'AFDEHAR- Anvil Month: The First Month in the Dwarven Calender (would roughly coincide with January?). I'm not entirely well-schooled on the symbolism or meaning of the dwarven months according to Tolkien so I'm going with a headcanon here and looking at the Anvil Month as a state of vigorous renewal. It's a new year; let's roll up our sleeves and get to work and hit the ground running (hence the anvil, I suppose). Thorin and Meisar are emerging from their honeymoon into quite literally a new world and there's a lot of work to get done when it comes to running Erebor. Done with my little spiel here. Onto the chapter then...
They were dressed hastily in none more than outer garments over their sleeping clothes it seemed, but Thorin led the way quietly out of the chamber and into the cold, empty corridor. The braziers that lined it, which were re-lit every several hours or so, were down to small nubs of light. At this hour it could be expected and Thorin was grateful for it. He carried a lantern nonetheless.
Oliada was seated on the chaise lounger Meisar insisted she have for her comfort; still, it was a stiff posture she held, with her spear in her left hand at the ready, the shiny onyx tip giving off an ominous glimmer in the light of the dying brazier above her. The sentry rose quietly and dipped a small bow.
"I escort?" inquired Oliada, officiously. "My queen? King?"
Thorin smiled with unbidden kindness toward her. "You look out for my queen so, Oliada."
"My king..." she ducked her head low. Thorin bade her look at him though. "It is of a nature I could not share at this moment with any but my queen. Surely it is within your understanding, my lady? I'm quite sure there will be no trouble, not at this hour." It was half-past-three in the wee hours. All of the dwarves were in Erebor would be sleeping, save for the night-workers down in the forges and perhaps the bakers' guild, and their shifts turned at the rising of the sun.
Oliada nodded a silent confirmation and posted herself at the door, sturdily.
Where are we going at this hour? She thought better than to ask Thorin. In a recess somewhere in the back of her mind, she already knew.
.
They crossed several halls before finding the narrow door to the stairway he sought. It was not amongst the stairways that she had previously seen to lead to the lower levels of the city, down to the mines and the forges where there were many living quarters and offices of the guilds. This one was narrower and darker and seemed to twist and turn so many times going further downward into the mountain she lost sense of all direction. Finally they entered through a heavy arch down into a place so dark it could have been a cavern, uninhabited. As they passed Thorin tilted the lantern up into the cavernous ceiling. An enormous hulk of carved stone, the face of Durin the Deathless himself rendered immortal, peered down at them from the high wall to their left. Like a cavern uninhabited, except that it was. Just not by the living.
"Diragîn," Meisar acknowledged in a solemn murmur.
"Yes."
Many stairs led down to the several or more levels on which these tombs were arranged, so sprawling on each and like a maze down deep in the mountain they felt like a separate city in their own. The resting places were slotted into the stone walls or arranged raised up from the floor itself, with effigies of their occupants or carved emblems of their occupations and kinship groups to mark them. All dwarves of the kingdom were buried here, and all with a certain reverence, be they lantern-lighters or sentries or the most renowned of warriors and masters of guilds. On the peripheral of the tombs were long solemn rows of entirely new ones, a saturnine village that had only just been built, their facades still shiny. On on was made an effigy of a dwarrowdam holding an infant in her arms. Effigies of a whole family- mother, father and three beautiful young sons adorned another hulking mausoleum where presumably all had been interred together. The mother held the three young dwarflings in her arms while the father raised his ax and shield to protect them from an unseen assailant. Meisar felt her throat tighten. Simultaneously her hand gripped Thorin's just a little more snugly.
"When the mountain was reclaimed we found there were chambers and nooks where some thought to take refuge when the dragon assailed the city. We are still uncovering them..." Thorin explained dispiritedly, nodding his head toward the recently-interred that she was gazing at blinking back tears. With her hand still grasped in his they descended a final stairway to the lowest level of the necropolis. Here were lain the kings and princes, their wives and daughters, sisters. They were buried together like the ones above, some in tombs that rose up out of the floor. Others were slotted into the wall beneath solemn statues of their likenesses. The empty gray eyes that peered down on them from those walls seemed sad, lonely even, but they did not frighten her.
