Chapter 11: A Conspiracy of Cousins

Morwen burned, but it was the cold burn of frost on flesh. When the spasmodic applause and chatter petered out Halmir coughed. His bleary eyes slid sideways toward the onlookers than back to Morwen.

Morwen grasped the wine cup so tightly that the inlayed glass diamonds around the stem left a red pattern along her fingers.

Halmir coughed again. "Well, what do you say, Morwen?"

Some of the crowd strained their ears, not wanting to miss a spectacle when it presented itself. Morwen scraped her brain for a crumb of an idea to respond to Halmir's farcical announcement. But no words came to navigate the tricky position in which he had placed her. To answer the way she wanted would be impolitic. To answer the way he wished, impossible.

At a moment's inspiration, she let the cup slip from her fingers. It hit the dais. The wine gushed upward, then left a dark splash of red on the front panel of her dress.

The effect was instantaneous.

Gildis rushed forward with a cloth to try to save the dress, kneeling on the dais between Morwen and Halmir. A handful of Morwen's neighbor women followed, crowding Halmir out. They created a wall of dresses for Morwen to hide behind, besides further confusing her drunken cousin.

Laughter bubbled up in the crowd, which stung Morwen's pride. Yet temporary ridicule felt better than a forced answer in front of ten score guests.

"Gildis, I need to get out of here," she whispered to the housekeeper who had squeezed the excess wine from her skirt into the rag.

The women clucked their tongues or moaned when Gildis pulled away the the rag to reveal the stains. Morwen moaned too, but not over the dress.

Gildis shook her head. "Come, my lady," she said loudly enough for the nearest guests to hear. "I'll help you into a different dress."

Unable to help it, Morwen glanced around for Halmir, but he had disappeared from the dais. She couldn't see him anywhere. But rather than feel relieved, her anxiety spiked. If a deranged animal wandered into one's yard, best to keep it in sight.

When they passed through the gate, out of earshot, Morwen stopped Gildis.

"What happened?"

Gildis looked at Morwen like she was addled.

"Lord Halmir intends to marry you. He isn't one for asking, apparently."

Morwen blinked to hear it put so starkly. She cupped her forehead in her hand. "I thought so, but I'm feeling a little dazed."

"And no wonder," Gildis grumbled. "At least you thought of a clever diversion, though it's cost you that front panel. Come."

Morwen followed her down the path and almost broke into a run when she heard footsteps pursuing them. Unable to help herself, she turned to find that only Ioneth following at a shuffling run.

"My lady," the plump girl puffed as she came alongside Morwen, "Beldir sent me after you to make sure you're well. You looked fit to pass out when you dropped the wine."

So it hadn't looked deliberate to anyone but Gildis, Morwen hoped.

"I'll be alright," Morwen assured her. "Where did Halmir go? Did you see?"

"Did you miss Lord Thengel come up behind him?"

Morwen winced. "What did he do?"

"He hooked Lord Halmir's elbow and dragged him behind the dais."

"Did he?" she asked weakly. Morwen had only been aware of the guests as a whole, forgotten the individuals in the few seconds it had taken for Halmir to derail the feast. "And then what?"

Ioneth shrugged. "Well, everyone laughed because Lord Halmir sort of hiccuped really loudly when the prince pulled him off the step. Half the lads followed them around. I'll make Seron — erm, he's my…my…"

"Yes?" Gildis snapped.

Ioneth blushed. "Well, I'll make him tell me what he saw."

"Why don't you go and ask him now?" Gildis said sharply. "Make yourself useful."

"I have to go back to tell Beldir you're all right anyhow," Ioneth said to Morwen, ignoring the housekeeper.

They watched her kick up gravel as she ran.

…

When they made it back to the empty house, Gildis helped Morwen undress and find a clean, but understated alternative.

"It's a shame, this was the last of your mother's good clothes," Gildis said as she folded up the stained dress.

Morwen thought her mother would forgive her, given the circumstances.

"What will you tell Lord Halmir?"

"I'm hoping once he's sober he'll forget."

"Men drink to forget and grow sober to remember."

"Then let's hope that he will also remember decorum and sensibility. And silence. Underrated virtues, in my opinion," Morwen muttered.

