Blimey, Silwerswath! I had not known before that there existed anything like "verbal puppy's eyes"! ;-) But as I'm a nice person and the chapter was ready anyway: Here you are and indulge yourself!
And I bow to Katster, who followed the trail of the hints through the chapters like my best sleuthhound. Congratulations!
Thank you to all of you for reviewing, subscribing, reading and wanting more. You certainly make me happy.
Chapter 12
"Éomer?"
The concerned voice intruded the red haze that pervaded him, making him realise the soft touch of a hand on his upper arm and causing him to open his eyes. Worried grey eyes, a serious face, displaying a deep frown right above the root of the nose ... He gulped for air, like a man who had been at the edge of drowning ... drowning ... "Lothíriel, how can it be that they let him live all these years? Your father, Erchirion …?"
She withdrew her hand and stepped backwards, tilting her head to avoid his gaze. "Erchirion was in Minas Tirith, and Father ..."
She looked at her hands. "Well, things weren't that simple. Amrothos and Elphir tried to get hold of the sailors slandering her, but it seemed they had dissolved into thin air and nobody really knew them in the taverns and on the docks. Father went to consult Mardil's father, Lord Baranor of Edhellond, on the matter. He was a good and honourable man, as were his two elder sons, who went with him to defend Minas Tirith during the war and died on the Pelennor; that's why Mardil came into inheritance at all."
She shrugged helplessly. "The relation between Dol Amroth and Edhellond had always been good, and the family was highly respected in Gondor, except for Mardil himself that is. One does not break up a relation like that easily."
Éomer felt his fury ebb into bitterness. "So a girl's reputation remained slandered for political reasons."
"There were several reasons that made things difficult even for those who saw through Mardil's scheming. Though Lord Baranor admitted to Father that he thought Mardil to be irresponsible and vain to a high degree, he found it difficult to believe that his son would take an oath on his mother's honour that lightly. They finally agreed to have him removed to his wife's place in Upper Lebennin, out of the reach of my brothers."
"But there must have been people besides your family who saw through his machinations!" Disappointment and impatience made him sound harsher than he had intended.
She sighed. "There certainly were, but we could not prove anything, and there were certain aspects that made people doubt Alcarien's innocence."
Though her embarrassment was obvious, she went on in the effort to explain: "There were found quite a number of girls that later admitted having been seduced by Mardil, but not one of them ever had got pregnant. And what proved to be further fuel for the gossip mongers was the fact that in all the past five years his wife never conceived."
The gods were just at least! A grim smile on his face, Éomer nodded. "That was to be expected."
"Pardon?" Her face expressed utter surprise at his statement.
He frowned. Surely she knew, didn't she? Every child in the Mark knew.
But there could be no doubt that she was totally at a loss. He had never imagined two neighbouring countries to differ that much in their traditions and beliefs. Trying not to let his resignation show in his voice, he explained: "The people of the Mark believe that children are a favour the gods show us. If a man is blessed with an offspring, with new life, and he does not care for it, even disavows it, they will punish him. They will blight his seeds and he will die without a trace of him left in his people."
She stared at him dumbfounded, and only after a while exclaimed, her disbelief showing clearly in her voice: "But Éomer, that would mean, that a woman could claim any man to be the father of her unborn child!"
"No." He shook his head with firm conviction. "Only the one she has lain with. You see, any man who could be the father would think twice to deny it, but if a man does, he generally is believed, the whole affair just being too dangerous. Therefore a woman would not risk willingly to name the wrong father."
With a grin he added: "Not that any Rohir would deny any reasonable claim anyway."
She looked at him doubtfully. "In the lower classes of Gondor most couples marry if a child is on the way, especially the girl's family pushing that on, and I suppose every decent lad is willing to marry his pregnant sweetheart, but there are always cases, in which a man would prefer to refrain from any responsibility, having seen the affair as something rather … non-committal. And there are women who are not virtuous as well."