Thorin raised his lantern against a white marble tomb. "They recovered what was left of my grandfather's body and brought it back here to rest in stone. The rest of those who fell that day they burned at the gates of Moria," Thorin droned, half a murmur. "And my father, after so many years, from the dungeons of Dol Gondur; they saw him home. He is here now." They followed a dark solemn line from Thror to Thrain, as Thorin traced his fingers over and told of the inhabitants of each. "My mother Tania, who died when Dis was half a year, from a bout of appendicitis. There was nothing the healers could do. My grandmother Lotte is here in this one. She died peacefully in her bed as a crone, an odd fate for the Line of Durin." Sapphires studded his mother's tomb, diamonds and pearls the old queen's. He shifted his touch from the mother-of-pearl across the cold stone to the ones beside Queen Lotte: a pair of tombs side by side whose facades were decorated in a single great ruby each. For the wife, the sister, the mother that mourns. The mother especially. These were the newest graves. A third tomb was beside theirs but it had no ruby to mark it nor anything at all.
"I needed you to see them," Thorin murmured quietly. "I have come here often but I have shielded you from this, Meisar. But I need you to see now."
"I know," Meisar said but her words were stuck in her throat like dry bread and strangled. Thorin was kneeling and he traced his fingers around the border of the ruby that studded Kili's tomb. The small indents of the runes that marked his name, his legacy. And then Fili's.
Suddenly the faces she had seen etched reverently in ink that smiled back at her from Dis's locket were too real. The sweet smile of the dark-headed one no more than bone now. The smirk of the fair one. Only dust. It hit her like a swift blow to the chest. She knelt beside Thorin. The stone was impossibly cold against her knees. Thorin nodded to the third tomb that was beside their own, blank, but for the runes that spelled his own name. "They placed me in that one for a few hours. The rest you know," Thorin grumbled.
Do I?
"Of all the time I have come here, I have but an empty heart for it. The dead cannot hear, not in this place. Alas, I would ask their forgiveness and their guidance. Youth may not have granted them wisdom, but it granted them the goodness of heart which I lacked in my time," he went on. "To come here is to remind myself that nothing in this world is worth the treasures of this kingdom. If I am to be king, I can never forget that. You must never let me, Meisar."
"As each of us fail in moral purity in times of such turmoil, such curses," Meisar said. "And for what it's worth, I will not let you forget. Nor will your sister I think."
"Dis is too weak to see to any end except to dull her own pain," he said suddenly. "I'll not be putting her to such a task."
"If such a task must fall on me then so be it," Meisar accepted quickly. She thought of Dis in her somber little chamber, weeping into her pillows, filling up on Elvish wine where no one would see or hear. She held the thick extant robe closer against her body. It was cold down here, too cold. Thorin leaned close his head in the small divide between the princes' tombs. "See here my sister sons, I have brought my queen to you. So you will see you did not die in vain." His fingers dropped suddenly along with the rest of his body. Thick sobs rocked him and tensed every muscle in his body until he was halfway to prostrating himself upon the ground in penance before them. Meisar caught him under the arms and held him. She rocked him slowly and heedfully in an embrace so tight she felt she could have pressed the air fully from him. But his breath came again in small heaves that struggled to fill his lungs between sobs.
"I speak to you as if you hear me," Thorin growled in desperation. "But they are dead. They cannot hear. They are dead..." He curled downward as if struck.
"Have your tears, my love. We all must, sometimes." She held his head tightly on her knee and bent forward over him, letting her hair fall in a great curtain to shield him even from the lantern's light, and have for his moment a peaceful dark shelter in which to pour his grief. His body quaked and quaked and blunt nails seemed to anchor to her opposite knee so hard she was sure there would be bruises or indents left. But there was no pain that could have equaled her husband's. She, for her sake, had wept for these two princelings; he had raised them from birth.
"It is our home now too. We must honor them by breathing such life into it and prosperity. Or what was all this worth? All this blood? All this..." she gazed around at the tombs and felt dizzy.
"Prosperity?" he half-growled. "Were the Blue Mountains not enough? We built for ourselves a comfortable life there. They were content there, my sister-sons, in my halls that I was a fool to call so modest."
"And as such you would not have traveled upon that road east of the Shire," Meisar reminded, her voice thin with hurt. "Whether in life or death."
"Life or death? Is it life here, in this mountain that we build now? This kingdom destroyed my grandfather. Its wealth built up and then destroyed my people," Thorin said bitterly.
He sighed again, contemplatively, in a long low exhalation. He put his hand flat against Thror's tomb. "But he belongs here. As does my father. And my sister-sons. It is their home. In life it should have been; in death it will have to do."
"I will no longer dwell in the spell of death, nor such curses of gold-kind," she said stoutly, rising to her feet in haste. "We have suffered too long in its shadow."
"When I think could not live another moment, still I think... it is not enough. I have not... I have done to deserve far worse."