"Oh, he's made it public, Morwen. You will have to answer."

Morwen knew in her heart that Gildis was right. Looking back, Halmir had spent the entire afternoon building up to that announcement. And even longer - from the cloth to accepting the invitation despite mourning his brother's death.

"If only he fell off the dais onto his face," Morwen mused. "And split his lip. Nanneth could stitch his mouth closed."

Gildis sniffed disapprovingly. "Don't go wishing things on people you wouldn't wish for yourself."

Morwen sat at the table and rubbed her eyes. "It doesn't make any sense, Gildis."

Gildis stood stiffly by the door, the dress cradled in her arms. "It makes perfect sense," she replied.

Morwen gaped at her.

The housekeeper's wiry eyebrow lifted. "From a certain point of view."

"Did you realize what was happening?"

Gildis pressed her lips very thin.

"Gildis."

The older woman picked invisible lint off the dress in her arms. "I thought it would be Lord Hundor who would come forward. Lord Halmir had settled in Minas Tirith and would certainly find a wife there. And he might have, but for Lord Hardang's death." Gildis sighed. "It certainly upsets affairs."

Yes, it had. Stars! Morwen tried to imagine her eldest cousin's reaction had he been present. But that proved impossible. Hardang existed in a sensible world that he had taken with him upon his death.

"Will you be along soon?"

Morwen nodded.

As Gildis closed the door behind her, Morwen marveled at the woman's far-reaching gaze. Hers had always been so close to home, rarely wandering past the next season.

Alone, the shock ebbed away, followed by a hot, bubbling fountain of anger. The wine had given her a stomach ache and made it impossible to stem the tide of events of the day that crowded around her, hemming her in, till any peace she might have enjoyed in the solitude of her chamber choked her like weeds around a seedling. She stifled a moan of frustration, grinding her palms against her eyes as the memories came, quite unbidden.

Morwen hadn't known what instinct had propelled her, maybe the over-bright look in Halmir's eyes, but she had greatly desired to pull Halmir back down off the platform, to silence him, anything - but he would go on and she had felt constrained by the good breeding demanded of the lady of the house to not make a scene. There was the confusion after Halmir's announcement. The stiff silence. The tangle of explanations and compliments on her left. And Morwen, sitting in the seat of disaster while bells jangled in her ears half the afternoon as boys and girls danced. Thank the stars Adrahil had not come to witness the spectacle.

Small consolation!

The entire valley, half the men of Arnach, and the crown prince of Rohan were witnesses in Adrahil's stead. How long before the news spread all over the fief and beyond?

Whatever she had expected or suspected, namely that her kinsmen were shirking the irksome retirement of deep mourning, that he should come to pay her court had never crossed her mind. Though she now realized it had certainly crossed others'. Her neck and cheeks burned to the touch just thinking about it.

And how could she face her guests after Halmir and Hundor shamed her? Not just with ridiculous announcements, but outright snubbing the prince. She prayed Thengel would take his men and go. If she had to provide him with a cart and horses for Guthere, she would do it. He could keep the lot of it if only she didn't have to face him in her humiliation.

What could Halmir possibly be thinking of? Morwen asked herself the question over and over like a weathervane in a gale. Round and round they went went at full tilt, making her sick to her stomach. What had come over Halmir? They were cousins removed some by two generations, it was true. But never, not once had he expressed any attachment to her - friendly or otherwise. Until the cloth - the stupid cloth. She'd mistaken the gesture for condescension not romance.

She had never thought to marry until the moment of his very public broadside. Marriage was a vague idea. She knew it happened to people - sometimes to people she knew. Nothing to trouble herself over. For some women marriage was an economic necessity. For others, the result of passion. Fortunately, she was a stranger to both want and longing.

Of course, she had never thought of marriage as a method for controlling someone. And that's what he had attempted to do, announce his intentions publicly to embarrass her into accepting him for some undiscoverable end.

The meanness of it made her want to scream.

