe she would tolerate your presence as a guest if she knew?"

Thengel crossed deeper into the room, past Halmir. "She has the sense to know that people cannot be blamed for words spoken in the rashness of youth."

"Can't they? Then why hasn't King Fengel recalled you? On the contrary, Prince Thengel, your assault on my person rather confirms that you have not grown out of this so-called rashness of youth. In fact, I could lawfully demand satisfaction from you."

"Satisfaction?" Thengel laughed, a dry, mirthless sound that caused Halmir to step back as if unnerved by this unexpected reaction. Halmir's face flushed.

"Do you find law and tradition humorous?"

"No. Law and tradition have their virtues, which is why its humorous that you should invoke them. You were drunk in a public place and received due treatment," said Thengel once he stopped laughing. "If anyone has the right to demand satisfaction, as you say, it's Lady Morwen."

Halmir shivered like an angry dog when another had stolen his bone. "You can laugh at me, but at the end of the day you're still just an exile with no home and prince with no country."

Thengel caught the invisible gauntlet and approached Halmir slowly. Though he stood no taller than the Gondorian, he had width and presence that came with holding a line of men by his side against an onslaught. Halmir leaned away.

"If you continue in this manner, lordling, I promise you'll get a taste of this temper you're so keen to remind me that I possess. You've annoyed me more than once today and it's not in the Rohirrim's temperament to forget an offense. You've harped on my meddling with whatever scheme you have up those gaudy sleeves of yours and I tell you I wasn't meddling, but you're making it my business when you come serving me threats. If you do it again I'll get a hold on you that you won't easily wiggle out of. Understood?"

Halmir had the sense to keep his mouth shut, but he managed a sneer before he beat a hasty retreat through the study door.

Thengel stationed himself in the chair behind the desk and stared the door down, half expecting a line of accusers to follow in Halmir's wake. Why not get it all out of the way at once now that his temper was primed and ready?

When no specters from his youth appeared, Thengel resigned himself to the last accuser left in the room, his own conscience.

Thengel had not expected his past mistakes to be flung in his face, let alone by a man he had known for less than a day. After he had proved himself in the defense of Gondor these last twenty years, was it possible youthful indiscretion could overshadow any renown he might have won? Nobody spoke to him of those years until that wretched night they spent in the company of Teitherion. His guards were instructed not to, he believed rather than knew, and Thengel never asked. Neither had his adoptive father and brother, Steward Turgon and Ecthelion. Not since Thengel's first night in Minas Tirith.

He did not like the idea of exposing his past misdeeds to Lady Morwen. He told her that he had disrespected Fengel King that day when they walked to Anorian's well. An understatement. Disrespect earned a boy a hiding in Meduseld. Disturbing the king's peace with murder threats could not be ignored. He tried to reach back into that memory to feel the heat that fueled that desire and found he could not rekindle it in the semi-dark of Lord Randir's tidy library. In its place he felt only a cold, damp regret.

Thengel's fingers curled around the spine of the book he had borrowed from Lord Randir's shelves, a history text of Numenor and its kings and queens. He'd slogged through it most of the night before. He opened to a random page and read.

The moral breakdown of the king and heir relationship, in which the flouting of authority lay, this began with the Prince Aldarion and Tar-Meneldur. This same rebellious and stubborn pride spread into his marriage to Erendis, ultimately tainting the line and ensured a bad end. In all senses, the decay which began before the reign of Tar-Aldarion, engendered again in his heir Tar-Ancalimë, was but a seed of the audacity behind the usurpation of the throne by Ar-Pharazôn and the sinking of Númenor.

Thengel closed his book in frustration. So, even the paragons of the West took issue with their fathers. But to blame the collapse of a civilization on a boy who wanted to go to sea seemed ridiculous. The words had a weight to them, though, which Thengel could not shake. Division spawned weakness. In a family. In an army. An enemy could render a company twice as vulnerable if it managed to part its men.

Thengel had learned that lesson the hard way and it had cost them the Lord of Lossarnach. Then by some perversity of nature, Thengel had found himself ensconced in Hardang's cousin's home while his friend slept in the ground. And perhaps the only service Thengel had managed to render Hardang's cousin had taken the form of a barrel.

Why though? Thengel couldn't recall the details exactly. There had been the distressed look on Lady Morwen's face after her cousin's speech, the last straw in the a pile of offenses which involved turning this beautiful place into a parade ground, and then he remembered Cenhelm urging him to release his grip on the sodden Halmir who was doubled over in the rain water like the greasy duck he was.

