A/N: Enter the referee. Hope this new voice works OK. Bumper edition this chapter. Thank you to everyone who has been reviewing and emailing and offering suggestions - it's hugely appreciated!

VIII

Leaving behind at Edoras the Kings of both Rohan and Gondor, I had ridden several days ahead of the returning and victorious army, for I was eager to see Dol Amroth and my family after a year away. Having tarried a while in Edoras with my daughter, I now wished to see my younger sons in Dol Amroth and, on the way, visit my nephew, as dear to me as a son, and his wife in Minas Tirith. And I had there also a new great-niece whose acquaintance I was keen to make for the first time. Thus there was a song in my heart as I rode past the Rammas and onto the Pelennor. News of my imminent arrival had clearly come ahead of me, for my nephew was waiting to greet me on the steps of the White Tower; and we embraced, and he praised the Valar for my safe return. And we went up into the Tower, and towards his office there.

As boys, my two nephews spent many of their summers with my family on the coast, and my wife and I were glad to have them, for not only did we love them dearly, but they were for us a memory of Finduilas, and we also judged that any time away from the city was only to their good. Boromir, always easy with himself, would quickly settle and reappoint himself in command, to which self-elevation my eldest son Elphir, a year or so his junior, would simply raise an eyebrow at me and then amiably indulge his cousin for the entire holiday. But often it would take much time, sometimes a week or two, before Faramir could be coaxed from his near silence. In no small part this was because his older brother would answer on his behalf any question directed towards him and he, like my own son, had plainly decided that the easiest course of action was to allow him. But the larger part of this reticence was, I believed, that he had learned very early in life that, if he did speak, he did not always much care for the responses he got. My wife or I would need to spend much time alone in his company before he was once again comfortable with us; yet once he did open up, it came in a great rush, as if all his opinions and thoughts, bottled up in the city, could at the coast flow free.

His face, upon arrival, and before he was persuaded that it was now safe to relax, was what I am sure he intended to be a study in complete neutrality; but he has always been easily deciphered by the careful reader; which, alas, also included his father. Sometimes his expressions were amusing or touching - the loving look he would bestow upon my wife when he thought nobody was watching; the dry half-smile which would meet one of his brother's more extravagant claims. But often they were simply saddening - the flicker of alarm at the unexpected mention of his father; the look of concentration as he summoned up the nerve to say something - and then the slight shrug when he decided not to risk it; the air of tension that was always faintly detectable, even when he was otherwise at his ease.

The virtual disappearance in recent years of that tension I attributed entirely to Éowyn, and it was one of the many things for which I felt profound gratitude towards this remarkable young woman. Her compassion towards his bleaker moods and her patient sacrifice of her own ambitions to his duty and desperate desire for a stable family life were some of the other acts for which I believed her as much worthy of song as her deeds in battle; and, in his turn, Faramir was as gentle and considerate as I had always known he would be with the woman he loved.

And he did love her - anyone could see that, not just those of us who were experts in him - for his face was transformed when he caught sight of her; and, when he touched her, it was sometimes as if he were handling something of great value. But at the back of my mind I worried - for I always worried about my nephew - that while he was indeed devoted to her, he frequently misread her. And this shortfall in his usually limitless insight into the hearts of others I put down to his lack of sisters, and his lack of a mother; and, also, that whatever perception he had gained as a boy of how it was between my wife and me, he did not otherwise have a great deal of experience to draw upon when attempting to make a success of his own marriage. My heart had been full of foreboding at his continued delay in explaining to Éowyn that he was ill; but the boy was as obstinate as his father, and I knew, from hard experience there, that pressing him would most likely have an effect opposite to that desired. And while I had had sympathy with his unspoken fear that Éowyn would not understand, again I believed he had misread her. She valued plain speaking and did not care to be deceived; but my nephew had learnt at much too young an age the safety there was in silence, and the Steward's house, when the Lord Denethor had been its master, had been a place were certain matters, such as missing mothers, or differing opinions, or one's feelings, were firmly closed.