Morwen tried to remember what her mother had said about their courtship. They were both older by Gondorian standards. Hirwen saw Randir in the marketplace in Minas Tirith. He tried to make a joke and failed, then in his embarrassment bought a barrel of apples for twice its worth after walking off without collecting either the change or the apples. Hirwen hunted him to the Archives. She liked his absent-minded charm. Later he admitted that he had to live on the apples for a month because he'd spent all his pocket money. They were married the next year. Hirwen's uncle gifted the land and lodge so they could support themselves.

They had been giddy and foolish and natural, but at least they were in love.

Feeling that she had taken more time than she ought to herself, Morwen rose and left her room. The air felt cooler in the empty hall. The fire which had been neglected since dawn had whittled itself down to a few red embers. She found a wrap hanging over the back of her father's chair and threw it around her shoulders.

The afternoon had crept along and soon her guests would return to the hall, so Morwen built up the fire with another iron. The scent of woodsmoke and the warm light provided a temporary balm. She had spent most of her childhood feeding things into this fire. As long as there was a fire here it felt like home.

It made Morwen wonder about the near empty garth in Arnach, south along the Erui deep in the vale. She did not know Ferneth well, despite the relative nearness of their homes. The people of Lossarnach were not many compared to some fiefs and they stuck to their vales and hollows. They would come together in wartime under their lord's banner if need be. Her mother's kin had been like that. Not overly close - certainly not the way her father's kin in Belfalas were. He always maintained careful records off all his cousins and wrote to all of them as if they were brothers and sisters instead of remote relations. That had been easier when he was one of the Steward's scriveners in Minas Tirith in the days before he met Hirwen.

The tap of boots on the kitchen threshold, which were too heavy for Hareth's, sent a chill down Morwen's spine. She tugged her wrap tighter around her shoulders as she rose. A flimsy shield.

"I thought I'd find you hiding here."

Morwen ground her teeth. "Hiding?"

"Peace, I don't want to fight," Halmir said as he stepped into the firelight. He had dropped the theatrical tone he had worn that day like a pantomime robe, and though his voice still sounded thick, it no longer contained that dreamlike quality of the drunk.

Water droplets caught the firelight as they fell from Halmir's wet, flattened hair. He smeared the moisture away from his brow and flicked it off his hand with a sneer.

"Why are you all wet?" she asked.

Halmir glowered at her. "I had a meeting with a rain barrel, compliments of your guest."

"Oh no," Morwen moaned.

"Oh yes," Halmir griped. Then he winced and gripped his forehead. "This prince of yours has a short fuse. Though why he can't mind his own business is beyond me."

Morwen paled. What on earth had compelled the prince to provide her cousin with a dunking? She wished he had ignored the whole stupid spectacle rather than participate in it.

"I have to return to the orchard," she said in alarm. To apologize? To assess the damage? To gain a modicum of control?

"They can do without you for a little while," Halmir grumped.

"So can you, but I have a duty." Of course it made the duty sweeter if it prolonged the wait for this dreaded conversation.

Halmir positioned himself between her and the hall doors. "I insist."

"Fine. Get it over." Like pulling a tooth or a scab.

Her surrender seemed to throw him off. Morwen stared mulishly at the fire while he regrouped. She could feel him contemplate her profile.

"You are very beautiful," he said, as if only half aware that he spoke aloud. "I wonder when that happened? I used to think you looked like Hundor."

Morwen rolled her eyes. More useless compliments…and a dig.

He shook his head. "I see my error now," he continued. "The announcement was ill done. It ought to have been discussed privately between us before I claimed anything publicly."

Claimed? The range of possible retorts staggered her. She bit her cheek, giving him a look that willed him to go back to the party - or Arnach - if he valued his continued existence.

He kept talking.

"Morwen, I realize my plans are premature," he said groggily, "but I did not ask you to marry me on a whim."

"You didn't ask at all!"

Halmir winced again as her retort knocked around in his skull. "Well, it goes without saying, doesn't it?" he replied. "I had no choice after I realized how this prince had encroached on you."

She gave him a sharp look. "You have completely invented this scenario, Halmir, which I find baffling."

He held up his hand. "Listen, please. You and I have both experienced great losses within the space of a year. Your venerable father and my brother. The world is an uncertain place for you, a young woman, and for me, the mere servant of an infant lord. Our house - the house of Lossarnach - lies vulnerable. But you and I - we can strengthen it."

