AN: It's customary in a lot of fanfic to put Anglo-Saxon into the text, edh and thorn and wen and all. And we all pretend we took Anglo-Saxon 101 and can read this stuff fluently. Confession time! I can't. (Wave and fluid dynamics, I'm your woman, Anglo Saxon not so much). So what I offer in what follows is a transliteration of how it sounded to me (and therefore how I imagine it would sound to Jane and Theo) when I listened to a recording of someone reading the poem I've stolen.
~o~O~o~
Faramir was woken by a horrible bleeping noise. Lazily, Éowyn disentangled herself from his embrace and reached out to turn her phone off. Then, equally lazily, she slid across him to get out of bed, pausing to kiss him slowly and thoroughly. He pulled her tight against him as her blonde hair cascaded round both of them, flowing like silk across his shoulders.
"By the Valar, woman, you're going to be the death of me."
"Yeah, but you'll die a happy man." She planted another kiss, light and teasing, on his lips.
She wriggled out from under the bedclothes and picked up her discarded pyjamas, pulling them on (to Faramir's disappointment). He reached out and caught her hand.
"Stay."
"I'd love to." She gave him a dazzling smile, then became serious. "But do you really want to explain to Jane what her kids saw when they came looking for Éomer?"
Faramir let her hand drop. "Morgoth's balls, no."
"Yeah. Exactly. So I'd better get back downstairs."
Éowyn tiptoed down to the sitting room and crawled into the sleeping bag on the air mattress, then gave a huge yawn. She wondered how much sleep they'd actually got – not much. She was going to be so dead today. She really should try to get some sleep before the kids started charging round the place. She wasn't sure if she could though – every nerve ending seemed to be singing. She rolled onto her front and clutched the pillow to her. Then laughed out loud at the thought of how ridiculous she was being.
~o~O~o~
It turned out there wasn't a whole lot of point in trying to sleep anyway – quite soon the household started to stir. Theo was up first, just before 7.00, getting ready for the day's work. Next was Jane – she had a short day, but had still signed up for a shift at the Co-Op 10 till 4, knowing Éowyn and Éomer would be around to look after the kids. By 7.30, Theo had left for the day, and Jane was feeding the children unicorn hoops. Éowyn and Faramir were sitting nursing coffee, feeling simultaneously elated and shell-shocked.
Jane noticed the almost continuous accidental-but-not-really touches, the brush of hands, the jostling of elbows on the counter, the touch of knee against knee. But she was far too wise a woman to pursue the question of what last night's sleeping arrangements had been in the absence of Éomer. In any case, that didn't worry her so much as the way the two of them looked at one another – utterly moonstruck. There was no doubt about it: Éowyn was in way over her head. And Jane feared she'd be the one picking up the pieces.
She phoned the doctor about Faramir – the earliest appointment she could get for someone not registered at the practice was the end of next week. Still, at least she'd tried. That done, she set off for work, leaving Éowyn instructions to take the children to the park, instructions which Éowyn duly followed.
She and Faramir spent a freezing cold couple of hours pushing swings, lifting children up climbing frames, down from climbing frames, spinning roundabouts. On another day, they would have ended up bored senseless. But today, the minutes and quarter hours flew by, in a haze of want for one another, spurred on by moments of surreptitious contact whenever the children weren't looking – his hand in the small of her back, her hand on his arm, their shoulders touching. When the children were out of earshot, they whispered sweet nothings. When the children disappeared inside the wooden fort, or down the concrete tunnels underneath the bank the slide was built on, they snatched kisses, all the sweeter for being so quick.
The fresh air seemed to work wonders on the children – when they got home, Kelly and Callum wolfed down the chicken nuggets, oven chips and beans Éowyn had been told to feed them for lunch. She managed to rustle up an omelette for herself and Faramir; he chopped up a quite passable salad to go with it.