My nephew's office in the White Tower had its habitual air of appearing as if a small hurricane had lately passed through it, a trait which had always somehow heartened me, since his father's preference for orderliness I had always felt bordered on the obsessive. But, despite their vastly different styles, I would not have been able to choose between them when it came to attention to detail and grasp of subject matter; in this he was very much his father's son, save he did not use his knowledge as a stick to beat others, nor as a means to trap them. And the white walls caught the sunlight, and fell on his papers and books and pictures, and when he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head, I was struck at how at ease he had become in his role as steward.

And so we fell to talking, and I asked him for news of Gondor, where all had, as I expected, been well and indeed prospered under his rule. He pressed me then for news of the war and wished to hear in detail about its conduct, the success of our strategies, and my thoughts on the security of our eastern allies. And he spoke a little in return of the incursions from the south which had been attempted, and the great successes of the Poros company in defending that border. And while it was a great relief to him that our main strength was now returning home, he believed it was clear now in the south that even while stretched elsewhere, Gondor was neither weak nor undefended. 

Then I asked him about his family, and he spoke at length and with great love of Elboron, who was now walking and almost talking; and, when I asked about his new daughter, now four months old, he was near speechless with pleasure. They had named her Morwen, for Éowyn's mother's mother; and it seemed that Faramir's new daughter was another dark-haired child and so well named - although I privately wondered what Éowyn made of this. It seemed, when I asked, that this birth had been less trying for Éowyn and, as the summer had been mild, she had been less troubled by the heat. And then I asked, as I knew he had been expecting, about his own health during my absence, and he fell silent again, but this was plainly not from pleasure. After a moment he spoke.

'It truly troubles me very little; but, since you will not be content with that as an answer, I shall attempt a fuller one.' But as I watched I saw tension creep in around his eyes and mouth where before he had been at ease. 

'Have you experienced anything such as I saw before I left?' I prompted.

He ran his hand through his hair, a gesture which most commonly meant he was considering how best to phrase something. 'Not so much in recent months,' he admitted.

'But you have done so?'

'If I am over-tired or over-anxious - '

'The latter being a common enough occurrence!' I said, and saw, with a little surprise, that this did not amuse him.

'Indeed,' he said, a little sternly, I thought, then he continued, 'Or, on occasion, if I hear loud and sudden noises. In which case - yes; I might easily find myself in a condition much the same as you saw before you left.' And then he smiled and seemed more himself. 'The lesson being not to become exhausted and to keep all about me quiet - as I prefer! And these simple rules followed, I am much the same as ever I was.'

'And have you yet picked up a sword?' I said softly.

He frowned at me, and his face again became somewhat stern. 'That,' he said, quietly but firmly, 'will not happen again.' Then his mood changed back. 'So, are you now content?' he smiled.

And I was, since he seemed very well, as did his family, and he had clearly made a great success of his stewardship. And although I now wanted to go to my own home in the city, after my long ride, I promised to dine with him at his home that evening, and we bid farewell for the moment, and I left him to his business. It was only when I was halfway to my own house that it came to me that he had barely spoken about his wife, and then only in answer to my questions. And then I also thought that, for the first time in his life, he had, perhaps, not been as easy for me to read as he had hitherto always been.

In the early evening, at the time we had set, I was strolling across the court of the fountain towards the Steward's house, and I heard my name called. Coming towards me from the direction of the citadel was my nephew who, it seemed, has just finished at his office for the day. We walked together to his home, and he asked if I had rested well, which I had, and I asked if his afternoon had gone well, to which he shrugged.

'Paperwork is paperwork. At least I am a quick reader.'

'And yet you would willingly spend hours with your head stuck in a book!'

'I would prefer something less dry! Even with my imagination I am hard pressed to make reports of building maintenance on the fourth level seem romantic.'

I laughed at the thought of my nephew the bureaucrat sitting behind his desk, and we entered the house. Éowyn came to greet me in the hallway, and she was as lovely as ever, and I was very thankful to see how well she looked. It was plain this new baby had taken much less of a toll on her, and this was a great relief, since I knew how much of a strain her first child had been, both physically and on her state of mind. My first stop was, of course, the nursery, to take a look at their children, now fast asleep; and to admire how much their son had grown, and to offer appropriately flattering remarks about their daughter, which was not difficult.