Of course, it had taken the rest of the afternoon for Thengel to see his actions with any clarity. Halmir's words had revealed old anger and it disturbed Thengel.

He had felt happy pretending to exist in a new story. Who was Halmir to remind him of the old? Or Teitherion, for that matter. How can a man change his appearance if he won't look at himself? Did everyone think he was the same man who left Rohan nearly twenty years ago?

A knock at the door scattered his thoughts like so many leaves. Thengel put his book down and called out for whomever it was to come in. Cenhelm pushed his head around the door.

"May we have a word, my lord?"

Thengel grunted. "Why not. They say trouble comes in threes."

"My lord?" Cenhelm frowned his concern.

"Nevermind."

Thengel waved him inside. Thurstan followed behind Cenhelm but stayed near the door. Cenhelm stood stiffly before the desk and it gave Thengel an uneasy feeling. They had not spoken of the feast and his men had given him wide berth after he returned from his walk in the orchard.

"Well?" he asked.

Thurstan nodded at Cenhelm, who cleared his throat. "We've talked it over, Thurstan, Gladhon, Guthere, and I. They didn't want to come in and tell you this themselves, as it's a volatile subject, so I've taken it upon myself to speak. "

Thengel gave them both an arch look. "But you brought Thurstan for backup?"

Thurstan crossed his arms, which amounted to an assent.

"I'll try to contain myself," Thengel answered, folding his hands over the desk.

Cenhelm nodded. "Thank you."

"So, what is it?"

Cenhelm glanced back at Thurstan, who shrugged.

"We've been in Lossarnach for a week," Cenhelm pointed out, "and with this new development we should seriously consider returning to Minas Tirith despite your predicament."

Thengel tapped his fingers on the book and tamped down his immediate negation. He wanted to return to Minas Tirith as much as he wanted to stick his hand into a scorpion's nest. The chaos that awaited, the expectations, the wretched parties - Thengel wanted solitude. He almost told Cenhelm as much, but he knew the men expected him to react somewhere on the strong side.

"It has," Thengel agreed reluctantly. "But can Guthere handle the return journey?"

Cenhelm glanced out the window into the dark. "He will require frequent rests, of course. The journey will take twice as long, but I think it would be best."

Thengel leaned forward so his arms rested on the desk. "Guthere needs more time. Lady Morwen won't begrudge us two bedrooms."

Cenhelm and Thurstan exchanged a meaningful look.

"But the situation has changed, Prince Thengel," Cenhelm continued starkly. "I cannot guarantee your safety, especially as I doubt Lord Halmir is used to the indignity of being washed in a barrel."

"Cenhelm's afraid you'll be killed with Halmir's men about. He'll have failed his duty," Thurstan supplied. "Besides, no new bairns, no new princes."

Thengel shot them exasperated glances. "If you're so worried, where were you lads half an hour again when I found Halmir sitting in here waiting for me?"

Cenhelm paled and Thengel almost felt sorry for him. "What is this? We were with Guthere."

"He's a fool, but I doubt he's fool enough to retaliate, Cenhelm," Thengel assured him, fully regretting telling them anything. "He talks a lot and says things he shouldn't, but I wager he only picks on people he believes won't fight back. I set him straight on that score."

Cenhelm clenched and unclenched his fists. "Forgive me, Prince, I should have -"

Thengel raised his hands. "Peace, Cenhelm. I'm far from helpless."

"Be that as it may," Cenhelm growled, "it's my duty to protect you."

"Another chance will present itself, I have no doubt."

"Certainly if you go asking for it, my lord," said Cenhelm stiffly, wounded by Thengel's flippancy.

"I?"

"Besides, Thurstan witnessed a row between the Lady's folk and those toy soldiers from Arnach for putting up tents in the yard."

Thengel scratched his chin, looking around Cenhelm shoulder at Thurstan. "A row, you say?"

"Yes. I went out to relieve myself and that scarecrow Beldir was fit to be tied - and might have been if I didn't break it up," said Thurstan. "Their tents covered the ground from the dooryard to the orchard gate."

Thengel frowned deeply. "If tensions are high here perhaps we might repay Lady Morwen for her hospitality by lending her support."

"What business is it of ours? None," Cenhelm demanded. "You are not authorized to intervene in matters such as these. In which case, can you justify staying?"

Thengel shook his head, and though he agreed with his guard, he didn't like it. He didn't have any authority in domestic disputes, let alone Lossarnach's affairs.

