Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
— Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
It is almost impossible to weep while riding a horse. And yet, I managed it. I rode through the night, hoping that no one would follow me. I wasn't sure when they would notice when I was gone, but it was possible that I could have a day or two. Maybe more. And it was highly unlikely that they would guess where I was going.
I was sure they would assume I would make for Arnor, but that was not where I wanted to be. While I did miss my friends (what I wouldn't do to embrace Berendine and Joy), what I really wanted was to be far from people who knew me. I couldn't face my friends, or their judgement - or even their commiserations. Despite the depth of my loneliness, I wanted to be alone - on my own terms - and lick my wounds while I considered my next move.
Soon it was dark, but I would not stop. I had to ride through the night to put distance between me and Lindon. I wasn't sure if Glorfindel would follow me - not that I didn't think he would let me go, but this wasn't exactly the safest option. But I couldn't bear to stay another minute, and I couldn't bear to talk to him again. I would dissolve in a puddle of tears, and I would submit to anything to stay with him.
My will was strong - but the sound of unexplained noises in the night scared me. The last time I had seen an orc had been terrifying, but there were also wolves out there. And bandits. And goblins. And possibly bears. And angry mobs with torches who wanted to kill me. I shuddered. I had been so good at making friends at one point, but now all I could do was make enemies.
As long as I kept on the main roads, and was careful, I was hopeful I'd be safe.
After racing through the night, I rubbed down my poor horse, and for the next day I walked beside her. I had pushed her, and even though she was strong, we had a long journey ahead of us. I would relax when we were out of Lindon, I told myself.
As soon as I left the boundaries of Lindon, the temperature dropped considerably. I had wondered why the weather was constantly temperate, and it only rained at night, and now I knew. Gil-galad's ring must control the elements itself. We never had snow on Tolfalas, being an island, but we at least had seasons. I wondered if the consistency and lack of change had added to my feeling of distorted time; constantly slipping out of my fingers and yet unchanging. I wrapped a wool blanket around my shoulders and carried on.
It turned out that I didn't have as great a sense of direction as I thought I did. Over the next few weeks, I passed many small, ramshackle villages on the way and asked them where I was. It was never where I thought I was, or where I was meant to be. I zig zagged across the land, sleeping in barns and huts, until I eventually left the inhabited land and entered the wild.
For the first week, I didn't notice much apart from the chill in the air. I cannot remember much for the first few days, and everything I did notice barely touched me. At the time, I didn't understand, but I realised later that I was numb to my surroundings. But I slowly began to take in more of the new sights and smells around me.
In a way, it was exhilarating to be by myself, to ride through deep valleys and crystal clear rivers with just my horse for company. I spoke to fewer and fewer people, until at last, I was the only person within leagues. I had never been so utterly alone before. It was a strange experience; I truly understood my utter insignificance in the great outdoors, but it was strangely comforting. I had certainly felt alone before - and lonely - but walking on mossy banks in my bare feet, or picking Athelas wherever it was abundant, and other herbs I could find, or mushrooms and eating roots, made me feel capable and independent again. Sometimes I lay on the banks of a river and looked up at the sky, watching eagles fly and began to feel as if Middle Earth weren't so hostile as I thought it was.
There was something about being cold, I thought, that woke you up. I began to feel more alert during the day, and less panicky and fearful. I hadn't even known that I had been full of fear. But then even up Mount Doom, I never thought everyone would turn on me - especially people I had sought to heal. Perhaps that was why I couldn't sleep at night. I missed Glorfindel being next to me, stroking my hair and kissing my forehead. I missed the smell of his hair. But I put it to the back of my mind. I had to.
Sometimes I would look at his pendant hanging round my neck. It felt like a guilty pleasure. Why hadn't I given it back? Why hadn't I given him my own seashell pendant in return? It could have been something to remember me by.
I felt sure that I shouldn't take off the seashell necklace. Not yet. Not until I knew who my father was.
And as selfish as it was, I couldn't bear to return the golden flower necklace.
