Elfhelm shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Hilde turned to glare at him. He gave a watery smile.
"These honey cakes are nice." It seemed like the only contribution he could offer to the conversation.
"So," said Hilde, "Tell me more about the sort of work you had in mind."
Lady Galadwen fished in her capacious leather saddle bag and produced several swatches of fabric, which she unrolled first at a time.
"This first one is an example of the sort of tapestry work the ladies in my area produce – obviously because the work is so highly skilled, it is very labour intensive, slow, and hence expensive."
She passed the piece of cloth to Hilde, who spread it upon the table so that Edith, the housekeeper of the Golden Hall, and Lord Sigward, who managed the royal estates, could take a closer look. The tapestry panel was square, of sides just longer than a cubit, and showed part of a hunting scene.
"The deer and the hounds are beautifully executed," said Sigward appreciatively. Eflhelm, who was beginning to lose the will to live, cast half a glance towards the table. Even he had to admit that the liveliness of the poses, with the stag at bay, poised to leap from its pursuers, and the dogs, leaping and cavorting around the edges of the coppice in which the stag was hiding, were quite lifelike.
"That's a remarkable degree of detail on the faces of the hunters," added Hilde. "You can see that one's bold as brass, anticipating that he'll be the one to catch the stag – and the one next to him, closer to the antlers, looks quite scared. And the one behind looks like he's jealous not to be at the front of the fray."
Edith, whose knowledge of dye stuffs was second to none, said "The colours are beautifully chosen and, as well as being lifelike, complement one another – the green of the foliage and the blues of the men's cloaks. But tell me, how fast are the dye stuffs? Will they fade quickly?"
Elfhelm shifted again, trying not to let the chair squeak and attract Hilde's attention. Béma, he was bored.
"Usually we fix the vegetable dyes with vinegar and the fruit dyes with salt, and those give good results, but we're experimenting with various treatments to improve the longevity."
Longevity… thought Elfhelm. Bit like this bloomin' conversation… He was drawn back to attention by another glance from Hilde, and watched as Galadwen spread another swatch of fabric on the table. There's more? Béma be buggered!
"Now this is the really innovative part. Lady Hilde, you said that your craftwomen were making the hangings for the new queen's chambers and her solar, as is only appropriate – you want to showcase the fine work of the Riddermark." (Elfhelm had to admit she was a shrewd one, this lass from Anorien. Sweeten the deal with honey and flattery. Makes the price easier to swallow.) "But you also said that you had the long gallery outside to fit as well, and that would be hard to complete in the time you have available. This is how you can get a lot of impact for a minimum of expenditure, because we all know how tight silver is in the aftermath of the war."
Despite himself, Elfhelm started to pay attention. The swatch of cloth was woven, with different colours of yarn in both warp and weft, forming a rich brocade, with the choice of weaving patterns allowing one or other colour to come to the fore, producing patterns of flowers and foliage woven into the cloth itself. Even if such fripperies were women's concerns, Elfhelm couldn't help but be impressed by the ingenuity. But even he, much as he tried to avoid what he thought of as "women's stuff" like the plague, knew that brocade was damnably expensive. The next bit brought him up short.
"Now, obviously I'm not going to tell you how this is done, because otherwise I'd be giving away the tricks of my trade and losing my profits, but I have installed mechanisms on several of the looms on our estate which means that cloth like this can be woven almost as quickly as normal cloth. If we take the central tapestry panels, which have to be hand-crafted, and surround them with this woven cloth as a border, we can create large panels for your long gallery at a much lower cost than if we covered the walls in panels made from tapestry alone."
"So what sort of figures did you have in mind?"
Elfhelm abruptly lost interest in the mechanism, and returned to his earlier morose state. The haggling would go on for hours. Wild hunt carry me away!
The gods must have heard his prayers, for at that point there was a knock at the door, and it opened to admit Éothain.
