The garden of the Lady – 4 – Berúthiel of Umbar
.oOo.
The garden gate flaps in the ocean wind, creaking ominously on its last hinge. There is no longer any need to guard it, the fright is enough to keep the passer-by away.
The hill has lost its name of 'Queen's Gardens', for everything about the sovereign has been erased from the porticoes, the paintings, the registers, the anals. Now stony paths run through a jagged moor. The fountain has dried up, the hamlet of the arena is deserted. In places there are still clumps of twisted trees, covered in black moss and rotten with brambles. Pale flowers gobble up insects under the corpses of withered palms.
A few fruit trees still struggle against the weeds, bearing deformed buds of adultery and stillborn fruits of incest. The arbour has collapsed between the stone arches. Beneath the shreds of trellis hang cobwebs.
Bitter black berries sometimes ripen on the stunted shrubs. They are called "queen's curls". The herbmasters make a decoction from them, which is served to lovers wishing to be freed from their obsession.
Under the nettle-ridden rotunda, the memory of Tarannon's and Berúthiel's disputes still resounds. The king had reserved this estate for her as a wedding present, so that she could indulge her passion for horticulture. He had taken care to preserve the stage and its tiers, in order to satisfy her thirst for theatre. But the Navigator-King, obsessed with Gondor's naval power, had neglected the queen. Sordid accusations of treachery, dark magic and intrigue, the misdeeds of frightful felines spying for an enchantress, had quickly driven them apart. Finally the queen had been banished, after a trial behind closed doors, and sent back south with a few galley slaves sentenced to life. The King had no descendants, and was succeeded by his nephew, who led the war against Umbar...
Only an old white cat, gaunt and devious, still prowls in these ruins. Rumour has it that he has lived nine lives... nine very long lives.
.oOo.
Des flibustiers de Pelargir racontent avoir eu, par une nuit trop calme, il y a bien des années, une apparition qui glaça d'effroi l'équipage :
Sans bruit glisse une nef sur l'océan austral.
Sous la lune luisante un chat blanc tient la barre.
Des miaulements furieux s'échappent de la cale,
Des grincements hideux, un affreux tintamarre.
Des brumes malines le navire surgit.
Un chat noir à la poupe agite un vieux falot.
Un matou à la proue, un autre à la vigie,
Funèbre présage dérivant sur les eaux.
Some privateers of Pelargir tell of an apparition on a still night, many years ago, which frightened the crew:
A ship glides noiselessly across the southern ocean.
Under the shining moon a white cat holds the helm.
Furious meows escape from the hold,
A hideous creaking, an ugly din.
From the malignant mists the ship emerges.
A black cat at the stern waves an old falot.
A tomcat at the bow, another at the lookout,
A mournful omen drifting on the waters.
This legend has been told in every inn and tavern from Dol Amroth to Linhir. The sailors claim that the fallen Queen, Berúthiel the cursed, has joined her people, the princes of the Black Númenoreans, and that with them she nows weaves her curses, preparing the fall of the Dúnedain of Gondor.
Who knows? Perhaps Bergil was rowing among these galley slaves condemned for life?
Or has the witch enslaved him in the form of one of her nine cats?
.oOo.
NOTES : The origins of this tale in Tolkien's legendary
1 When the Fellowship of the Ring is looking for her way through Moria's darkness, Aragorn sustains that Gandalf «... is surer of finding the way home in a blind night than the cats of Queen Berúthiel.'» — The Lord of The RIngs — Book II — Chapter 4
2 « She lived in the King's House in Osgiliath, hating the sounds and smells of the sea and the house that Tarannon built below Pelargir "upon arches whose feet stood deep in the wide waters of Ethir Anduin;" she hated all making, all colours and elaborate adornment, wearing only black and silver and living in bare chambers, and the gardens of the house in Osgiliath were filled with tormented sculptures beneath cypresses and yews. She had nine black cats and one white, her slaves, with whom she conversed, or read their memories, setting them to discover all the dark secrets of Gondor, so that she knew those things "that men wish most to keep hidden," setting the white cat to spy upon the black, and tormenting them. No man in Gondor dared touch them; all were afraid of them, and cursed when they saw them pass. What follows is almost wholly illegible in the unique manuscript, except to the ending, which states that her name was erased from the Book of the Kings ("but the memory of men is not wholly shut in books, and the cats of
Queen Berúthiel never passed wholly out of men's speech"), and that King Tarannon had her set on a ship, alone with her cats and set adrift on the sea before a north wind. The ship was last seen flying past Umbar under a sickle moon, with a cat at the masthead and another as a figure-head on the prow.» Unfinished Tales – The third age
3 « With Tarannon, the twelfth king, began the line of the Ship-kings, who built navies and extended the sway of Gondor along the coasts west and south of the Mouths of Anduin. To commemorate his victories as Captain of the Hosts, Tarannon took the crown in the name of Falastur 'Lord of the Coasts'.» — The Lord of The RIngs — Appendix A. Tarannon was the first childless king, since he fought with his wife Berúthiel, His nephew Eärnil 1st, the son of his brother Tarciryan, succeeded him. The name of the queen was even erased from the royal annals.
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