After six weeks on the road, I was coming to the end of my stores of food (Elvish lembas bread lasted a long time and horses liked it too I found) and I greatly desired a bed. And, if at all possible, a hot bath.
But as I rode into my final destination on my horse, I almost turned around and rode back out onto the road.
Elendil's gift now seemed like a kick in the teeth. If I had thought Tolfalas was a backwater after seeing Minas Tirith's wealth, then this village was a hovel. There was a row of higgledy-piggledy houses in various states of disrepair, opposite a long gated manor house of only two storeys. The house was old: the windows were deep, but it was human made, I thought. Some of the windows had been boarded up and a tall iron gate with sharp spikes blocked entry. But in Sindarin, the name of the hall was written on the gate - CARDOLAN.
"Home sweet home," I said to myself.
There was a stench of urine and decay in the air. As I turned around, a young child, naked and filthy, stood in the uneven muddy road, staring gormlessly at me. I thought I could see a puddle of vomit on the ground. I wrinkled my nose.
The gate, as forbidding as it was, turned out not to be locked.
The heavy wooden door, inlaid with metal, was similarly unlocked, but it was heavy and creaked loudly as I pulled it open with all my might. Dust went up my nose as I swung it open; the hall was long abandoned, it seemed. The air was stale inside, and it was dark, but there was some light; not all the windows had been boarded up.
I tied my horse up and gave her a pat for good measure. She whinnied at me softly, and I broke off some Lembas and fed it to her.
Inside I explored with trepidation. I wanted to laugh; Elendil had gifted me a decrepit ruin in exchange for saving his son's life. What a joke. And I had left Lindon for this strange and unwelcoming place. It was dark and dusty inside; slivers of light came from cracks in the boarded up windows. I managed to open a shutter, and as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that most of the furniture had gone, and the bare stone was all that was left. The wood on the walls were discoloured in square patches, which took me a second to realise that paintings had been removed. This must be the main hall, I thought, looking up at the large staircase. I walked towards it, wondering if there were any decent bedrooms to lay my weary head.
But just before I could ascend the staircase, the door behind me creaked. I turned around and saw the silhouette of a woman standing at the entrance.
"Oh!" I said, a hand going to my heart. "You scared me!"
I walked towards her smiling but she looked me up and down, and found me wanting from the expression on her face.
"We don't need no foreigners," said the woman, stony-faced. For a beat, we just looked at each other. She was in her fifties, with long silver hair tied up in a neat bun, and an apron over a work dress. She looked cross. I wondered what I'd done now.
"Well. My name is Minnow. What's yours?" I asked, gamely.
The woman continued to stare at me. "You ain't welcome here," she said.
"I can see that," I muttered.
"You got an Elvish horse," she accused.
"True. Who lived here before?" I asked.
"Don't you know? Lord Shetan but he's been dead these ten years and more. I used to be his housekeeper," she said.
"It's mine now. Elendil gave it to me during the war," I told her, lifting my chin.
The woman looked at me, sizing me up.
"And are you expecting to stay in Cardolan Hall?" she asked. When I said I did, she asked for how long.
It was a good question. "I'm not sure as of yet. What's your name?"
She narrowed her eyes. "It's Sylvie," she spat, turning around and walking out.
Another enemy, I thought, glumly. This was beginning to become a habit. Had I forgotten how to make friends?
I made it up the stairs, and scoped out the first floor, and the top floor, which was small rooms with low ceilings - servants quarters, I realised. The ground floor was mostly a large hall, and a kitchen at the back, and a few meeting rooms, and what once was a library. There was a courtyard at the back. The first floor was bedrooms - some of the furniture remained on this floor, including a room that would do for my bedroom. The villagers seemed to have looted the hall for everything they found of value. This included a lot of the doors - firewood, I thought. Or perhaps they just really liked doors! They had taken most of the linens, but left the more ornamental fabrics. There was plenty of silk, which confused me. I would have stolen the silks first - they would sell better, I thought.