Éomer slunk back into the house just after lunch, looking suitably dissolute and not much more awake than Faramir and Éowyn. Hung over and sleep deprived he may have been, but that didn't stop him noticing the tension between his sister and her dark haired nutter. Oh bugger, shouldn't have left her alone. He managed to get a moment with her in the kitchen (as he made himself a very large, very strong mug of coffee). Not that he got much sense out of her. In fact the only thing he did get out of her was an announcement that it was now his turn for a few nights on the sitting room floor, while she took the bedroom. With Faramir. This was delivered with an icy, slightly belligerent stare which seemed to say And don't you dare say a word. Then she swanned out of the kitchen before he could say anything.
Jane came home to find Éomer sitting in an armchair drinking coke (the sugary variety), and eating crisps and a bag of the kids' giant chocolate buttons, keeping half an eye on the kids as they played hungry hippo. Éowyn was asleep on the sofa with her head on Faramir's lap, his fingers nestled in her hair. He in turn had his long legs stretched out on the coffee table, head back against the back of the sofa. He was also fast asleep.
It wasn't until much later, after the children were in bed, that Theo and Jane sat the three of them down at the kitchen table. Theo produced an old wooden box. In fact, old didn't seem quite to do it justice, Éowyn thought. Ancient might be closer to the mark. It was about the size of a shoebox, a dark wood with a fine grain which circled in tight whorls. It had elaborately wrought hinges and a lock and key in some almost black metal with a dull sheen to it. Theo opened it. There was some cloth, folded up, and lying on top of it, a book. Beneath the cloth lay a dagger in a leather sheath and a belt buckle in the shape of a serpent or perhaps a dragon, chasing its own tail.
"There wasn't a lot of stuff with you when you were found as children – just a sacking bag with a few bits and pieces, stuffed between the two of you on the back seat. The brooches you know about, but there was also this book." Theo produced an ancient looking volume, bound in leather, with interlocking knotwork patterns tooled into the cover. He opened it.
"It's not English," said Éomer.
"I know," said Theo. "We've taken it to dozens of antique booksellers over the years, and no-one seems to recognise the type of writing. One guy joked it needed the Rosetta Stone. Several have suggested it's some sort of elaborate hoax."
"Wait," Faramir suddenly interrupted him. He pulled the book to him. "It's written in the Cirth." He paused, resting his chin on his hand for a moment in concentration. "I think it's a transliteration of some Rohirric. Not a language that's usually written down, but someone's done their best."
The others looked at him in puzzlement. He might as well have been talking Ancient Greek for all the sense he made to them. Then he started trying to read it aloud, hesitantly, with gaps as he struggled to make sense of it.
"Eorl mathlohduh, bohrd havenoduh, wahnd wahkneh ash, wohrdum meldeh, eerdeh und andreh, ayaff imm andswarreh: "Yeh-hersst du, Balchotha, hwhat thees folck sayeth? Brimmanna bohdah, abayod efft ahnyon, sayeth eenum lay-ohdum, michlay lathra spell, that hayre stend unforcouth, Eorl mitt hass warroduh, tha willuh yahlyeean ethell thisneh, folck und foldan."
Éowyn froze in shock. "I've heard that language before. It's… As if I knew it when I was a child, but I've forgotten it. It feels like… it feels like home."
"Romany?" asked Jane.
"No, that's not Romany," Theo said.
Éomer too had been sitting with a look of stunned amazement on his face. "Éowyn's right. But I… I think I do remember bits of it. Say it again, a bit at a time."
Faramir repeated it a phrase at a time, and Éomer tried to guess at the meaning.
"I think it starts with a name, Eorl. Eorl made a speech. He held up his shield. His staff made of ash. And… Nope, I'm stuck with this bit."
"My Rohirric is a bit rusty, but I think it means 'formed words together'," Faramir said. "Then something about being angry and… determined, I think, and gave an answer."
"'Do you hear?' Now I'm stuck. Is Balchotha another name?" Éomer's next attempt ground to a halt.
"A nationality – 'Man of Balchoth', one of the Wainriders – they tried to invade from the East, 500 years ago – 500 years in my world, that is."
"Do you hear, man of Balchoth, what this people says?" Éomer frowned.
