Before long, the trial began, seeing Aragorn, Arwen and myself seated on an upper dais in three overly plush chairs. Eldarion had been left at the palace in the care of one of the nursemaids, for the child was too young to be brought to a court. Gimli, I noticed, had been seated in the front row of the public seating area, along with some of the elves from my kingdom. Darius too was seated there, in case there should be need to testify that the boot tracks that had been found had been indeed left by the two boys. More of the citizens of Minas Tirith filtered in, filling in the rows of seats until there was standing room only, and that too became cramped. There had not been much trouble in Gondor for some time now, and this certainly was a huge deal to the people, for murder had occurred within their very borders. The fact that the murderers had been of their own stock was even more of a public interest.
At last, the guards from the jail brought forth Tenoan and Eleros, wrists and ankles bound, to sit before Aragorn to await judgment. Their mother, Rebajh, wept bitterly off to one side. Aragorn stood to signify that the hearing was now in session. Immediately, the murmurs of the onlookers ceased.
"Tenoan and Eleros, sons of Anteron, you have been charged with the murders of Queen Elen, Princess Anoron, and Prince Aragorn, the royal elven family of Itlilien." Here there were scattered gasps throughout the seating area, obviously escaping from the lips of those whose ears had not heard who it was that had been killed. Aragorn ignored them and continued on. "You have been brought here today to be questioned as to your involvement in this crime and to be judged accordingly under the ancient laws of the city. Now, I must have your word that you will tell the truth in its entirety."
"You have my word," Tenoan said immediately, for he was the more brazen of the two boys.
"Yes my lord. I will speak the truth," Eleros said after his brother had spoken.
"Good," Aragorn said, nodding. "Now then, I want to hear your side of the story, for I have only the evidence that I myself collected."
"It all started about a week before the murder," Tenoan began. "As you probably guessed from the condition of our home that you saw, hard times have hit us. This has been ever since our father passed away last year. Mother had gone out to the market to try and find some sort of herbs to blend into a tea because Eleros was feeling a little ill. It looked like it might rain that day, and we both tried to make her stay home, but she would not hear of it. Well, I stayed home to take care of my brother. I'm not so good with telling what herbs are the freshest, so our mother would not allow me to go to the market for her. Well, anyway, she had only been gone for a quarter of an hour or so and there came a knock at the door. I answered it and there was this man standing there. He was dressed in black robes which hid whatever else he may have been wearing, but I vaguely recognized him as one of your men, my lord."
"One of my men?" asked Aragorn.
Tenoan nodded. "Aye sire, he was one of yours. I could not remember his name but I knew him from the times that I had been in the palace with my father."
"And you Eleros? Did you see this man too?" Aragorn asked.
The shorter of the two boys nodded his head fearfully. "Yes my lord. If you'll pardon my saying, he looked like a man of great importance. He spoke like one too and with great urgency."
"Did you recognize him at all or could you point him out?"
"I think so, yes, but he wore a hood and some of his face was blocked by it," Eleros replied. "All I remember clearly was a great scar on his chin."
I could see Aragorn thinking about this. The boys took his silence to mean that they should continue their story.
It was Tenoan that spoke up once more. "I invited him in with great hesitation and only because he promised that he could help us get out of being in poverty. He said that he had access to great wealth and that we had but to perform one simple task for him. When he knew for sure that we had done it, he would provide us with such wealth that we would never want for anything again. Needless to say, we both were interested in what he had to say after that. As you have seen, our mother is not so young anymore and neither of us wanted to have to see her continuing to break her back working for meager wages."
"So we listened to what he had to say. We were to ride out to Ithilien at some point the following week to the royal home. We were supposed to slip inside and kill them all," Eleros said, shuddering at the memory. "Both of us said that we were no longer interested in his proposal and we tried to force him back outside and forget that he ever came to us. Neither of us have a problem with the elves living within our borders. But the man turned against us and drew his sword, threatening us. 'Since I cannot tempt you with money', he said, 'I will tempt you with your lives. I have come on the wishes of King Elessar.' At this, he took out some legal looking document, but neither one of us could read it. He put it away again just as fast. 'Kill the elves or you yourselves shall be killed after watching your mother die.'"
Tenoan jumped back in, for Eleros had suddenly gone silent, as if reliving the exchange between the three. "We asked him why your lordship would want to see the royals dead, but he would not answer, saying only that his orders came from you and that he did not know the reason. Then he turned and left. Eleros and I looked at one another not knowing what to do. When our mother came home, we did not speak a word of what had happened. But the next day the same man cornered us when we were out doing odd jobs for what money we could make."
"He scared us terribly and we knew that his threats were real, whether or not he came with orders from you, my lord." It was Eleros again. "So we decided that we had to go through with it, or at least warn Lord Legolas. We decided on a day and when it came around, we went to the royal household. When we got there though, our plan changed. We had planned to warn them about the threats against them. It was urgent, so we snuck around, noticing that there were no servants around, and we pried the door open so we could get inside. I think we frightened the queen by our unexpected appearance. She began to yell and that scared us, because we did not know if there were any servants in the house that we had not seen."
"What did you do at that point?" Aragorn asked.
"We tried to explain, but our pleas went unheard. I think the knives in our hands had frightened the queen, for we had neglected to put them away; an oversight if you will. She ran at us, trying to protect the children," here Eleros took a breath, "and we reacted, raising our hands to protect us." He demonstrated with his hands the defensive position he and his and brother had taken. "She ran into the dagger that Tenoan held. I ran to seek help, but found no one in the house. At that point, I even hoped to find Lord Legolas there. But there was no one and when I came back, Queen Elen was already dead. Tenoan slit her throat to make it look like we had done what we had been commissioned to do. I noticed that the princess too had been wounded in a similar matter."
"After her mother was wounded, she rushed at me, taking up Eleros' dagger, which he had let fall off to one side when he left the room. She fought me, quite skillfully, and I had to wound her to save my own life, though I never intended to cause her death. When she fell back, the dagger hit the young prince. Believe me, I never wanted that to happen. But both died, despite what I tried to do to save them. So I slit their throats as I had done with the queen, because I feared what might happen if the man who had come to us found out what had happened."
A silence fell over the room as everyone took in what had been said. I felt myself relaxing a little, for without even realizing it, I had been scrutinizing each of the boy's faces as they had told their story. And I had seen no lie in their faces or their eyes. Aragorn made a motion to me. We would be conferring in a private room off to the side, for he wanted to hear my opinion.
"I thank you for your side of the story," he said to the boys. "But I require a private moment with Legolas. We shall reconvene in a few short moments. Guards, no one is to leave here."
Now Aragorn stood and I followed him to the private chambers that we would be speaking. Inside, he closed the door behind us and together we stood in the center of the room. Aragorn looked at me with a thoughtful expression.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
"I saw no lie in their eyes," I replied. "I think that they are telling the truth, though I still cannot figure out why they did not seek help earlier."
"I think they were afraid," Aragorn said. "Or at least, they were afraid of me, in case the story were to be true and I did order your family to be killed." He sighed deeply.
"Who do you think the man was?"
"Volus. I am almost sure of it. He has a recognizable scar on his chin, the result of a sword training accident when he first began his training as a warrior for the city. He proved not to be well suited for that role, but he showed particular interest in handling the palace finances."
"Which would explain his access to great wealth," I offered.
Aragorn nodded. "I was suspicious that he was doing something underhanded ever since Rebajh said that she had not yet received Anteron's pension. Volus had assured me that she was receiving every last once of it." There was an underlying anger in his voice now.
"I think it is best that we interrogate him," I said.
"Indeed."