'Do you see enough of them, Faramir?' I said quietly, for I feared that for all his devotion, his workload might too easily force him to leave all the burden for their care completely on Éowyn, and I knew she would not much favour this arrangement.

'I come back for an hour or so each day before they go to bed,' he said, and I was pleased to hear it.

'Indeed,' his wife added, 'the Lord of Emyn Arnen has always been most fond of his home and his children.'

'It is good, I think, for them to have one such parent,' he replied.

I had been gazing at Morwen, who looked as much like her father as Elboron did his mother, and had not seen their faces throughout this exchange. There was nothing in the tone, since both had spoken perfectly normally, and Faramir and Éowyn had always sparred, a large part of the delight of watching them together as a couple - but it seemed to me, given what I knew of their individual fears and troubles, that these were strange subjects about which to jest. And when I looked at them, there was none of the silent language of affection, of touch and caress, that had always accompanied their word games. Éowyn's face was perfectly still and pale, like a cold marble statue. And Faramir had, it seemed, at last achieved that expression of complete neutrality for which he had striven as a boy. And I admit that, seeing them thus, my heart quailed.

The greatest grief in my life was the year I spent watching helplessly my wise, beloved wife, as the sickness gripped her, and as she fought it with a ferocity the like of which I have barely ever seen even from men on the battlefield. But, at the end, when her suffering was too much even for her indomitable spirit, she simply slid away from me, so quietly I barely she knew she had gone. I would not wish such agony upon even an enemy. Close to this in painfulness were the sorrow and the sense that somehow I had failed to protect her which overwhelmed me on receiving the letter from the Lord Denethor informing me, in terse and almost cold language, of the death of my dear sister. And then, again, another letter, in the Steward's precise and powerful hand, telling me of the loss of that magnificent son that he and Finduilas had inexplicably contrived to produce. My poor sister and her boys. I would have protected them from anything - that pitiless man included - with my life if needs be. I had never thought I would need to protect them from themselves.

With so much sorrow caused by death, it never ceases to bewilder me why the living should choose to cause themselves even more pain. But, even fresh from a year on the eastern front, there is little I have seen to compare with the wounds inflicted upon each other in that time by the Lord and Lady and Emyn Arnen, as assiduous in the conduct of their own, private war as we had been in ours.

My alarm grew steadily throughout dinner. As we ate and talked, I gained the impression that I was attending two separate suppers, not one. It was not as if they competed for my attention; no, they were both far too courteous to draw me onto their battlefield in so gross a way. But I would find that while I was speaking to one, the other was completely absent from the discussion. Then, when an opportunity arose, the other would address me again, picking up from something we had said previously. They did not exchange a word and even barely a look. I began to reach more for the wine than was my custom and, after an hour or so, it was thus tempting to grab them both and knock their heads together. But I restrained myself.

Only at the end of the evening did they finally address each other, and I wished most fervently that they had not, or that I had not seen it. Faramir and I had fallen again to talking about the eastern campaign, and he was hazarding guesses as to what activity we would now see south of Dale where, he judged, our borders were too open between Rhûn and the northern marches of Ithilien, and he feared an attack there shortly. The King had been saying much the same thing before I left Edoras, and predicting another war there very soon. I believed the King on occasion too much given to doom-laden pronouncements and had, in my more optimistic fashion, insisted it would be several years before that need seriously concern us. It was therefore most galling to hear that Faramir's independent conclusions matched the King's, since he was usually right, a trait which could easily have been maddening, but which he contrived always to make endearing.

'You have lost none of your strategic acumen in your retirement,' I said fondly. 'How I wish you might be there with us,' I added gently, and he smiled at me, then laughed.

'Nay!' he said, 'I am well content to remain here, comfortable behind my desk!'

And then up spoke his wife. 'Which seems to my mind strange for one who was not present to earn glory at the greatest battle of our age.'

There was somewhat of a pause; then, 'Lady!' I said, in genuine distress, for this remark seemed to me simply cruel, given the cause of my nephew's ill health, and what I knew he himself privately felt about not having fought the battle on the Pelennor - whatever others thought of his extraordinary sacrifices in defence of the city.