"Sorry to interrupt, Lady Hilde, but there's been a bit of a disagreement between some of the off-duty men from the Aldburg and the Deeping-coomb Éoreds. Do you think I could borrow Lord Elfhelm to knock some heads together? Oh, Lady Galadwen." Éothain paused for an instant. "Good morning my lady. Um. Lovely to see you."
Lady Hilde laughed. "I'm sure we can spare my husband, unless of course, he particularly feels the need to stay."
"No, no, that's fine my dear. I think you have everything in hand admirably," said Elfhelm, unfolding his long, thin frame from the chair and heading for the door with remarkable rapidity.
~o~O~o~
The scene which greeted Elfhelm was not entirely unlike the bar room brawl in the town by the Rammas Echor, though, being soldiers, the blows were rather more accurate and effective than the roundhouse punches thrown by sozzled farmers and over-fed middle aged merchants. Fortunately, again due to being soldiers, the young men involved in this brawl were also rather more versed in the art of blocking and dodging punches. Elfhelm reflected that the one factor rather cancelled the other out, and the overall number of sore heads at the end of the affair would probably be about the same.
"What started it?" he asked Éothain, uncomfortably aware that he was now cast in the role of the landlord, whose duty it was to pour icy water on the participants.
"I haven't worked it out yet. It'll be cards or a woman, it always is."
Or in the case of the Anorien fight, the Marshal reflected, both, seeing as it was Éowyn's card-sharping that had kicked the thing off. Once again it occurred to him that Éomer was probably quite enjoying a quiet life, even though he missed his sister. Elfhelm wondered how Faramir was getting on.
Elfhelm spotted one of his lieutenants and one of Erkenbrand's sergeants hanging back from the fray.
"You two," he barked. "Buckets. Horse trough. Break this up."
"Yes sir," said the lieutenant, coming to attention. The sergeant followed his example with a slight tardiness, and a slight lack of backbone, both of which teetered a hairsbreadth the right side of insubordination. Elfhelm noted the strong whiff of whisky emanating from the man and decided to delegate bringing the man's behaviour up to snuff to Lord Erkenbrand.
The fracas was dealt with reasonably rapidly, with appropriate punishments meted out. Rather guiltily, Elfhelm eschewed going back to the tapestry negotiations and instead went with Éothain to look at the other's two new yearlings.
"Very nice," he observed, watching Éothain put one through its paces on the end of a long line. Plenty of spirit, but readily trainable, was his considered verdict.
"I'm chuffed with both of them. Whichever turns out best, I'll keep as a replacement for Stormbringer when he gets too long in the tooth, and give the other to my youngest brother."
"So," said Elfhelm, after a long pause. "Your Gondorian lass. Quite the head for business."
"She's not my lass," said Éothain, shortly.
"More fool you. Bonny and brains. And with a sense of the value of money. And how to make it. You could do a lot worse."
Éothain scowled, and turned his attention to taking the bridle off the yearling.
"So what exactly did happen in your hoity-toity 'turn about the long gallery'? Both of you looked quite flustered when you got back."
"Nothing." The tone of voice was tart. It made Elfhelm think of one of his wolfhounds growling to warn the other off its bone. Elfhelm, however, was not a man to leave a juicy bone alone.
"So that means you kissed her, but you didn't do anything that would lead to a hasty marriage at the point of her father's sword."
This time, Elfhelm could have sworn that Éothain did actually growl like his wolfhound. But he was distracted by another train of thought.
"Now there's a point. Her father seemed quite a punctilious man, not one to let his daughter run wild across Anorien and into the Riddermark. Where is he? Why isn't he conducting the negotiations?"
Then another thought struck him.
"Dammit. I need to go back to those bloody cloth negotiations. There's something a bit off here. Not about Galadwen's intentions or her honesty – I think she means well. But about her ability to guarantee that she can hold up her end of the bargain if, as I suspect, she's doing this off her own bat. I'd best make sure it's a small deposit and cash on delivery..."
~o~O~o~
AN: Yes, Galadwen has invented a prototype version of a Jacquard Loom! Why not? I love Middle-Earthifying random bits of history.