CHAPTER 4: MEMORY REDUX/ A QUIET LIFE

Tamar glanced at the milkman – Kored, that sounded Welsh didn't it? – and back to Frank, whose grip on the blocksplitter, whiteknuckled, was tightening. His eyes were wide, and his nostrils flared with each breath. The moment hung in the air, heavy with potential. Kored took a step back, feeling his way on the gravel with cautious toes.

            "I know that look sire. Many's the time I seen the very hordes of Mordor cower beneath it!"

Frank inhaled and hissed: "I don't know what you speak of."

Tamar stepped forward, positioning herself barely between them and addressed Kored. "Perhaps you'd better leave."

The older man noded, and bent to pick up his basket, the milk bottles clanking, discordant. He stepped back again, facing Frank who remained motionless. Kored's gaze flicked back and forth between the rigidly posed man and the silent watchful woman, lingering for a moment, seemingly doubtful, on Tamar. He nodded again, and faced Frank squarely.

"The oathes I made still stand, Sire, even after death, even here. I am your man, and will follow willingly if you but give the word," he said softly, and Tamar caught the cadence of a rote learned oath. Something inscrutable passed across Frank's eyes, and he blinked rapidly several times, and abruptly lowered the axe. "Go," he uttered quietly and forcefully. Kored made something like a salute, and, turning swiftly on his heel, crunched away across the gravel, out of sight behind the house. Tamar turned back to Frank, who sighed wearily and dropped the axe the ground where it hit the gravel with a muted slap. Nearby a bee busied itself in a last expedition before winter's sleep, and a crow called roughly from the other side of the house. Frank stood with his eyes on her, his gaze steady, but his throat twitching convulsively.

            "I… apologise, Lady," he said, his voice uneven. Tamar swallowed, her mouth dry, and shivered as the latent violence of the previous scene began to dissolve to be replaced by a new kind of tension. Her movements were stiff as she took a step forward, and picked up the axe, holding it firmly. She looked up at his grave face and in a strained voice said , "Mrs MacNeill will be dropping some eggs off this morning. Please don't try to kill her too." Then she turned and walked past him into the dark door of the cottage, taking the axe with her.

            He stood for a short minute where he was, listening to the bee, the crow, the small sounds she made as she moved about the kitchen. Then he began to walk, a sudden burst of energy forcing him to action, to movement. The kinetic joy he felt while chopping wood was replaced by an urgent need to be doing… anything. His strides were short and precise, a little wary with bare feet on cool ground, but he kept moving, away from the buildings and out into the awakening day and grass that rippled like water in his wake.

            Tamar was restless and nervous as she rinsed the coffee maker jug under the kitchen cold tap. Her mouth was twisted into a moue of unease, and her brow was heavy and creased. What the hell had that been about? And the milkman definitely seemed to know Frank – Boromir? In his favour though, Frank did seem to be genuinely confused by the man. Identities are often better unknown than concealed, she thought, quoting herself from a recent novel.  She glanced over to the axe, leaning by the green door, as she replaced the glass jug and fitted a filter to the top of it. The sharpness of ground coffee shocked her senses for a moment as she added the rich brown grains to the filter and snapped it shut. Flicking the switch, and leaving the hissing, gurgling machine to itself, she turned to the window and stared out of it for a long time. Who was he, this man that she had found like a wounded bird beneath a tree? Sparrow - or hawk? The crow outside called again, sending shivers through her with its callous, mocking tone.

He walked until he stopped. Not too long. He had walked through the grass, eyes forward, back straight, until he had come to a black granite outcropping. It broke through the soil like the crest of some enormous wave, topped with lichen like froth, frozen forever in ageless stone. He stopped, and stared at it, then away and past it, over the meadow to the edge of the forest. He felt unprotected out here, naked. The other man's words had stripped something from him – and replaced it with something else.  Doubt coiled like a heavy serpent in his entrails, and he felt sick and formlessly angry. The other man, Kored, had called him Boromir, and 'my lord', and had sworn an ages old oath before him. It was an oath that he had heard many times, and now the words spilled from his throat as he remembered them.

"As the blood of Numenor once flowed, mine flows now for Gondor and for you. I am your man, and will follow willingly if you but give the word."

They felt good, tasted familiar on his tongue. He repeated it, stronger, with more conviction. He had said this. Many times… he stopped, his moment of recall interrupted by the uncomfortable sensation of words left unsaid. That there was something he had meant to say… to someone. He had wanted to swear that oath, but had not. Could not, a small voice in his head hissed. He passed a hand over his face, rubbing his growing stubble.