"It's a sorry business leaving her on her own, though."

"I doubt Lady Morwen would welcome your pity. She's made of metal, we've all seen that," said Cenhelm. "Besides, your business lies in Minas Tirith. We cannot stay forever."

Thengel sighed. "Yes, I know."

Cenhelm blinked in surprise. Thengel smiled ruefully, knowing full well that he had expected the prince's usual angry retort when he suggested returning to Minas Tirith in the spring.

But he couldn't face those duties awaiting him in Minas Tirith wholeheartedly, not unless he relinquished the bitterness he felt. In his mind, taking a greater interest in Rohan's policies, in marriage, and having an heir of his own in preparation of his own future kingship, all meant that despite the leagues between Rohan and Gondor, Fengel still had his leash on his son. It meant that the old tyrant had won. Béma, he thought he'd dealt with that long ago. Yet there was a difference between banking a fire and throwing water over it. Perhaps it would be best to be guided by his men.

"How long will it take to prepare to leave?" Thengel asked.

"We can be ready at first light," Thurstan answered.

"Not first light," said Thengel. "I will need to speak with Lady Morwen and it would be best not to bother her tonight."

Thengel dismissed them and picked up his book again. He heard the door close but when he looked up, Cenhelm had returned to the desk and placed himself in a chair in front of it.

"Tell me what happened with Halmir," said Cenhelm.

"I handled it, Cenhelm," Thengel replied dully.

"You are my prince, but I answer to Marshal Oswin, your uncle. And believe me I'd rather anger you than disappoint him. So, allow me to do my duty."

Thengel scrubbed his forehead with calloused fingers. Cenhelm was a compass that always pointed back to Marshal Oswin and it gave Thengel a headache. The old rider never asked anything unreasonable and maybe that's what Thengel struggled with the most, because he always had to give in. Almost always.

"Alright," Thengel sighed. "Halmir threatened to hit me where he believes my weakest flank to be."

Cenhelm folded his hands in his lap. "Which flank is that?"

"My past."

Cenhelm looked puzzled. "That's not a proper weapon. That's…what do they call it?"

"Blackmail."

Cenhelm's gray brow dipped down over his eyes like a raincloud. "But that won't work. Your past is no secret among your friends."

"He thinks he can mar my reputation with Lady Morwen."

"What's she to you but a friendly young lady? This Halmir doesn't know what he's about. But then, he isn't a soldier." Cenhelm laughed in the hearty manner of man who has had a heavy weight lifted from his chest. "You frightened me, Prince Thengel. I thought he tried to knife your back. Let the coward carry tales to the women."

Thengel felt the moment drew out before Cenhelm became aware that his prince wasn't laughing too.

"You aren't bothered by this, surely?" Cenhelm asked, incredulous.

"I don't like to disappoint her," he admitted.

"Disappoint Lady Morwen?" Cenhelm balked. "How? Because she would see the good of you along with the bad?"

"You have to admit my bad is…worst than most."

"Only because your responsibility is greater. In proportion to others, your mistakes are just like any other man's."

But Morwen certainly would think less of him if she knew the extent of his mistakes, Thengel felt sure. After all, she had been generous with her help and he liked to think, perhaps vainly, that he was somehow deserving of it. It had been so long since he met with people who were not aware of his past that he'd forgotten the discomfort of discovery.

"Cenhelm, you've been with me nearly a year. I never asked if you remember the night my uncle Oswin spirited me out of Edoras. I know you served in his éored at the time."

"Yes, I served in Marshal Oswin's eored for thirty years before he sent me to Gondor." The older man's shaggy eyebrows were nearly lost in his hairline, perhaps wondering where this was going. Then slowly he said, "Ever since you arrived in Gondor, the Marshal has always made sure at least one of the warriors assigned to you knew you as a boy - who can remember you as you were."

Thengel stared at this new revelation. His guard rotated out every three years and were selected at random by casting lots. At least, that's what he had been told. "How could Oswin do that without rigging the drawing?"

Cenhelm snorted at surprise on Thengel's face. "He rigs it to be sure."

Thengel whistled a shrill note, imagining what Fengel would do if he knew. "But why?"

Cenhelm leaned toward Thengel. "Because there are those who feel their prince deserted his duty to the Rohirrim. You might have done much as you grew older to curb Fengel King's avarice had you not been so hot-headed."

"Fengel exiled me," Thengel reminded him, stung by his guard's blame, "I didn't leave of my own free will."