Éomer hesitated. Should he tell her about that three riders of his first éored, who had pooled together to support the child of a loose woman from Aldburg they had celebrated a victory with, all four of them too drunk in the end to remember in detail what had happened that night? He decided to better let it slip.
He scratched his beard. He at least had to try to make her understand. "You see, there also is more in it for a man than just the fear of divine punishment."
"And what may that be?" Her head cocked, she eyed him with blatant curiosity.
He shrugged. "Stallion's pride."
"What?"
Her expression of genuine shock embarrassed him more than he would have thought possible. He avoided her gaze, realising that it was disappointment that caused his former anger to flare up again, disappointment that her reaction was that of any other prissy Gondorean. He wanted her to be different, to understand, to be able to see things with his eyes. But this was Gondor.
"Having children shows a man's virility," he insisted with stubborn persistence.
She snorted. "It certainly does."
Surprised he looked into her face. Was the flare of the torch deceiving his eyes, or was she really grinning? But when she spoke, the mirth in her voice could not be missed.
"I'm sorry Éomer, but when you made that remark, for a fleeting moment I was afraid you might be referring to one of these blood-curdling myths some of our homecoming soldiers enjoyed telling about the Rohirrim." The corners of her eyes still crinkling with laughter, she nevertheless blushed profoundly.
"To be sure, you looked really shocked." He looked at her appraisingly. "Well, I think I don't want to know what rumour you were thinking of."
There had been all kind of stories concerning the Rohirrim and their horses circulating at Cormallen, all of them a crude mixture of offence and admiration. Éomer chuckled softly. They would be rather gob-smacked if they knew some of the authentic myths of the Eorlingas and the role their horses played in them.
Her lips still curved in a smile, her eyes turned serious and as well in her voice he could sense the edge of earnestness, when she asked in a seemingly easy tone: "Well, my Lord King, and how many testimonies of your virility are running over the green plains of Rohan?"
Being the warrior he was, he knew a challenge when he was confronted with one. Not that he doubted her right to ask or his duty to answer, you didn't develop trust by avoiding possible problems, but he wanted her to get this right.
"As far as I know I have one daughter. Her name is Gytha, and I count her the greatest gift fate has given me so far."
There was no alarm in her mien, no surprise, no hint of flinching. She merely nodded and then asked, her voice now controlled but not unkind: "And her mother?"
He swallowed, not certain how to start. "She lives in the Wold," he finally said.
"I see." There was just an ever so slight hesitation, before she continued. "You never thought of marrying her?"
Éomer felt his hands get moist, his back crawl with cold sweat, as the memory closed in on him. Breathing deep, he tried to steady his mind. He had to overcome this, had to step out of his past though it meant baring his very soul to her judging eye. He wanted to love and be loved, and he had told her so, he had to get rid of his past injuries first, not to taint their relation with them. But he knew it would be painful.
"I proposed to her when I learned that she was pregnant, but she declined."
"You can't be serious! What woman in her right mind would ... Oh." The bristling with which she had started her statement died down to a small embarrassed gasp.
He looked at her gravely. Did she know how close to the mark she had hit? Had he known, then?
"Lothíriel, to understand all this you must know about a certain custom in the Mark, something very important for any Rider. A tradition that has its roots in the days when our ancestors had to flee Rhovannion, before they even became the Éothéod. Will you listen to me?" Their eyes met and she nodded her asset.
"You see, we were a people on the move for centuries, without roots to the soil we walked. " He hesitated. Would she understand? Would she reject him? He needed to know for sure. Taking her hand, he placed her palm on his chest, right over the spot where his drumming heart felt like breaking the frame of his ribcage and held it there, covering it with his swordhand as he continued to speak.
"For my people their women are the ones who carry the memory of our roots, whose souls are connected to soil and water we live on. They are able to let my people's memory sink into the ground, to make it become home, and only they can draw this energy out of the land again to make our people live. And only they as well know the way to the ancestors." Her fingers rested still and warm on his chest, her gaze never leaving his face. Probing, his fingers slid along hers: slender but strong and firm, soft skin with the archer's callouses.