There was a library, full of large tomes that had turned to pulp. When I picked one up and opened it, dust flew in my face and the pages fell out. Only a few large maps remained untouched by the damp. The glass in the windows had been taken, and replaced with rackety boards that let a draught.
I found a well in the courtyard, and overrun gardens that were almost impenetrable with ivy. Some of the garden had been for growing vegetables, but now was covered in Athelas. That could prove useful, I thought. There was a large river swept through the land at the back. After testing the water from the well, I found it drinkable, and I watered and fed the horse another piece of Lembas, and took her into the hall, and gave her a room to herself as there wasn't a stable. Then I collapsed in the dusty four poster bed and cried myself to sleep.
I was glad of my horse for there was no other reason to get up in the morning. But she needed to be fed, walked, and looked after. Tears slid silently down my face as I brushed her down. Was this a big mistake, I wondered. Should I have stayed indoors for five years instead - at least I would have had Glorfindel, food, and books… Here seemed only desolation and loneliness.
I tried to clear up the debris in the big hall. I heaped everything that could be burned into the large open fireplace, and then gave into my weeping. I would allow myself ten minutes of crying, I told myself sternly, and then get back to work.
But it was hard to stop once I had started. I sat with my back against the wall, hugged my knees and sobbed.
"The villagers think that the hall is being haunted by a banshee," said a voice. I started and sat up, drying my face with my dress and sniffing. Sylvie was staring down at me, half-pityingly and half-confused. I mumbled an apology and stood up.
"What sort of noblewoman are you?" she asked. I almost rolled my eyes at that.
"A bad one, I think. I'm a midwife and a healer from Tolfalas, raised from the ranks by Elendil for saving Anarion's life," I told her. "Still learning the ropes."
"Why are you crying? Love affair gone wrong?" asked Sylvie.
"Something like that," I said, dismissively. I sniffed.
"He hit you?" she asked, warily. I shook my head. I wondered if I could trust her, and decided to throw caution to the wind.
"He was an Elf," I said, hoping that would cover everything. "I left him."
"Thought you'd be prettier to tempt an Elf." She looked at me appraisingly.
"Sorry to disappoint," I muttered. I decided to change the subject. "Tell me. How many people live in the village?"
"Fifty," she said. It was more than I realised. She started to name them all to my amusement.
"Mostly women," I commented.
"Aye. The war," she explained. I thought that was probably the case for Gondor and Arnor's villages; totally decimated. How this would affect the population over the next hundred years, I didn't know. But I imagined that villages and small towns would end up moving towards cities looking for work. This village was clearly on its last legs.
"Perhaps you could introduce me to everyone?" I asked. Sylvie gaped at me for a second. This was probably not the normal behaviour of noblewomen, I thought, but I didn't care. I had no idea how to live in this ruin of a hall, and I wanted to meet some humans that didn't want to burn me to the ground.
"We don't have any money," she said, as she opened the creaking gate.
"I see," I said, following her out.
"So we ain't paying no taxes, lady," she said, gruffly.
"Just Minnow. I see. Lord Shetan asked for taxes, did he?" I asked, as neutrally as possible. She hummed at me, and took me to the first door.
She made short work of it. I met all the villagers within a few hours. They were all thin, I thought, malnourished, and distrustful. There were only ten men in the entire village, three very old, and two had been in the war. One had lost his leg. Another had lost sight in one eye. The rest were jittery and untalkative. I couldn't blame them.
"I know you," said one man. His baby was on his knee, and although filthy, seemed rather healthy.
"Where from?" I asked, as pleasantly as I could.
He opened his shirt and I saw a long, deep scar. "Your hair was covered. But you got dark skin so I remembered you."
I recognised my stitches, but not him. "It's healed nicely. You've done well to keep the wound clean."
He nodded. "You were with the healers. At the edge of battle."
"I went to Mordor. Saw a lot of orcs. A lot of death."
"And for what?" he said, bitterly.
I tickled his son's chin. "For your baby!" I smiled at him.
"Yeah, s'pose so." He and his wife looked at each other. She squeezed his hand.