But Faramir raised his hand, silencing me, and looking at his face, I got the dreadful impression that he heard such comments far too frequently. And I could not believe this of Éowyn who, for all her talk of valour and courage, I had thought knew about men and war, and its cost upon them, and did not lack compassion. And that was when I was struck with the thought that it was possible that she still did not know.

They looked coldly upon each other for some time, before he broke the silence. 'As my lady may recall, for it was not long afterwards that first she set eyes on me, I had been wounded leading a retreat in which I lost a third of my men and most of my friends.' He paused. 'I too saw blood flow freely on the fields of the Pelennor, Éowyn. But the memory of the deaths of those I loved is not to me glorious.'

And I saw the hurt in her eyes, and I saw also that he was glad to see it.

And I was glad to leave them, for what I had seen had distressed me greatly. As I stood on the step, I promised Éowyn as I kissed her that I would see her at home the next morning; and I promised Faramir, as we clasped hands, that I would come to his office at the end of the day; and I was filled with terrible sadness at the great loneliness that lay behind both their pleas for my company. When the door closed behind me, it was hard to bear the thought of those two fine and fragile people, that I loved so dearly, and who had wandered so long alone and adrift, finding in each other not the comfort which they both so plainly desired, but only more sorrow. I went to bed with a heavy heart.

I do not make it my habit to interfere in the marriages of my friends and family. Perhaps it was my long felt regret that I had not spoken up when confronted with the disaster that had been the marriage of Denethor and Finduilas, but when I awoke the next morning, I had clearly decided in my sleep that I had to do all in my power to help these two young people, who were unable to set aside the sorrows of the past, to live the joyful life which they richly deserved. For they should be happy together - they had two fine children, were young and in excellent physical health, and had all the comforts that came from their rank. And yet it seemed that Faramir was tormenting himself at his inability to perform a role he had never wanted in the first place, and Éowyn was in turn placing the burden of her own frustrations on him. I believed in my heart that they still loved each other, but I did not know how much longer that could last nor, indeed, whether too much damage had already been done.

Late in the morning, I went to see Éowyn, who was at home and had plainly been waiting for me. And we embraced, and she clutched at me a little longer than I remembered her ever doing, for she was not an overly demonstrative woman, which had always made the affection she bestowed on Faramir more touching to behold. And we sat in the nursery for a little while, and played with Elboron, and cosseted Morwen, and then we went downstairs and fell to talking. I asked her gently how she liked her new daughter, which seemed to be a great deal, and she admitted that now her son was more active, her interest in him had grown.

'I am glad to hear all this, my dearest lady,' I said, 'but still my heart near broke to behold you and my nephew last night.'

A wave of great sorrow passed across her face.

'What you said to him...' I ventured.

The sorrow became remorse. 'Dear uncle,' she said, and she was near to tears, 'I beg you not to reproach me, for I do it myself daily.'

'Why then say these dreadful things?'

And now she was indeed weeping, very softly, and I moved to sit near her, to comfort her, and held her hand.

'He is so cold...' she whispered. 'So remote. He works all day and, when he does come home, he sees only the children, or seals himself into his study. He will not speak to me or touch me. He seems unwilling even to look at me. And I have tried and tried, but it seems the only way to get his attention is to attack him - '

'You certainly get his attention, but I doubt that you will thus make him less remote,' I pointed out.

She wiped at her tears. 'He holds me in contempt. He believes I fail as a mother, and I believe he is close to the mark.'

'Éowyn, that is nonsense! I have seen you with your children, and it is plain that you love them with all your heart!'

'I should never have become a mother,' she said sadly. 'All I shall do is ruin those poor children as surely as we ourselves were ruined. And I shall not have the excuse of being dead, although at times I wonder if it would be better for them if I were, and there father could be left to bring them up without me.' The tears rolled down her face again.

'You must not say, not even think such terrible things! Éowyn, how can you believe this? That they would be better without a mother - and one so extraordinary as you? Whatever nonsense my nephew has contrived to say, you must dismiss it as being not on your account and entirely as stemming from his own disastrous childhood. And he should have enough sense to see that himself.' I took a breath. 'You both should, lady,' I added very gently.