"Marshal Oswin negotiated your exile. The king wanted blood for blood and had the right," Cenhelm countered. "You were exiled by your own will when you put your anger before the good of the people. Anger, not your past, will always be your weakest flank if you allow it."

Thengel had always taken delight in the release of diving blindly into the red haze of his anger. And he had been angry. At eighteen. At thirty-eight. That evening. This afternoon. His mother's face. Lady Morwen's. That dais, the drunken figure of her cousin had brought the years back to him. Anger, his old friend. The great motivator. Truth be told, he didn't know if he had washed Halmir or Fengel King in the rainwater. Halmir possessed the same selfish impulses. Didn't someone have to stand up to the bullies, be they kings or minor lords?

Now Thengel leaned forward. "I felt angry on their behalf. Fengel took no care for them. When my mother begged him to let her restore the royal banners at her own expense, he would rather burn their history than put less meat on his own table."

Cenhelm looked at Thengel strangely. "Do you imagine you are worth less to the Rohirrim than those banners? Banners can be remade," he pressed, "As if we would forget our own history if it wasn't hanging in front of our noses. We keep it here and here." He pointed to his head and his chest. "Better for the people if the banners had burned than to lose their prince."

Thengel sat back in stunned silence as the words took root in his mind. Worth more than the ancient banners of Rohan that hung in Meduseld long before he was born. Was he?

Thengel had always believed that being right and doing his duty were one in the same. Right to protect the banners that were falling off the walls in decay, to take his mother's side, even to threaten the king's life.

At eighteen it had seemed so much clearer. At thirty-eight, the banners were merely the last straw in a long line of insult and injury, which had begun in earnest when Thengel came of age to train as a rider. Fengel had refused to allow Thengel to train with the others, denying him the chance to earn the respect and trust of the men he would one day lead in defense of the Riddermark. Fengel, always paranoid that his son might uproot his throne before his time, had undermined his son at every turn. Thengel, being a hotspur ruled by his spleen, had played right into Fengel's hands. Instead of leading the Rohirrim, Thengel had won renown in the woods of Ithilien as Gondor's lieutenant while Fengel's throne remained safe and intact behind leagues of grasslands and the Firienwood.

He thought he understood a sliver of just how little that would merit him in Rohan where fewer riders remained who served under his uncles Fastred and Folcred and died side by side with Gondorian soldiers. Most of his people had never seen Gondor for themselves or spoke the Common Tongue.

"Now that you are here and have seen me, do you believe what you said?" Thengel asked quietly. "At least the banners still serve a purpose in Rohan."

"I said it would be better for the people," Cenhelm answered gravely, "not for you."

Thengel's eyes narrowed as he tried to puzzle out what Cenhelm had said. "What do you mean?"

"You are not the prince you would have been had you never left the Mark. You know more of the world, of our allies and our enemies, Thengel Thrice-Renowned. You're out from under the boot of Fengel King and that's a heavy burden."

Cenhelm grew thoughtful for a moment. "And yet you too easily slip away from your duty as crown prince. I think exile has been very good for you - but tell me, mīn hlāford, how then have you behaved any differently than your father?"

A blood roared in Thengel's ears. He shot out of the chair as if it had turned hot as coals. But the fire was burning him from the inside.

"I have spent my entire life trying to be different from my father," he growled.

Cenhelm appeared unmoved, even to have expected the reaction. He looked Thengel in the eye and seemed sad. "We can only avoid becoming our own fathers by degree, my prince. Fengel King eats his duty. You dance around it. The Rohirrim lack a leader either way."

Thengel stared at Cenhelm, unable to speak. Before long he found he could not look Cenhelm in the eyes either. He turned away toward the window. It was not so easy observing oneself from another man's perspective. No wonder he had never invited it before.

Cenhelm's chair creaked as the rider rose to his feet.

"There's plenty of fodder to feed on, so I'll leave you after just one more question. You know who will be waiting for you in Minas Tirith and what he will expect," said Cenhelm, once again breaking into Thengel's thoughts. "Are you prepared to stop dancing?"

Thengel stared out the window for a long moment, but the darkness had turned the glass into a mirror. Slowly, he nodded.

"Then some good has come of this journey after all."

…

AN: Thank you for reading! I apologize for the vague references to Thengel's past. I did write about the incident in a story that is as yet unpublished. As I find time, I hope to post it.

mīn hlāford: my lord

Tulkasian: Eh, I made it up. Tulkas is, of course, the Vala with pugilistic tendencies, known for intimidating even Melkor.