Faramir picked up where he'd left off. "Report back, something-or-other. (I'm guessing he's a messenger, being sent back to his warlords). Give your people a report that they will hate. Tell them a… strong? Unconquerable? Not sure of the word. Anyway tell them some sort of strong leader stands waiting to fight them with his war troop. One who will defend his land and people. I'm not sure I've got that entirely right but that's the gist."
Faramir paused, then said. "I think its from an epic poem, one not normally written down. It would usually be sung aloud by a bard. From the country to the north of my own, our allies, the Rohirrim. It's the epic poem about Eorl the Young, founder of their nation."
Jane and Theo sat, open mouthed, stunned not so much by what Faramir had said, but by the fact that Éomer seemed to remember, from his early childhood, fragments of this strange language from another world. Even Éowyn, though she'd only have been a small child, remembered the sounds and rhythms of the language as familiar.
Éowyn sat staring at the text in front of her, but the writing simply seemed to blur. She had the beginnings of a headache, and a churning feeling in her stomach. Never before had she felt this sensation of rootless confusion, of the world tilted on its axis.
Faramir began to leaf through the book. "More stanzas." He shut it and turned it over in his hands, looking for clues to its origin. Then he opened it again, this time at the very start. And looked shocked.
"There's an inscription in a form of Sindarin – my language – on the fly leaf. Written in Tengwar rather than Cirth. And a drawing…"
Éowyn turned ghostly pale. "The drawing. It's the white tree – the white tree on the scabbard of your sword."
Jane, still seeking a rational explanation of the deeply irrational, said "It could just be a coincidence. Lots of people have trees in their mythologies. Didn't the Norsemen have a sacred tree?"
"But this looks exactly alike," Éowyn said.
Faramir traced the flowing, cursive script with a finger. Then he started to read.
"To the one chosen to seek for the knight and the swordsman, greetings. Those whom you have sought and found are my daughter's children, hidden from the sight of men to protect them. They will lead you to the means to save both the Riddermark, and Gondor. Seek for the carving of the tree; the path that leads to it will bring you home. Morwen, Dowager Queen of the Mark, T.A. 3003."
There was a stunned silence. Faramir looked round at the shocked faces. The white tree, he supposed, could have been a coincidence. Jane could be right when she pointed out that many peoples, by chance, used similar trees among their icons and sacred signs. But the fact that Éomer could understand the language of the Mark – that had clearly shocked all of them, especially Theo and Jane, to their very core.
Suddenly Faramir felt exhausted and disheartened, almost miserable. These people were so kind, so good hearted, so generous, their lives so warm and happy and untouched by war or the Shadow – and he had appeared from nowhere and turned everything upside down. He had a strong sense, a premonition almost, of a train of events set in motion, and now impossible to stop.
It was Theo who spoke first. "I've seen that tree before too… I need to go and get Sue's things down from the loft. Come and give me a hand, Éomer."
Faramir sat at the kitchen table, and took Éowyn's hand. He could feel it shaking slightly; come to think of it, he wasn't entirely sure his were any too steady either. Jane did what she always seemed to do when she was at a bit of a loss – she put the kettle on and popped a couple of teabags in the teapot.
Ten minutes later, Theo and Éomer returned. Theo had a sketch book tucked under his arm. "It's from a holiday we took, a year or so after we got married," he explained. "We went to Wales – near Cader Idris. Sue was taken with the idea of druids and Merlin, and King Arthur and all that. One day we went for a walk up this really lonely valley. There was a reservoir at the bottom of the valley – they'd dammed the river and flooded part of it, and there was a village under the water, the locals said. It seemed a sad sort of place. Anyway, we walked up the hill for a mile or so and came upon this old chapel. Sue was really taken with the carvings. She drew one of them."
He leafed through the book until he found the page he wanted. "Here." He laid it on the table.
There, sketched in pencil, was a perfect replica of the tree in Morwen's book, and, in turn, of the tree on the scabbard of Faramir's sword.
"Where is this?" Faramir asked. "Because I think this is where we need to go."
~o~O~o~
AN: The poem is the Battle of Maldon.