"Will you flog yourself like a lame horse for all your days? Do you think you were spared to do so, Thorin?" She wanted to shake him, to give him a light kick in the rump the way she roused drunken dwarves on the road. And she hated herself suddenly for the thought daring to enter her head, in this most sacred and solemn of places. She sunk to her knees as if in some penitence herself, beside her husband. Her head rested quietly on his, his grief a sharp heat that poured from his skin. "We will go forth as this day calls us, my king," she said firmly, but with a coo on the edge of her throat. "We must... we must." Thorin was still kneeling before his nephews' tombs. She massaged both his shoulders gently before he shot up to his feet and turned her and grasped her arms above the elbow and kissed her maddeningly. She tasted the salt of his tears on her lips, on her tongue, bitter and harsh.
"Shall we walk and see the rising of the sun?" he suggested quickly, blinking back the sheen of tears.
"Yes. Yes, I would like that. I would much like to see the sky again..."
.
The first pink ribbons of morning on the horizon creased the sky far beyond the borders of Erebor. They walked slowly along the length of the terrace. The sentries paid them a quiet reverent mind, stationed like statues there along the great terrace, all down and all up its length. The pink of the morning spread toward the mountain ahead of the pale winter sun that was in its trail, the sky a muted shade of indigo above them, as the night sky retreated ahead of the early light. Their breath expelled white into the air, so cold and crisp it created a low burn in her lungs after a few breaths. There was smoke on the air, smoke and ice, the chimneys of Dale puttering with shades of it white and gray against the half-light. Below them the river was slushy with ice.
A whistle blew deep from inside the mountain signaling the changing of one shift or another. "They are waking," Thorin observed. "Another day is upon us."
"Then I think perhaps we should dress before the whole of the kingdom is awake and stirring."
.
In their chambers he threw off his sleep-shirt and breeches, as she did her own clothing. Time felt insignificant, drawn out, in a haze of this newness between them. It seemed she had not dressed in ages; nakedness had become nature, whether tangled in the sheets or eating by the fire. Her own hair on her skin and Thorin's. She breathed a sigh of wistful desire in his direction, a last time for the morning that she could prickle with desire at the sight of his nakedness, before he snatched up small-clothes and a set of good breeches and disappeared into the bath to wash.
In time she called for her handmaidens and not only did Griet and Bertha respond at once but Gyda and Freyda and Emli as well. They herded themselves into the bedchamber so that Thorin might dress or go about some morning tasks in the antechamber.
"We're here to... um... help you dress and fashion your hair of course. Don't all queens need that?" Gyda shrugged.
"What should I wear?" She was standing in her linen smock and drawers, a blank canvas of a queen whose filling in was a daunting prospect. Who I am now?
"Blue I think," Emli suggested immediately. She flung open the armoire with its sparse set of clothes the seamstresses had cobbled together for her in haste. "You are of the House of Durin now. It is a royal color long favored, and you are a queen." She had selected a dress of the darkest blue that could be had without being wholly black. It had wide, dignified sleeves with small subtle trims of dark fur at its cuffs of the under-sleeves. The women brought her heavy linen under-skirts and pointed bodice, laced her in gently enough that she might breathe with ease. A broad belt very modestly bejeweled was set and clasped high on her waist when the over-gown was slipped on, securing it closed in the front. Only a spare stroke of the deep amber kirtle that was worn beneath the over-gown was visible.
The handmaids argued quietly but with ardency over who would have the duty of tending to her hair, one Meisar considered more a task than such a privilege. Finally it was Griet with Bertha's help that rolled it into a tight chignon at Emli's direction and placed the velvet caul over it, letting the blue veil that matched her gown fall down her back. "Lovely," Freyda said, jumpily, seeming alternately giddy and distracted. Her hands were twisting into one and other. Dressed in a gown of fern with a pointed bodice, embroidered in the same shimmering thread that was painstakingly sewn all along the russet sleeves, she was as unusually attired in such a girlish ensemble as was her current countenance. There was a change in her, something that seemed obvious and glaring but Meisar could not readily identify it.
When Thorin knocked at the chamber door the women retreated out past him. Meisar stood before him with her hands clasped, dignified in her sober dark dress. "I think they will take me more seriously if I am not bedecked in silly fripperies."
Thorin seemed amused. "You have led parties across a continent and negotiated a life alone, amongst many a stranger. A few common petitioners will not be so intimidating I promise. But I think," he said, crossing the room past her in a few steps. He opened the drawer on her vanity where she kept her jewels and pulled out the velvet box.
"Thorin..."
"A few fripperies but not silly ones, my love." He set the heavy sapphire collar about her neck and clasped it on the nape, gently. "Maiskit. The queen's jewels have gathered dust far too long. Besides," he sighed. "Half those who come today will not have known I am now wed. A queen's jewels would put aside all confusion in that matter."