"Our men's task and dedication is to protect them and with them the identity of our people. But when he dies in that cause, a warrior's soul is led to the Halls of our Ancestor's by the women's song and care."
Lothìriel nodded. "Erchirion told me that it was women who put Theoden King in his mound."
"Yes. It's the women who bring us into life and lead us out of it again. But there is something else, something they do to help any Rider who might die in battle far from home find his way to the ancestors and not get lost between the worlds."
He was not sure how to proceed, imagining that it would be difficult for her to accept the Rohirric belief.
"They give us the Éoredheap Segnung, the Blessing of the Warriors, to make our bodies remember what we are fighting for and our souls were we belong." Her fingers twitched slightly, but she didn't pull away, and after a moment of hesitation he continued.
"In case of war, on the eve of a battle or before the men leave their homes for the muster, every wife, every sweetheart will lie with the man they love, thus tying him to their land and smoothing their way to the other world should he die in battle."
Her hand remained firmly against his chest, a sad smile shining in her eyes. "It's a nice and warm-hearted custom, Éomer. But what if … I mean, you said sweethearts. What if an unmarried woman gets pregnant? What will become of her and the child if the warrior … does not return?"
He gently stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. She understood. He felt relief wash over him. "A child begotten at the Segnung is seen as a divine gift, a blessing. A sign that the warrior's connection to his people was rewarded."
Stopping his stroking thumb with her other hand, she looked up at him. "Éomer, there is something I don't grasp. From what I understand, a woman took you to her bed before you went to war."
He nodded at her enquiring look.
"She got pregnant by you."
Another nod.
"You wanted to marry her."
Again he nodded.
"And she refused." She shook her head. " That does not make any sense to me."
He sighed. "No, you are right, it really doesn't. You need to know something else to understand, something I..." He found it difficult to continue, and finally went for a direct attempt.
"Two years before … before she lay with me, Ethelfleda had been betrothed to Cedric of Snowbourne, a brave and noble warrior, and the date for their wedding had already been set. But for reasons I don't know, quarrel arose between them, so when Cedric was to go to battle, but days before their wedding, she refused to go to him, and Cedric in hurt pride did not take any other woman's offer."
He looked down at her, but she avoided his gaze, staring at his hand that held hers to his chest. Did she reckon what was to come next? His voice was hoarse when he carried on.
"He never came back and Ethelfleda ... she felt guilty, afraid he might be lost, unable to find his way because of her ... And I think she realized that she still loved him. She withdrew from everything and lived a mere shadow among the people of Edoras until ..."
He stopped, struggling for composure. This was worse than any combat he ever had fought through.
"Until that night she came to me, the night before my first battle." He swallowed, trying to suppress the bitterness that rose in him.
"She lay with me, Lothíriel, and yet she didn't, for..." He could not go on, his voice raspy and uncertain. He breathed, deep ragged breaths, his hand pressing hers against his chest.
"She lay with me," he continued after a while, his voice little more than a whisper, "but in her guilt-driven imagination she was with him, calling out his name, as I..."
He felt her hand twitch and immediately let go. How alien must all this seem to her, how could he have expected her to understand. Closing his eyes, he waited for her to withdraw her hand, but instead she clutched at him, crumpling his tunic in her right hand, while her left one grabbed his sleeve. None of them spoke, and finally her grip relaxed, her hand unclenched, till her palm lay again open on his chest, shielding his heart. Hesitantly he stroked the back of her hand, covering it again, anchoring himself in her presence.
"I rode into my fist battle, blessed and yet forsaken."
"Éomer," she breathed, lifting her grave face to him, "Éomer, for Uinen's sweet mercy, how old were you?"
A mirthless smile crept into the corners of his mouth. "Sixteen."
She swallowed. "Éomer, she was desperate … she ..."
"I know, Lothíriel. I know and understand now, but back then it felt as if I rode into battle a dead man." He shrugged.
"Yet I survived, and little time later I learned she was expecting and decided to marry her."