Sylvie decided to move us on at that point, and steered me out of the cottage, and to a new door. "You did well. Better than I thought," she said, almost accusingly, before knocking on the door.
"Thanks," I said, amused. Sylvie obviously thought I was a typical noblewoman. I allowed myself to briefly think of how Elwen would react if she had been in my shoes, then had to quickly stifle a snort.
"Lucie, it's Sylvie!" she said, before swinging the door open. A strange tableaux greeted us. It was dark in the room, like all the grotty houses we'd been in, and there was a strange smell; but this time it wasn't decay and dirt, it was illness.
A man lay on the table, a piece of wood between his teeth, his arm held out to the side, and a woman with an axe held high in the air. She started to swing it down.
Sylvie yelped and I lurched forward and grabbed the axe.
"Stop!" I shouted. She wrestled with it and called me some rather colourful names, but eventually let go. My heart was beating fast in my chest, and I looked over at the man.
"It needs chopping off!" the man groaned, waving his hand at me. It had swollen to an alarming size, and was purple. He was in tremendous pain, I thought, from the expression on his face, the cold sweat that had soaked through his tunic, and how much he was shaking.
"We don't need a noble bitch telling us what to do," hissed the woman.
"Lucie, what are you thinking, chopping his hand off like this?" I heard Sylvie scold the woman.
"Sylvie, he's in that much pain, we had to do something, before it kills him!"
As they discussed it, and Sylvie calmed the poor woman down, I examined my patient. I smiled at him, and told him my name, and asked his. It was just infected I thought, as I gingerly and gently looked at his hand. I rolled up his sleeve, and looked at his veins.
"What are you doing?" cried the woman, grabbing me by the shoulders. "We don't need you," she snarled. "Why are you even here?"
"Perhaps I was sent by the Valar to stop you from chopping off each other's hands," I snapped. I look around the dark room. It was hard to see anything.
"Can we have a little more light?" I asked. Sylvie opened the front door wider and a gust of cold air came into the musty room. I peered at his hand again.
There was a splinter under his thumbnail.
"Carpenter?" I asked. He nodded.
"How did you know that?" asked Lucie. I asked Sylvie to keep an eye on them, and I jogged back to the hall, and dug out my healer's bag. Please Valar, I thought, don't let them have chopped his hand off the second I left the room!
Luckily, it seemed like Lucie had listened to Sylvie. I heaved a sigh of relief when I returned, less than ten minutes later, and dug out my tweezers from my healer's bag, and the one jar of Athelas paste that I had saved.
As I lightly smeared Malachy's infected and swollen hand with Athelas, I asked Lucie to pour him a glass of water. I watched him drink it, and then I asked her to hold his hand.
"Will it hurt, Healer?" he asked, tremulously.
"It will sting a little, and feel odd. I imagine you've been throwing up a lot recently?" I asked. He nodded. "But it's just a splinter - at the end of the day, it's just a little splinter, and it will hurt a hell of a lot less than an axe to your wrist."
He nodded.
"I was trying to help him," said Lucie, defensively.
"I know," I said with a smile. "And once I take the splinter out, you can help me bandage him and keep it clean. Ready?"
He nodded. Smoothly, but quickly, I pulled out the long, thin splinter that had probably been under his thumbnail for a week. He yelped and drew his hand back, but I made sure that I got the whole thing out. I held it up for everyone to look at. It was a little underwhelming.
"It's so… small!" said Sylvie.
"How can something so… wee… cause so much pain?" asked Lucie, incredulously.
"Anything can if it's allowed to fester," I said. "But! It's gone now, and your hand will be back to normal in a month. And you'll be able to use it in less than a week. How does that sound?"
Malachy nodded, a tear slipping down his face. I showed Lucie how to wrap a bandage around his arm to keep his hand on his chest, and explained why it was important for blood flow. I told her I'd check in on him tomorrow.
"Got no money," she said, defiant.
"Don't want any," I told her back.
"What do you want then, milady," she spat, angry that she was indebted to me. I thought about it for a second.
"A bath," I said, with a smile.
"A bath?" asked Sylvie.