She touched the sapphires that platted at her neck gratefully, letting herself smile even though they felt so heavy she felt ready to be pulled forward to the floor at any moment.
"And this," Thorin added. He held a ring between two fingers, the thick band studded entirely in sapphire, a seal of office on its head. "This is the official signet of the House of Durin. You will stamp this seal upon anything that meets with your approval. Your ladies will be there to help you of course. Emli knows what she is doing. You have nothing to tremble for this day."
He turned then and went to set the raven crown upon his head. Meisar stilled his hand quietly. "I must make your marriage braid, Thorin."
She pressed him down by the shoulders to sit while she gathered a strand to trail down the back of his head, braiding it slowly and meticulously before clasping the precious marriage bead into its end. It was her own hands then that took up the crown and gently placed it on his head from behind, pressing it over him so that it might be fitted properly. She leaned and kissed his head between the spires of the crown.
"Are you ready, my king?" She slipped her feet quietly into a pair of pointed flat shoes with jeweled buckles.
"I am." He put out his arm to her so that hers could rest upon his, elegant and dignified for their journey from their chambers up to the petitioners' hall. "I am ready, my queen. I am ready."
.
They walked together with the escort of Oliada and two other sentries who were in Thorin's service besides Dwalin. Dwalin himself would be waiting in the petitioners' hall with Balin and the others.
Onlookers stopped to observe their train of dwarves rise up one level and then the next toward the chambers where the long queues had already formed. Thorin was broad and proud in his clothing and crown, the heavy fur of his surcoat wicking the dust from the stone floor behind him, ever so subtly. They doffed caps and called words of reverence and cheer to the king and his tiny, stout wife beside him. She looked more the matron than the bride, in her rich dark broadcloth, rounded hood with the veil trailing down the back as if she were a septa in some ancient temple. Only the jewels that bordered her hood would have betrayed her noble status, and her queen's jewels.
Waiting there already were Siv, and Eda with Virta, two healers on hand lest anyone fall ill in the queue or worse, the king or queen's court. Aroin was bustling around them waving her hand this direction or that in delegating task after task to the three of them. Elsa the nursemaid was there too. She dipped slightly before Meisar and Thorin. "Do you come with the princess? Will she join us here today?" Meisar asked with unmasked hope that she might.
"She has taken ill to her bed, my lady, my king," Elsa wrung her hands guiltily before her.
Thorin's lips pressed in silent disappointment. "Then surely you will send her my love, and assure her it is of no consequence."
"And mine," Meisar added. The old dwarrowdam's worried face sent a small tingle of unease up her spine.
"Of course, majesties."
Meisar joined her women. Eda held her face to kiss her cheeks. "How lovely you look, my queen," she gushed. "The glow of a new bride you bear. I am happy to see you again."
"A glow fit for a maiden not a woman half a crone such as I, especially in this dress. I'm not keen to have great rose bows on my sleeves. I think it might look a bit silly on me," she laughed uneasily, eyeing Siv half-amused, half annoyed.
"The wisdom of an older woman and her forbearance is a welcome thing," Eda assured her. "Those who come to you today will know you for a dwarrowdam keen to understanding a people and their wills, hardly some trembling little maid servin' to whelp the king a strong brood and none more. You are too keen for that."
From behind the door at the back of the chamber came long frantic scratches and when it was opened Brynja poured through with several hounds screaming in anticipation whipping past her so fast her skirts were flung forward. "I'm here! I'm here! Brought ye a present. Three of 'em actually. I would certainly not be leavin' you alone here," Brynja admonished with a deep laugh. "Bofur's gone to Thorin's council. I'll not leave ye here alone." Fred, Redcoat and Raincloud, all into the queen's lap at once. "Good gracious, I think they should have been kept in your-"
"I can bring them back and pen them in our privy if you like," offered Brynja. Around Meisar's feet, the three dogs issued simultaneous whines of disapproval and glares at the kindly dwarrowdam who had been as good as their jailer for four days hence. Meisar sighed resignedly.
"Fine. Stay by my feet then, you three," Meisar cooed at the dogs gently, placing them all about to lay on the train of her skirts. She felt Aroin's disapproval prick at her out of the corner of her eye but the haughty dwarrowdam's attentions were swiftly turned elsewhere.
"Look now! Even Hegi has come!" Eda cheered.
"How lovely you are looking, Mistress Hegi. Why you've even had a bath," Aroin chipped lightly at her.