"Did you love her?" Her dark grey eyes were full of concern.
"No, I did not even remember her face properly. But I thought it was my duty."
Taking her small hand in both his large ones, he shook his head. "I was an idiot, Lothíriel. Hurt, uncertain, but full of my own importance. I had fought my first battle and I had impregnated a woman. Were not the gods looking favourably at me?"
"And what did she say?"
"She refused to even think of marrying me." Seeing the doubt in her eyes, he explained.
"Lothíriel, I was a milksop, and she was a woman of twenty-four, Ethelfleda, Marshal Elfhelm's eldest daughter. No one expected her in earnest to marry me."
He shrugged. "She had lain with me at the Blessing, that is in a sacred joining, not because she had felt anything for me. I would have understood, had she based her refusal on that, but... "
For some seconds he watched his thumbs, stroking across her knuckles, before he finally lifted his gaze. "She told me, the child was not mine but Cedric's. She believed to carry her dead love's child. Believed that the gods had let him come back from the afterworld to give her this child as a token of forgiveness. For her I had been but a medium of their grace, a vessel to do their will."
"No!" She gasped in terror, both her hands clutching his.
"She believed it, Lothíriel. She could not help it. She believed it and plummeted me from the heights of my pride and self-importance into the abyss of nothingness."
He smiled wryly. "Soon after that she moved to the Wold, to live with her mother's people."
"And you?" Her voice still held some of the horror she tried to control.
He shrugged. "Strange enough I coped with it. No one knew, no one looked down on me or teased me, there were more battles, and I proved to be a promising warrior … I somehow found my place."
And there had been the lasses, who had started to seek him out, not only on a battle's eve, but after it, when he had come back victorious though sometimes hurt, their hands not only tending his wounds and loosening his cramped muscles, their arms and legs encircling him, fending off the terror of battle, their moist depth sucking him back into life. But he did not think it the right moment to talk about them now.
He could not help looking sheepish. "I recovered. And when I finally got the news that Ethelfleda had given birth to a daughter, I was off to the Wold, determined to claim my rights.
He shook his head, lost in memory. "I was such a moron."
Holding her hands, he looked up. "I behaved like a mad bull, marching into her aunt's house, demanding to see her, determined to fight anyone who dared to bar my way. I'm still not sure if I acted due to delusions of grandeur or if I just tried to hide the feeling of inferiority. Anyway, when I burst into her room, I found her nursing the child and that sight ..."
He sighed, a hesitant smile spreading over his face. "It stopped my ravings, as the very moment I saw that tiny being I simply ... melted and were I had intended to demand I found myself pleading."
"And did she listen to you?" Her voice full of concern, she pressed his hands.
He nodded. "Yes, she did. She was very different from the desperate woman that had left Edoras six months before. She didn't say a word, but listened as I stammered out my love for that child in her arms, begged her to let me protect it, support it, love it."
His gaze sought hers as he continued, his voice low, as if still after years that had passed he was not able to comprehend the wonder of that moment. "And then she stood, put the child in my arms and told me to present it to the household and name it."
"Had she overcome her madness?" Lothíriel's voice sounded breathless.
Slowly he shook his head. "I don't know Lothíriel, I never asked her. I'm not even sure if she wasn't right, and I've pondered it more than just one sleepless night, but it didn't matter that moment … and it does not matter anymore now. She seemed to have talked to nobody except me, and I have not spoken about it to anyone but you."
She nodded solemnly. "So you presenting the child to the members of the household and naming it defined you as the child's father?"
"Yes, it did. And I named her Gytha, "gift" in Westron, though at that moment I was not sure, whether it was a gift given to her by me, or rather to me by her. I just was convinced that that was her name, though I never had thought about it, not expecting to be in time for the naming."
"And what about the mother?" All anxiety had left her voice, but still there was quiet concern.
"Ethelfleda married Bealdric the next summer. A sheep-farmer of the Wold and a renowned warrior. He is a good man, and every time I went to see my daughter I found her cared for and loved. I could not wish for a better home for her."