"Boromir," he said, testing the sensation. "I am Boromir. Lord Boromir."

"Yes, sire," came a soft voice behind him. "You are still the Lord Boromir."

He turned sharply, fingers closing into fists. Kored stood there, puffing slightly, still dressed in his blue uniform, his gaze intent upon Boromir's face. He did not flinch.

"You are Boromir, Lord of Gondor, saviour of the town of Tirnalan. I remember, even if you do not."

Boromir shivered in the shadow cast by the tor, his face frozen. Tirnalan.

"Keep talking," he ordered. Kored nodded.

"You are the son of Denethor, Ruling Steward. Your brother is Faramir –"

"Faramir…" he whispered.

Kored nodded. "Yes, your brother is also a warrior, although but a stripling boy when last I saw him." His voice dropped to an almost intimate tone. "You are the hope of your people. If you are here, then all is truly lost at last…" he trailed away with a small sigh and a sob.

Boromir stood straight, and gazed past him. "I am Boromir, son of Denethor, Lord of Gondor," he said softly. His eyes snapped back to the man before him.

"You served with me at Tirnalan. You were a sargeant, an archer of some reknown. I remember you now. We were trapped in an alley by a phalanx of enemy fighters, and you and your brother – Marduk? – You perched atop a roof and picked enough from the edges that we were able to break and run for cover. I lost so many men that day…" His stare grew unfocussed. "I though for sure that all was lost, another city drowned in the darkness. But somehow at the end of the fighting, I was standing, and the town was mine again. Mine. I had snatched it back from between the talons of Mordor, and held it firm against my breast. I wore the silver and sable of Gondor that day, and stained it with the blood of Gondor's enemies. And you," he said, returning his attention to Kored, who stood rapt and attentive, "you… I went searching for you afterwards, to thank you. But you were…" He stopped, his throat closed and wooden. Kored's body had been one of those laid carefully against the town's broken wall, eyes closed with a gauntleted hand, arms crossed over the raw seeping wound that slit his belly almost in half. Boromir blinked at the memory. His bow had been a snapped twig, laid beside him. But now, Kored stood before him, wearing unfamiliar clothing, and unchanged from that day – albeit alive.

"You were dead," Boromir stated, his tone faintly accusatory. Kored nodded, slowly.

"Aye, I died once that day, for Gondor. Is it not odd that we should meet like this, in the Afterlife?"

Boromir swallowed, once, twice. "This, then, is what awaits?" He gestured around him with one hand. "This?"

He sat down abruptly, and rested his head in his hands. Kored sat, a little awkwardly, some distance away.

"How did you die, Lord?" he asked softly. Boromir looked up.

"What?"

"How did you die? If you are here, then…" Kored's question faded beneath the inference. Boromir sat up, and closed his eyes.

"I died…" he said unsteadily. "I am dead. I died."

Kored was still, his eyes sympathetic.

"Battle," Boromir supplied at length, openeing his eyes. He sought a memory of his death, of what had killed him, of where he had been and why. Images, of a dark shape, of screaming, fighting, of pain that tore the breath from his lungs, of a man's creased brow hovering above him… But nothing more.

"Of course," Kored stated. "You were ever the most honourable and valiant among us."

Boromir looked at him, raising his eyebrows slightly, and smiling. "I thank you, yeoman, but I fear that here, in this world, qualities such as you and I hold most dear may count for naught."

Kored pursed his lips. "This world is not so different from the one we left, Sire. I have been here for six seasons now, and I am contented well enough."

Boromir creased his brow in surprise. "Six? But the Battle for Tirnalan was but two seasons ago. In winter. Are you certain of it?"

Kored cocked his head to one side, then nodded. "Aye. Certain. Six seasons. Two in my current occupation." He smiled slightly. "This place has no need of any more soldiers, Lord. Although my hand sorely misses my bow at times, I am well content to deliver milk, and live a quiet life."

He lapsed into silence, and Boromir grew thoughtful and still. A quiet life. He thought of the cottage with the green door, and the woman and hound within. He may no longer be welcome in that place, but he could find another. Kored had adjusted, and if there were one of his men in this world, he reasoned that there must be more. Perhaps…

At length, he returned to the cottage. Tamar saw them approaching from the kitchen window, and stepped into the shadows of the back door to watch them approach, one finger tip straying the handle of the axe which still stood there. The two men, Frank and the milkman, Kored, approached together, deep in coversation. They paused at the edge of the yard, by a disused farm building, and exchanged a few more words before parting, Kored moving quickly toward his van, checking his wristwatch, and Frank standing and watching him go before shifting a considering gaze toward the cottage. Tamar studied him closely. He was different somehow, perhaps taller, or sterner. With a lithe grace that had not previously been present, he began to move toward the cottage. She shrank back, out of the shadows into the interior of the house. He entered, momentarily filling the doorway with his large dark form before moving into the kitchen, his bare feet making quiet scuffing sounds on the tiled floor. Tamar followed him, and when she entered the kitchen, he was standing before the coffee maker, a look of contemplation on his face. He looked up when she made a slight noise. Something close to embarassment crossed his features, and he ducked his head.