"And a fine new dress," Meisar interjected sharply, suddenly annoyed with Gloin and Oin's sister. "Hegi, you are a wealthy woman now from your fireworks. It is good to see you treat yourself well with your fortunes." Hegi swished her red-and-tangerine paneled skirts, a ridiculous color scheme if ever there had been one adorning any woman, but she was proud of her new dress and Meisar quietly obliged her. Rings were on her fingers, gaudy jewels, and a long string of interlocking chains hung about her neck. Meisar swiftly brought a chair so that the mad miner might sit; she still walked with a slight limp from a particular encounter with orcs some months before. Hegi sat and as Aroin's resounding voice of disapproval came again, grunted blankly at Aroin without much care of her words.
"Let her be!" Emli hissed suddenly at her sister-in-law. "Why, Hegi may don an ugly dress this day, to which I have no idea what possessed her to find it to her taste, but she scaled a mountainside and saved all of our skins to fire an orc den there. Let me see you try such a thing in those big skirts, Aroin!"
"Or you!" Aroin shot back. "Think you are the fanciest creature in this kingdom you do."
Meisar was irked and rose swiftly to face Aroin, climbing onto the small stepping stool that had been brought so that she might climb into her chair with greater ease. It let her meet the taller dwarrowdam's eyes. "My lady Aroin, you serve the court of the Princess Dis with tremendous honor and capability. But this is my court. It is the queen's court, and each of these dwarrowdams are as upright and honorable as can be found anywhere in this kingdom. I shall not permit these petty trifles to mar such a day as this. Is that well understood?"
Emli concealed an approving smirk behind her hand. The shepherdess shaking her crook upon an unruly flock, her face set as stone as if the stern lines around her eyes and forehead had been carved by chisel and hammer themselves. It returned to her countenance as if she had not been the bride four days past and the bride of a king no less, with the rose tint of her own passion still flaming her cheeks. The reverence, and the heat together, with which Thorin was looking at her from across the crowded chamber both reassured and stirred the deepest parts of her belly.
"The two of you," Meisar continued toward Aroin and Emli, "are the most skilled and only-skilled in the sorts of work we have this day. You will work together without any tomfoolery. This squabble ends now. You may continue it later, in your private chambers. Yours, not mine."
"A good thing to see some of the shepherdess has survived in the queen," Emli said approvingly. "We will need some of it, if this little court of ours is to have any semblance of discipline or decorum." Meisar nodded in a tacit but slightly amused agreement. They were something of a motley crew indeed; a queen whose attendants were miners' daughters, a healer and her apprentice, smiths a wild-eyed woman with mithril teeth, and a witty wanton in too many frills, with at least two staid noble-born matrons to offset the latter. And her silent Blacklock sentry with her strange spear and full undecorated beard. When the women, even the mannish ones, had beheld their passing train, they looked afraid of her. And right they should, my faithful Oliada.
Beside Meisar Freyda was squirming and bending forward time and time again to deliver ardent gazes to the king's court at their table across the chamber. "Are you alright, Freyda?"
"He's braided my hair," Freyda gushed suddenly. "He's courting me now, the way it ought be properly done. See?" She displayed the plait to the dwarrowdams proudly, but her braid was unclasped, except for a string of twine. "He will make one proper before the day's end," Freyda said. "He wears my ax about his neck now." She gestured to her undecorated throat to indicate, the omnipresent necklace no longer there.
"And he kissed me... oh lovie he kissed me the night before this... I'm tinglin' to tell ye of it," Freyda whispered controlling a gush of passion with some gumption. "Musta been like that when Thorin first kissed ye."
"It was," Meisar answered lowly so the other dwarrowdams could not hear, feeling a tingle and a shiver in herself as if it were that very night again, still damp from the freezing river. "I will not forget it as long as I live."
The door opened and through it spilled three dwarrowdams that carried with them the aroma of freshly-kneaded dough, blackberry tarts and rich soup. Lulia pushed Anbur and Yrsa forward that they might present themselves as proper ladies. They curtsied together. "My dear girls!" Meisar beckoned them happily. Bira had seen to it that the youngest were sturdily and finely attired, their hair impeccably braided. Lulia stepped forward in front of them, dipping a long bow in her plain dress of blue velveteen and heavy, shined boots.
"'Amad told us to come and make ourselves useful to the queen," Anbur said, proudly. She curtsied once more, proud of her ability to do so like a lady, shoving Yrsa aside with her skirt.
.
Ori arranged his instruments on the heavy desk of state that had been hauled into the chamber, his quills and parchment and inks all lined up. He wrung his hands, still in their woolen mittens; it was cold from all the doors being open to the outside where winter was on its early breaths. So many folks were coming and going it was no use closing them, not even the great front gates of the mountain.