Seeking her eye, he found her looking at him with understanding. "You see, as much as I loved her, I was much too young, out at training or on patrol most of the year, and all in all little more than a visitor. And then, with Wormtongue's machinations, Saruman's treachery and the Enemy rising in the east, I was much relieved to have her cared for as far away from Edoras as possible."
She stroked his hands lightly. "Those threats are over now, and she will live to see a better future for Rohan."
"Yes, she hopefully will." Lifting her hand to his lips, he softly kissed her knuckles. "And yet the fear for her well-being nearly made me go insane, when we were on our way to aid Minas Tirith."
"The orks crossing the Anduin," she whispered.
Trust Imrahil's daughter to know about details of the war.
He nodded. "We were warned about the attack, but turning aside would have delayed our arrival at Mundburg, and we knew that when it fell, the Mark would lay open to the enemy."
He swallowed hard, before he continued. "I gave the order to press on, but I felt as if my heart was torn into pieces."
"She remained unharmed, didn't she?" Her question sounded like a plea.
"Yes, she did. I would never have been able to forgive myself if ..." He could not finish the sentence.
"The Ents were out in the northern plains and led these beasts a deadly dance. The people of the Wold lost some flocks of sheep, but neither people nor horses came to harm. Though I have no doubt that foul creatures would have found Bealdric's men far from unprepared. Living in the Wold means living on the frontier, that makes people steadfast and sturdy, be it in war or peace."
Remembering the usual bustle of the wealthy farm, he could not help a grin. "You see, Bealdric can't ride to battle anymore because of a disrupted knee sinew, but that does not keep him from running his household like the captain he truly is. There are three boys now, and to Bealdric's utter joy a daughter was born this spring. He loves Gytha dearly, and as she is twelve now, and in less than two years time will leave for Aldburg or even Edoras for further education, he was just happy that there would be another little girl to spoil."
She tilted her head, her tone teasing. "You mean to take her into your household? Feel it is your turn now to spoil her?"
"As it is, she is the King's daughter now, and it is necessary for her to get some courtly polish, as far as you Gondoreans think us Rohirrim able to achieve it." He grinned, as she smacked his hands, and made to catch her fingers again.
"I think first of all she will stay some time with her grandparents at Aldburg. Her grandmother Hrodwin is looking forward to have and educate her, but when Gytha feels up to it I would like her to come to Edoras, just for the chance to boast a bit with my lovely daughter."
"I see," she mirrored his grin, "Stallion's pride."
He found it difficult not to laugh. How easy it was to fall in with her teasing. Trying his utmost to display the facial expression he and Éothain used to call the Gondorean airhead, he let go of her, crossed his hands behind his back and addressed her in perfect haughtiness. "Princess Lothíriel of Dol Amroth, you are supposed to be shocked, disgusted, and miffed and not to talk like a Rohirric stable hand."
"My dear Sir Uptight," Joining his antics with much more talent than him, she slid into the royal role, cool like a trout in a mountain stream. "As a matter of fact I have been informed, that there are certain occasions, when even the King of Rohan himself is confirmed to be quite close to said profession and bearing, and I think it is our absolute duty to adapt to that example of demeanour as a sign of Gondor's gratitude, and as well, though that is certainly to be considered a most demanding task for Gondor's nobility, as the acknowledgement of the existence of a rare thing amongst Lords and Ladies: common sense."
Carrying her role to excess, she looked down her nose till she squinted. He snorted with laughter. Who would have imagined such fun, seeing her preceding yesterday's official banquet? The longer he talked with her, the more aspects of the girl her brothers had told him about peeped out of her personality. He breathed deep. He had been right: If she would just let him, he surely would be able to come to love her.
Stomping feet and the clang of armour from the other access to the battlement announced the change of guards. Lothíriel looked up in surprise. "I hadn't realised it was that late already. Dinner will be served in half an hour, we had better go down."
Bowing in acknowledgement, he offered his arm, and side by side they made for the stairs.