"A bath," I repeated. "More than anything! Been on the road for weeks. Well, farewell until tomorrow!" I picked up my healer's bag and walked out the door.
Sylvie followed me. "You've met everyone now. Come to my house for a cup of tea."
Her house was neat and clean, like her, but it was also showing signs of wear and tear. This was not a prosperous village and hadn't been for some time - if ever. I sat down at her table, and for a few long minutes there was silence as I looked at her home. She didn't share it with anyone, and it reminded me of my grandmother's house. Dried flowers hanging from the ceiling. Everything spick and span. Cared for.
Do not think of your grandmother, or you will end up weeping again, I told myself.
"Family?" Sylvie asked me, after she had lit a fire in the grate and hung a kettle up.
"Hmm?" I asked, momentarily confused.
"Mother?" she asked.
"Dead," I answered.
"Father?"
"Unknown. Alive. I think."
"Friends?"
"Various."
"Intentions?"
"Survival," I said.
"I meant for Cardolan Hall. And this village," she said, annoyed.
"I'm not sure that my answer would change," I said softly. "How long has it been like this?"
She huffed and sat down. "This village was stripped by Shentan for decades, and then the war come. And the last of the good men left, and didn't come back. Some died last winter. Some's left for the cities, like a lot of the villages around. Them's that stayed, can't leave. Winter is coming. We got no food, and little firewood left."
She poured the hot water into a teapot, and we waited for it to stew.
"Ain't got milk for the tea," she said after a while.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the ceiling. Was this a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire? There were fifty people in this village and it didn't sound like they expected to survive into the new year. I had some coin, it was true, but where would I buy enough food to keep this village alive? To survive, Cardolan would have to be able to sustain itself, either by trade or being self-sufficient. I didn't know how to manage an entire village. I had failed at managing myself.
I had lost my confidence in myself, I thought. The temptation to run away was quite strong. But where would I go? And these people, even if they didn't like me very much, needed me. I had been a bad lady of Cardolan - I had responsibilities I had ignored, I thought.
Sylvie poured the tea, and I watched the steam.
"I climbed up Mount Doom," I told her. She raised her eyebrows at me. "I have seen the very worst of people, and the very best. All in the same afternoon. I've learned a lot of things. Some about how to heal. But some about how to cope with failure. There is still hope."
"I can't feel hope any more," she admitted.
"That's because you are the hope of this village," I told her, with a smile. "And I am your hope. Together, Sylvie, we will save this village. I know it."
"I am doubtful," she told me. "I can't tell if you're mad, or… just stupid."
I took a sip of tea.
"Mad. Definitely." She smiled at me.
The next day, I woke up and felt a little better. Yes, I had left the love of my life, the hardest decision I would ever make and would likely never feel true happiness again, and yes, there was an angry mob in Lindon who wanted to burn me to the ground. And yes, I was now going to be alone forever. Waking up in dusty sheets that smelled of foot. And all my muscles hurt from travelling for weeks on end and my eyes hurt from crying for hours on end.
But at least I had a task. Impossible as it might seem. It was good to have something to work towards.
At least, that is what I told myself to get out of bed.
I pulled on my boots, stretched, and ambled downstairs to the makeshift stables. As I brushed down my horse and fed her Lembas, I vented to her.
"All in all, Neya, this is a very bad situation. This house is falling apart, and I've inherited the responsibility for this village and I'm completely out of my depth, as usual…"
CLANG! I jumped. It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen. I gave Neya a pat and wandered through the hall to meet my intruder.
It was, to my surprise, Lucie. She had pulled out a large tin bath from somewhere, and was heating up water over the fire. She wiped her dark hair away from her face.
"Good morning," I said, uncertainly.
"Mal is feeling better," she admitted.
"I'm glad to hear it. I was about to check on him," I said.
Speaking to the floor, she told me that she was preparing a bath for me. She didn't say thank you, and it didn't exactly seem in her vocabulary - and I had asked for a bath. So I thanked her, and when it was ready, I gladly divested my clothing and hopped in the hot bath.