"You must listen carefully!" Dori admonished. Carefully groomed, he buzzed around in the same overbearing manner that Aroin did at the queen's table, but far more neurotic. Ori tried to wave him off but it was of little use. Thorin finally directed him to sit on the other side of the table, a gesture Ori was openly grateful for. Ori sat up straighter, practiced holding the quill for the swiftest strokes.
Thorin looked over as Dwalin finally joined them. "Well," grunted the lieutenant. His eyes pointed purposefully at the small stone-on-twine still worn about Thorin's neck, and then dipped ever so subtly to his own.
A simple ax pendant was hanging about his neck on a similarly crude chain.
"I dare say I am proud of you Dwalin," grinned Thorin, more relieved than surprised. "It took you long enough." He reached to examine the pendant. "And you have given her some emblem I'm certain?"
"Aye. A proper clasp'll be finished come evening, in the silver-smith's guild-hall. Silver is good. I think she'll like silver."
"So it is official then?"
"Mmm-huh," Dwalin replied swiftly. "She is… my lass now." He took the pendant between his thick scarred fingers and strained an eye to it, proud of wearing it.
Thorin leaned back in the high chair he was seated on, took in the muffled sound of the queue just behind the door. Dozens, maybe hundreds, were already lined up there. "I hear her father is the famed Golden Boar who fights in the pits like a berserker," Thorin remarked. "What do you make of that now?"
"I have shared a drink of mead with him already," Dwalin grinned thinly. "A fine character he is."
"Good then," Thorin said. "I think then you shall find yourself soon a married man."
.
The merchants' wagons dwarf and man's alike crowded not only the marketplaces of Dale but the whole road that connected Dale to the gates of Erebor. They sold and bartered everything- furniture carved from the most exotic of woods, goose-down pillows and mattresses with sets of hand-embroidered bedding, plush carpets brought from the lands of the Haradim, a most volatile and mysterious tribe amongst men. They sold cookware and cutlery, fine plate of silver and glass and pottery alike, bolts of silk, damask, velvet, and linen. Dwarves and men alike purchased jewelry, combs, dwarven tapestries and toys for the children. Others made and sold potions for the teeth and hair, tallow soaps and candles, wash basins carved with runes. Fishermen from Esgaroth sold their catch and farmers from the lands just East of Dale hawked the last of their apples, potatoes and pumpkins from the autumn's bumper crop. The dwarves of Erebor were ready to live again, determined to make their quarters within the mountain home, and it seemed all had something to sell to make the living quarters livable. The commerce was a necessary thing in such times. As the reign of the beast collapsed, the city rose from the ashes. Brisk trade and plenty of jobs to be done kept the peace between men and dwarves, if the mass influx of exiled dwarves had flummoxed some to say the least.
As the king- and now the queen- of Erebor would hear petitions upon that day, the halls of the great city were crowded with long queues of dwarves and men alike. They had whispered in the halls of the city of an old promise made by the King Under the Mountain that prosperity might come again for the riches of Erebor flowing once more, bringing boats, even ships up the narrow passages of the River Running, crowding the Lake, new crude roads being stamped into the earth by the wheels of a thousand wagons and carts and hooves coming from all points East and West and South alike.
They would come, as surely as the sunup had, the ladies of Laketown and of Dale with the dwarrowdams of the kingdom queuing, bringing thick bolts of Laketown lace and samples of fine winter wools in sober hues, to offer in decent quantities for trade in metals precious and practical. And she would help to draw up lists for wool and leather for shoes that the Lake Men might bring, and for their benefit send orders to the guilds for metal-works so that the Esgaroth women might have steel needles for their spindles, steel for the men's wood-cutting axes so that the winter might be warm in the houses of the cities. They would hear the petitions and try and resolve the petty squabbles between dwarf and mannish merchants, and see to the requests of all the dwarrowdams of Erebor, be they the healer-women or the bed-maids, the jewelers, the needle-makers or the housewives of the city. Petitioners waited in the halls outside the inner chamber, where they were summoned several at a time per gender and party, as space permitted.
Emli blustered in, garbed in her finest. She went to arranging a set of parchments and quills and thick octagonal wells of black ink before her. "I'm afraid I cannot read or write with that much ease," Meisar confessed with a low hint of shame in her voice. "I'll need a scribe."
"I can write!" Siv volunteered. "I can write real well."