"Vulnerable? To what danger?" she deigned to ask. If a risk existed, she wasn't sensible of it.

Halmir sent a black look out of the window. "Even now there are some who would continue to whittle away at Halgemir's line until there's nought left but little Forlong. Who will defend the child's interests if all the men have gone to Ithilien? Wasn't Hardang enough to satisfy the lords of Minas Tirith?"

She stared. Did he mean Prince Thengel? If Rohan could spare its crown prince in the defense of Gondor's borders, who was Halmir to complain if Lord Ecthelion required Haldad's useless younger sons?

"Your preference for your kin in Belfalas is no great secret and I know you don't love me," he added. "I won't pretend I love you either."

She glared at him.

"Yet."

"Halmir—"

He held up both hands. "Please, Morwen. We don't love one another yet, but we could one day."

"Are you willing to take that gamble?" she demanded. She sank into her chair, resenting her cousin for tainting the comfort she always found under her own roof. "On an eventuality? The odds look bleak to me."

"Marriage is a gamble." He scoffed at her naivety. "How many besotted fools come to regret their choice after their blinders fall off?"

Then his eyes lit up, he came toward her with arms wide as if he had been handed revelation from the herald of the gods. "But you and I don't have to be fools. We will go into it without pretense. We could be happy for the very fact that we are not in love."

The way his sodden mind worked made her dizzy.

"You're mad." She would have laughed but for the tearful constriction in her throat. "I don't respect you either, Halmir, let alone love you," she told him. "Without that, there's little hope that either of us would be happy. In fact," she tilted her chin defiantly in the air, "I would plague your heart out."

He looked like she had bit him. She admitted to herself that the last bit had been childish, but that was more honest to their true relationship than what he proposed. His hands disappeared behind his back while his jaw worked. Morwen remained in her father's chair while Halmir paced the floor - albeit unsteadily - before the hearth. She pitied the buckskin rug he ground under his feet on the pivot at the end of each lap.

"How long do you intend to stay?" she asked before the monotony of his movements drove her into a frenzy.

"As long as it takes to receive a favorable answer, my dear." He sounded almost cavalier, perhaps in an attempt to conceal how her brash words had hit a nerve.

"Halmir," she said steadily. "It is easy to give. My answer is no."

He stopped to look at her, eyes dark with disappointment. "Think of the suitability, Morwen," he said quietly.

"You have described it to me at length. But it would be unconscionable for me to accept your suit," she pointed out. "You should be in mourning. I have no desire to wed."

He waved off her objections. "A woman who does not desire to wed? Impossible. All women want to marry. That is their portion."

Morwen ground her teeth. "Not mine."

"I will persuade you," he said lightly, unperturbed by the scowl on her face.

"No, Halmir, you won't." She tried to sound firm. Did he truly believe he could simply will her feelings in whatever direction he wished? If one thing was true of this valley, it was that Morwen reckoned for herself.

He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. "But I will. I can. I don't boast idly, you know. Do I look anything but deadly serious?"

Morwen wanted to cross her arms over herself but kept her hands planted firmly on the armrests, fingernails biting into the wood. "What persuasion could you possibly use? I don't love you and a husband is of little use to me. I am in full command of my dowry and I have a house and land to provide what I need."

Halmir saw light and he smiled. He waved away an invisible vapor.

"Oh, you have that little stipend from your father, the youngest son of the youngest son of some long-dead prince? Is that enough to live on?" He stopped pacing to lean in over her. "Do you have land, Morwen? Did your mother give you that? You have been allowed the use of land. It was given to your mother and father by my grandfather since yours had nothing to provide his only surviving daughter. Ah, there's that second son again," he said with a curl in his lip. "But it was a peculiar arrangement. The land was a lease and a verbal agreement only. Unless you have a certificate somewhere no one else has seen? Do you have that, Morwen?"

Morwen began to see light. Something like ice formed in her stomach. For the first time she felt that Halmir's bravado might not be all bluster.

"Speak plainly," she told him.

"Gladly." He turned away, arms crossed as if hugging himself. "Your have no claim to Bar-en-Ferin as your own. You have no right to succession on tenement land. In fact," he said, facing her again. "You only remain installed in your beloved orchard at the sufferance of the Lord of Lossarnach."