She did not answer immediately, merely sat for a while with her head lowered, her face veiled by her hair. In time, she spoke again. 'He turns out,' she said, with much hesitation, 'not to be the man I believed I was marrying.'

'It would be a miracle if he had,' I muttered, but said, 'How so, Éowyn? What sort of man did you think you were marrying?'

'A kind man, and a gentle man,' she said.

'He is above all these things,' I replied, although given their display the previous evening, I could see how she might have begun to reach a different conclusion.

'One who would love me - '

'He would give up his life for you and the children you have together,' I said; for I knew that whatever he felt when he reached for a weapon, should his beloved family be threatened, he would seize the hilt of a sword without hesitation, whatever it cost him.

'One who would bring honour upon our house,' she said.

I did not answer straightaway, for I was not yet clear how much she knew, and it was not my place to tell her that her husband was ill. This had to come from him, I deemed, if this poor couple were to have any chance of happiness together. And if she did know, and despised him for it, then she was less the woman I had judged her to be, and I would rather have him without her, no matter how much it cost him at first to lose her.

'How does he not bring you honour, Éowyn?' I asked softly. 'The sacrifices he made during the war; all that those years of fighting cost a man like him... The service he has given the King since then - and what he has done in the past year, ruling the kingdom wisely and justly. There are few men in either Gondor or Rohan to be held in such honour as your husband.'

'And yet he let you ride east in his place, and he sits here in Minas Tirith, pushing paper around his desk. He will not even wear the sword I gave to him to protect us.'

Two things were plain to me then. Firstly, that she still did not know about his illness. And, secondly, and consequently, that my nephew was a greater fool than I would ever have believed possible of him.

'My lady,' I said at last, 'Whatever his demeanour and the deepest desires of his heart, Faramir is not solely of the line of Dol Amroth. He is as much the son of Denethor as of Finduilas - more so than he admits even to himself. You would be very wise, I think, to remember this, for the Lord Denethor was a stern and even at times a cruel man, not given much to pity, nor to love. And I think, although I love him greatly and it causes me pain to say it, that my nephew could very easily become like his father, should he be too much hurt or disappointed. His will is as strong as his father's was, and it has only been through great self-restraint that he has schooled himself to gentleness. You make a grave mistake if you judge him weak.'

It was clear from her face that I had given her much to think about.

'For the sake of yourselves and the children you both hold so dear, I ask you - Éowyn, I beg you - talk to your husband. Ask him again to explain why it is he will not go to war. For I fear that soon it may be too late for you; and while you and he may make yourselves as happy or as unhappy as you choose, you have children now, and neither of you, I think, wish to make their childhoods as miserable as your own.'

And she sighed, and nodded, and I knew for certain I had done the right thing in speaking to her so frankly.

It was early in the evening when I went to see my nephew, and he was still hard at work. A messenger stood before his desk, and the steward was busy scribbling away. He looked up and smiled warmly but a little absently when I entered, and I nodded to show I would wait until he was ready. In time he finished, sealed the letter with his silver ring, and sent the messenger off with quick but courteous instructions.

'Did I come too early?' I said, closing the door behind the messenger, for I wished this conversation to be private.

'No, I am finished for the day. And I would stop on your account anyway.'

'I am honoured, my lord steward!'

He gave me another absent smile, and came from behind his desk towards the hearth, before which stood two chairs, and a small table, piled high with books and one or two bottles. I sat in the seat he gestured towards, and glanced at the titles on the spines of the books. None seemed to be related to his work, and I wondered exactly how much time he spent here. He poured out the drinks, handed me a glass, and sat down opposite me. We talked for a while about his day, but he had plainly not been much enthralled and perhaps instead rather wearied by the day's business, and we soon drifted onto other matters, such as the imminent arrival of the King. And then we fell quiet. He appeared to have lost the art of small talk or, at least, had taken to spending more of his time in silence. After a moment or two studying his rather preoccupied face, I took the plunge.

'I saw your wife this morning,' I said.

He gave me a sharp look. 'Did you indeed?' he said dryly. 'And how is she?'

'Not at all happy,' I answered. 'As I'm sure you can guess.'

He said nothing, but stared into his glass, swirling the liquid around with a gentle, steady motion.