Emli issued her a dithering glance. "Can you, Siv?" Meisar inquired against Emli's eye of doubt, and herself warily eyed the dwarrowdam with her rouge and sculpted coiffure even more ridiculous on her than Nori. Pink bows decorated all down her puffed, ruched sleeves, the dress falling gracelessly to reveal her shoulders.
"Eda taught me when he had the apothecary back in the Blue Mountains."
"It's true," Eda confessed warily.
"Fine. But for Mahal's sake cover your shoulders," Meisar said resignedly. Her and Emli were thrice as sumptuously bedecked as she was in their clothes; in her dark gown and rounded caul she was almost somber-looking. But I have the queen's jewels. They will know. They will believe it. Eda tugged the white muslin shawl that Siv held daintily tucked into her elbows behind her, and set the shawl around Siv's shoulders, firmly. "Tall-folk coming into our home this day. Ought to be a bit of mystery 'bout the dwarf-woman yet," she lectured.
"Mystery? Think they ought see us fer what we are in the plain, hearing all the wild tales comin' from 'em. I heard one of these pox-faced mannish girls sayin' our men done kept us dwarf-women in gestation crates under the mountain back when like pigs when we're whelpin'. Bugger all. Be a well-dressed doxy before I'm called a sow by the likes of these spindly lasses."
"You represent my court and thus the king. Remember that and abide with some care," Meisar agreed quietly. "But if you can write, then come and sit here. There are plenty of quills and parchment pages to fill this day. Pray Mahal you can behave yourself for a few hours. I'll be sure to keep you busy."
The queen then placed her hand comfortingly on Brynja's, the lass standing at attention with a self-conscious gleam in her eyes in spite of her good dress. She hid her hands with the permanent tinge of coal-stain still in the fingertips. "Brynja, you watch her hand. See the way the letters are formed. Memorize it. Sound out the words in your head. You know the sounds of the letters, right?"
"Aye, I do, I think."
"Good, then just observe. I want to you to learn. Between Bofur and I we shall have you literate in no time."
.
Petitioners came and the dwarrowdams negotiated amongst themselves their claims, sending most away satisfied. Urdlaug came about at noon to deliver fat, soft loaves of sweet-bread, soft, runny wedges of cheese, pumpkin bisque, dried apples with cinnamon, and her blackberry tarts, still steaming and lightly frosted. Donbur pressed through with beef-and-onion stew laden with fat slices of carrot and potato that both courts eagerly took. At his and Urdlaug's waists jingled bags of coins so fat they were near bursting. Mannish petitioners came through munching on their fare, licking the grease, sugar-frosting and juices from their fingers. At some point, an old woman bundled in several moth-eaten layers of clothes wandered in past the sentry, called forth to the queen's desk which she did with some confusion.
"I am the queen of Erebor. How may I be of assistance to you, dear lady?"
The woman's clouded eyes took her in, bewildered. "A dwarf queen! I never thought-"
"Queen Lotte before me was determined never to be seen. I have chosen differently," Meisar explained, kindly. "My king and I are equally engaged this day."
"But there is no king! The king is dead! And the dwarf princes- dead too! The princess, they say, don't eat, just sleeps on ale and poppy-milk."
"The king lives, good lady. He is there, you see," she tried to interject, feeling a swell of bile rise in her throat.
"The princes?" the woman's eyes were wandering and empty; she was senile, most likely.
"The princes, they are-"
Across the chamber, Thorin's lips were pressing again and the council, all were looking awkwardly in the direction of the mannish crone. Meisar's voice was caught in her throat again.
"Go on, Ellery, you've got no business here lolling about holding up this long line," a swift voice nudged the old woman aside, and Meisar was glad to see a familiar face in the lady of Laketown, Dylis, who intervened diplomatically enough. She was bundled in a thick wool cape and characteristic tall fur hat of the Lake-Men, her nose red from the cold still. "Ah, Ellery, you've come to the petitioner's queue not the marketplace." She advised the old woman gently. "Apologies, my queen. She is a bit daft. Searching for the toy market I think, so that her grand-babies may have gifts in the evening."
"Dwarves coming back to the mountain have made a beehive of every cottage on the shores of the Lake and every house in Esgaroth proper. There's industry to be had at all corners." The women of Esgaroth no longer chastised by their poverty in coarse dresses and undyed wool. They would never be as fashionable as the women of Dale, who, as in the times of old, looked now to the dwarrowdams of Erebor to contemplate their fashions, their jewels and trinkets selling wildly in the marketplaces of the city. But as they came through, their cloaks were no longer torn, their boots no longer patched, their faces clean of soot and no longer smelling of oil and the day's catch, mostly.