Morwen's eyes burned, scattering firelight reflected in unshed tears as he outline the vulnerability of her claim to the plantation.

"As far as I know, the Lord of Lossarnach still suffers it," she countered, though her footing felt precarious.

"But the lord's regent questions the wisdom of the arrangement."

"And who is the regent?" she asked defiantly.

"I am." He gave her a smug smile.

Morwen had never thought of him as truly ugly until that moment. She rose out of her seat, feeling at a disadvantage as he stood over her and understanding set in.

"Halmir, are you strong-arming me into marriage or into giving you Bar-en-Ferin?"

He touched her cheek. "It is one and the same, Morwen dear."

She danced hurriedly away from the chair and out of his reach. It shamed her to recoil and her resentment rose up in her like a scream.

"This scheme is beneath you. Hardang would never have countenanced it."

Halmir's face twisted into a sneer. "It would not have been necessary if my brother had not fallen in Ithilien," he said resentfully. "We have his son to think of and our own line."

"Your brother managed his household without absorbing mine."

"My brother's loss is a heavy blow, Morwen." His voice sounded stern, as if she were a recalcitrant child, unwilling to heed her betters. "Hundor and I are persuaded that our grandfather could never have meant for so much good land to leave the family."

"It has not left the family," Morwen pointed out stiffly. "He was my mother's uncle. My great-uncle."

"Perhaps. But when you are married, as one day you will be," he said over the sound of her scoffing, "it will only pass further and further outside the line. Unless you accept my happy alternative."

It was a little late to strike a noble figure, Morwen thought acidly. He was a beast.

"What does Ferneth say to all this?" she wondered belatedly.

Halmir made a sour face. "Ferneth has as much to say about this as a decorative cushion would have in the furnishing of a hall. Besides, the poor woman is grief-stricken and recovering from a difficult labor, which she suffered through alone. And as the eldest surviving son of Haldad, I must take up the mantle until my nephew comes of age." Halmir's voice softened. He sounded almost affectionate. "Morwen, I am not trying to take Bar-en-Ferin away from you. I'm trying to share it with you."

Morwen fumed. His selfishness galled her enough without all this whitewashing.

"It isn't yours to share," she retorted, refusing to be drawn in. "My parents built up this land to what it is today. Yours never cultivated it."

He dropped the mask of affection like a rock. "I think you'll find it is mine to do with as I please until Forlong—"

They were interrupted when the hall doors opened. Cenhelm and Gladhon entered with Guthere strung between them. Halmir backed away from Morwen, but it was the Rohirrim who looked sheepish.

"Are you unwell?" she asked Guthere.

He looked sweaty all over, but he said, "Oh, well, no…."

"He grows dizzy and short of breath after so long," Cenhelm answered. "We let him overdo it."

Morwen crossed the hall toward them. "Should I call Nanneth?"

Cenhelm shook his head. "No he just needs a rest. We see this kind of thing often when blood's been lost." He glanced over at Halmir. "Pardon the intrusion."

Stung again, she allowed them to pass into the corridor. When they were gone, Halmir passed beside her toward his own room.

"Where are you going?" she asked suspiciously.

"To have a lie down. My head's split," he grumbled. "But consider what I have told you, Morwen. I expect a more favorable answer soon. Until then, we will trespass a little further on your hospitality."

"Trespass is the only correct word you have said all day," she called tartly.

He turned back to glower at her from the shadows. "You know what I meant, Morwen. And you know that in truth you are trespassing on our hospitality and our good will. Good night."

Morwen watched him go through bleary eyes. Oddly, that made her feel better. She never cried when she was in real trouble. Only when she was deeply frustrated. If Halmir believed he could cow her into taking him or giving up her home, he was mistaken.

She would be iron and ice.

AN: Apologies for the delay. November was a difficult month health-wise, including a hospital stay. But Morwen and Thengel should be back to business in the new year. :)

Halgemir - first lord of Lossarnach

Hathol and Hador: sons of Halgemir

Haldad: son of Hathol

Hirwen: daughter of Hador

Hardang, Halmir and Hundor: sons of Haldad

Morwen: daughter of Hirwen