'What has happened to you both, Faramir?' I said quietly.

He gave a short, embittered laugh. 'It is quite simple. My wife believes that I am a coward. And so she holds me in contempt.'

'And have you still not explained to her?'

'Explained what precisely? That my hand shakes when it reaches for a sword? That I weep at nights at the memory of battle? That I would hang myself rather than ever again go to war? You truly believe that she would not judge all this cowardice? What else is it?'

'You know better than to say that - '

'Thank you, but I am the best judge of my own state of mind - '

'And what of all those other men you have known that have suffered the same as you? Do you judge them cowards too? I can see from your face that you would not dream of dishonouring them so. Why, then, should you be any different, Faramir?'

He did not answer me, but a shadow settled on his face.

'I think you underestimate your wife,' I said eventually.

'I think you do not know her as well as I.'

'And I think that you do not know her as well as you think.'

Again he fell silent, but then he set down his glass, rose, and went to lean on the mantelpiece. When he turned to look at me again, he folded his hands behind his back, and his face was now very pale. And it took me a moment to grasp, since this was not an expression that he had ever presented to me before, that he was extremely angry. I rose to face him and, as I did, I remembered that I had seen that look before; and it seemed to me that more than thirty years had rolled back, and that I was standing before the Lord Denethor. I was most upset and, I admit, quite unnerved at the transformation in him. I raised my hands to calm him.

'Look, son - ' I began, but he cut me short.

'You have overstepped yourself, sir,' he said softly.

I gasped, for he had never spoken to me so coldly before.

'It is not your place, sir, to pass judgement on my affairs. What passes between me and my wife is our own business, and I would ask you in future to remember that. I do not deem it appropriate to offer my opinion on your domestic arrangements, and I must, I fear, insist that you extend the same courtesy to me.'

'Now look here, son - ' I began again, more firmly, for I was now, I admit, somewhat nettled.

'I would ask you also to bear in mind, my lord prince,' he said, and his face had gone even paler and his fury unmistakeable, 'that I am not your son, and you are not my father. This persistent confusion in your mind has, I think, led you to assume an authority over me which in fact you do not have.'

I was very angry by now, at what I saw to be his ingratitude, the precision with which he delivered his blows and, most of all, at his uncanny impersonation of his father, a man who had always managed to play havoc with my self-control. And I was overcome with a powerful urge to strike him - but I am not such a man as Denethor son of Ecthelion, and with an effort I controlled myself. But I was not sure how long this restraint would stay in place, and I deemed it best that I left at once.

'I am glad that we have clarified matters between us, my lord steward,' I said, rather bitterly, as I made for the door. 'And I shall take up no more of your valuable time. But I'll say one thing else, Faramir,' I added, as I turned the handle on the door. 'No-one would mistake you for anything other than your father's son. It's as if he lives and breathes.' And then I bowed in a mockery of courtesy, and I left him before we said any more that we would later both regret.

As I made my way out of the citadel, my face still scarlet, that regret took immediately hold of me. This was most certainly not how I had intended this exchange to play out, and I deeply regretted my final remarks, which now seemed unnecessarily cruel. And I fell to thinking about what he had said; for, indeed, he was always such an easy-tempered and compliant man, and I remembered so acutely the forlorn boy that he had been, that it was, I thought now, perhaps too easy to treat him as if he were still much younger than he was and in need of my protection still. Moreover, it struck me now that in this I had possibly done him an injustice as great as that his father had done him, although without the appalling physical coercion, in not taking him entirely seriously on his own terms, and in giving him less than my full respect. He was, after all, as he had said, not my child, nor my junior, but a lord of the realm and head of his own house as much as I; and he had demonstrated repeatedly his excellence, in his service to Gondor as a soldier and again, most recently, ruling the realm for a year not just competently, but admirably. He was indeed my peer and not my subordinate.

And I wondered then if it was that perhaps he should be left to make what he would of his life, mistakes and all. But I prayed for Éowyn's sake that, should she decide that it was time to attempt a reconciliation, that it would not be the ghost of his father that met her, but his own decent and honourable self. And after I went into my house, I sat for a while with my head in my hands, and I swore never to interfere in another marriage again.