"I apologise for frightening you, Lady," he said. Even his voice was different, she thought. Stronger, with an edge to it. In his current clothes – the old tshirt and stained and too short track pants – he had acquired a bearing that surprised her. Almost regal, she supposed, although she had never seen a member of the Royal family to make the comparison.

"You know who you are," she said shortly. After a moment, he nodded.

"Yes. Yeoman Kored does speak the truth. Although I fear I may have been momentarily… outside of myself… I have regained my name and somewhat of my history, although much is still unaccounted for."

Tamar stood straight, and raised her eyebrows in question. He swallowed, and looked her in the eye.

"I am Boromir, Lord of Gondor, son of Denethor, High Steward of Gondor," he said in a firm voice. She looked at him. She blinked.

"Uh-huh."

There was a moment of silence. And another. Tamar sighed.

"That's it?"

He nodded, a slightly imperious cast to his action. She pursed her lips.

"You can tell me the truth, you know. Surely you owe me that much. If it's a matter of the police, I don't care what it is you've done as long as you don't do it here. Why – "

"I speak the truth, Lady Tamar," he said loudly, interrupting her. "I am no criminal, assuredly. I am a Lord of Gondor. I have regained myself at last, here." He gestured around him. She frowned.

"In the kitchen?"

"No." He gestured again, impatiently. "The Afterlife. Here. With you."

She was silent for a moment, and rubbed at her eye when it itched slightly.

"So – you are Boromir, the Lord of Gondor, and you are dead, and this is the Afterlife?"

He nodded. "Yes."

She pursed her lips again. "Uh-huh." She sighed again, considering. Why not? Her first thought had been aliens, admittedly. Surely this was just as entertainingly odd. She had sensed something otherworldly about him when she had first encountered him that night, something of the Unreal. She studied him for a moment.

He looked steadily back at her, his handsome face serious. She rubbed a hand across her cheeks.

"Why don't you tell me more about yourself?" she said at last. His posture relaxed slightly, and he smiled his crooked half smile.

It seemed to him that the more he spoke of it, the more he could say for certain. He spoke of his father, the High Steward, and of his brother, Faramir. He spoke of hia childhood in Osgiliath, and the way in which the sun struck the ruins of the old bridge just so. He spoke passionately and low about the moon on the spires and gates of the Silver City, and the trumpets ringing high and clear across the land at his return. He spoke of battle, of high magics and low, of the feeling of a good sword in hand and the enemy within reach, and ready to fall. He spoke of the high wide grasslands of the Riddermark and the men who rode endlessly across its length, of the hidden cities of dwarves and elves, and the ruins of the elder cities of men. He spoke briefly of his mother, and sorrowed afresh at her passing,as he had done when he was a child. He remembered more and more of himself, and of the world from which he had departed. It seemed that every tick in his bedroll, every innkeeper, every courtier's embellished gesture had carved for itself a place in his memory. At last he stopped, aware that he had reached a point where even words refused to reveal any more of his past, or of his death. Tamar sat before him, silent and attentive, her face fixed in concentration as she listened. He wondered about her. She had not believed him when he had declared himself, yet she sat and listened as if entranced by his voice, and his words. She was as extraordinary a woman as he had ever met, he decided.

"I should like very much," he said quietly, "to resign myself to my fate. I am dead, and Gondor cannot be aided by my sword any longer."

She nodded, thoughtful. His stories had held conviction. He believed what he said to be the truth, and Tamar found herself half believing it as well. Whatever he was running from, whatever he was concealing, she thought, she did not feel him to be at all threatening. His truths would come out in time.

"I should like to stay. Here, with you," he said, his voice rising slightly in question. "I have been one of the truest warriors of Men, but I am dead. I want a quiet life."

Tamar nodded again.

"You'll have to sleep on the floor until we decide what's to become of you."

He smiled his half smile, and nodded in agreement.

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Please R&R, as I am a bit uncomfortable with some of the language in this chapter. CHAPTER 5 will be delayed by the fact that my computer is currently moving house with me, and may not be put together for a while. I'll do my best.

As a spoiler, Gandalf is coming to tea.….