Elfhelm, being of an age to have two sons grown and two daughters headed rapidly towards marriageable age, tended not to drink too much at Yuletide. Leave that to Éothain and his mates, was Elfhelm's motto. Thus it was early in the morning as he made his way back from walking his two hunting hounds, only to encounter one of the gamekeepers in a fine old dudgeon. The man was coming back along a path diagonal to his own, returning from the dovecote. Seeing the Third Marshal, he launched into a tirade.
"Someone's gone and nicked two of my fastest birds. The pigeons we use to bring messages back from Aldburg and Helm's Deep."
"Are you sure? Couldn't they just have escaped?" Elfhelm said, weakly. It was too early for this sort of thing. Alas, his mellow approach to life (once off the battlefield) seemed to anger his interlocutor still further.
"Escape? I made that dovecote myself. Look after it myself. It's in perfect nick."
"Oh," said Elfhelm, in what he hoped was a placatory tone. He headed back towards Edoras, the man at his heels, continuing to hold forth on the disgusting pranks of drunken youths and how they should be dunked in an icy horse trough then rolled in the midden for purloining his finest birds.
If Elfhelm hoped the kitchen wing of the Golden Hall would offer him sanctuary, he was to be sadly disappointed. His lady wife, Hilde, was in the middle of an animated conversation with the housekeeper and one of the chambermaids.
"And her bed were just empty, hadn't been slept on at all, mistress. There were this note on it."
"What does it say?"
"Never learned me letters, mum." The girl handed over the piece of parchment.
Hilde squinted and held the writing at arm's length, frowning as she tried to persuade middle aged eyes to focus.
"Oh Béma's bollocks!"
Elfhelm started at the sound of his wife swearing in front of the housekeeper. She was normally punctiliously polite. She saved swearing for very special occasions indeed. It had to be something very bad. She waved the parchment in his direction.
"The Lady Éowyn. She's 'gone to Aldburg,' supposedly to attend to her friend's birthing and lying-in. She'll send us a pigeon to let us know she's got there safely."
Elfhelm, too close to waking and having not yet had his breakfast, did not register the sing-song quality in which the words 'gone to Aldburg' were delivered.
"That's nice," he said, unaware that he was venturing onto very thin ice.
"Well it would be were it not for the fact that I know the lady in question was delivered of a bouncing, bonny lad – two weeks ago!" Hilde looked fit to explode.
It was at this point that the throng filling the kitchen was augmented by the arrival of Éothain, half carrying, half dragging by the scruff of the neck, the pale green-face errand rider of Gondor. The Gondorian looked like he was ready to throw up at any moment.
Béma's cock and balls, thought Elfhelm, going one better than his wife.