"Here also does it come again. And we shall be prosperous. All of us. Speaking of, I have come on behalf of the spinners' guild. We can offer the shearing of two-hundred sheep, good wool. They want silver in return, silver bands. We already have a dozen or more weddings for the spring and that is just of the guild-girls I come on behalf of."
"Silver?' Meisar repeated. She took a deep breath, examining the sample of the wool Dylis had brought. Wool was in demand in the city, for socks and blankets and winter cloaks. "How many bands? I shall send word to the silversmiths at once." She motioned to Siv to write the order, which she did, in neat, if loopy, handwriting.
"For now, fifty I think will do. But I sense by spring there will be more," Dylis laughed. "Oh such times, my queen."
"Indeed." Meisar turned to Lulia with a smile. "Go on then, my dear girl, make yourself useful then," the queen chirped. "Take this to the silver-smith's guild."
Dylis chuckled approvingly at the swiftness of the little dwarf girl as she half-sprinted past with the order. "With winter on the back of our necks we shall be working dawn 'til dusk to keep up with the demand of our own plus the mountain, and glad for it," Dylis said. "Lack the plain endurance of you dwarves to go at it from sunup to the setting in the west with your toil. But we are equally determined to keep busy. Even the princess of Dale herself." Dylis parted and let through a tall, fair young woman in a plain fur-lined brown cloak, summoned in by the sentry who kept the flow of the queue steady at the chamber door.
"It pleases me to present myself, my queen. My congratulations on your marriage."
"You are the wardeness of the city then?"
"Nay, only a humble substitute," Sigrid laughed. "My father has traveled to Mirkwood to settle a dispute with certain silk merchants. The elves are particular about their textiles. But some unrest from the East where fine silks are made before they are brought to the markets of the city has disrupted this." The dwarf behind the queen was getting an uneased look- a dwarf or a dwarrowdam Sigrid could barely ascertain with her full black beard. The spear was like a milk-snake in her hand, twitching. "Yes," Sigrid went on. "But I think it shall be settled just as easily. I come on his behalf for other matters."
"Many dwarves still lodge in the inns and on the outskirts of Dale. The resources are always thinner in winter and..."
"Is there unrest?" Meisar queried.
"There has been some tension. Men can be as stubborn and hardheaded as dwarves when it comes to provisions they believe are theirs by right," Sigrid admitted quietly. "To have some conclusion, even one still in the works, would do much to ease the disquiet of certain people."
"New living quarters are under construction in some of the old mines. The progress is as well as it can be. But it shan't be near its conclusion until spring I think." Meisar felt a pang of inadequacy.
Emli clandestinely slid a parchment note before her. She let her eyes dip briefly to it, never taking her attention off Sigrid. Suddenly the queen smiled peaceably at her. "It is my understanding we will offer work in the new quarters for good pay. Those who wish ought see Gloin about it. He will arrange the pay and shifts."
"My husband," trilled Emli, pointing out Gloin. "Over there."
"I shall send word, majesty. Expect a delegation within the week."
"FOUR MORE!" the sentry hollered. "Women, see the queen seated on the left. Men, the king." Through the door came several dwarves and a figure that ducked low under the door but still knocked the tall gray hat from his head. Meisar stood as Gandalf regained himself, making a beeline for her rather than Thorin. "You stood in this long queue for all this time?" Meisar gently admonished the wizard. "You know you are welcome to our company, without the wait."
"I sensed you would be well-occupied and I waited my turn, as in only fair, my dear queen," Gandalf grinned down at her. His humility was strange but welcome. She caught an urgent glance from her husband out of the corner of her eye. "I have a sense my husband would desire a word with you," Meisar said.
"Ah but it is you I came to see, good majesty. Only to bring a small gift," Gandalf put before her a pair of snuff boxes full of Longbottom Leaf and Frogmorton weed that she could smell right through the fresh-polished wood. "And to inquire as to whether I might take a spot of tea with you before I am bound to leave this kingdom. Perhaps in the week or so, I think. A wizard's duties take him to far too many place in too little time it seems."
"Of course."
"Gandalf," Thorin's voice sounded impatient as it summoned him over.
"It will be done, Gandalf. You know where to find me," Meisar assured him.
The wizard took his seat in a chair the steward brought for him that was too small and nearly brought his knees to his chest. Thorin surveyed him with a degree of unhidden amusement. "You are welcome to be privy to my council so long as you remain here, Gandalf. After all, where would we be without you?" Thorin said and the wizard could not tell whether there was a quiet wave of sarcasm there or not.
Diragîn- Places of the Graves
Maiskit- Be Adorned!