It was bliss.
She sat next to me as I soaked. "I used to be a housemaid here," she told me. Then, it all came out. Lord Shentan's penchant for drinking, for raising taxes so he could buy more alcohol from Gondorian merchants, and how he drank himself to death. How Cardolan was never exactly thriving, but how they hadn't ever thought it would get this bad. How most of the village had worked in the hall, but it had been abandoned for ten years and then came war. How last winter was so hard. Ever since the Elf king had come back to Lindon and done his Elf magic, the weather had changed.
I wondered at that: did Gil-galad's magic ring keep the weather warm and temperate in Lindon, but unbalance the surrounding lands? It seemed unfair, I thought. But then, I did think there was a selfish thread running through Gil-galad's veins.
The hot water was cooling fast, but I managed to scrub the dirt off and wash my hair, every tight muscle in my body relaxing as Lucie talked about Cardolan. She grew braver, talking about how all the servants disliked their master, and played tricks on him, watering down his wine, and oversalting his food.
"We used to steal the books, throw them in the river and put them back on the shelves in the library when we were angry with him," she admitted.
It was the first time I had laughed in a long time. "I didn't understand how they were so rotten!" I laughed. A little abashed, she grinned at me.
By the time I had dressed, Lucie and I were on better terms. She was a little nervous around me, and not exactly friendly, but I felt like she liked me a little.
We went back to her cottage to check on our patient. Malachy's hand had almost turned to a normal colour, and he wasn't sweating anymore. I smeared more paste on the back of his hand, and bandaged it up again. I was very pleased with his progress - and happy to be healing again.
Then a neighbour I had seen the other day popped in with her young son (who was clothed this time) and asked me to check him for lice. I hadn't tied up my hair so fast in a long time.
It took all day for me to de-louse the children of Cardolan - and their parents. I missed Thavron and Thalion so much as I scrubbed the kids. It had been years since Thalion died, I realised with a pang. I could still hear his voice in my head, as clear as day. I wished he was here. I wished Astro could do the de-lousing for me.
Someone gave me a bowl of gruel, and then it was time to go to bed. The next day I woke up starving, but rested. I went to check on Malachy (the swelling had gone down considerably and he could move his fingers without much pain) and I realised I hadn't cried in hours.
To reward myself, I went on a short ride on Neya, re-lived all of Glorfindel's comments about my poor horsemanship and cried a little. I thought about the time we had travelled to the Forge City together, and I had been angry with him. And how we had travelled back and he had tugged his favourite curl. And how I would never see him again.
Sylvie found me sobbing over a trunk of tapestries and invited me to dinner. She made us an omelette each and gave me a slice of bread with butter. It was heavenly.
"No one hates you anymore," she informed me.
"Praise the Valar," I said, between bites.
"Still not sure about you, though. You're different. I been to the city in Arnor and I seen all sorts come to visit Lord Shentan but there's something not right about you."
"My hair? My skin?" I asked.
"You're not the first person I met from Tolfalas. Nah, it's not that. You spell change for us all. There's something of the sea about you. Dark, dangerous, but soft."
I wasn't sure what to say to that. I looked at her pale blue eyes, and I didn't think I saw hate or anger, just trepidation.
"Will you help me, Sylvie?" I asked. "I don't think I can get us through the winter without you."
"What's in it for you?" she asked.
"Don't have anywhere else to go," I admitted.
She hummed and said she would help me, but just because I could take a splinter out a man's thumb didn't mean I could save Cardolan.
I went to bed that night with my head spinning. I ran through lots of possibilities. But cold weather was not my forte.
Neither of us brought it up for another week. I continued to visit Malachy to check on his hand, which he could now make into a fist. A woman asked me to look at her aching tooth. She offered to do my laundry in return and I found myself sleeping on clean sheets soon enough. I cleared all the debris out of the hall - but didn't burn anything. I wasn't cold - yet.
After looking at various maps I rode Neya around the neighbourhood to scope out the land. There were five villages within a day's ride. All similar sizes, but without any grand hall - decrepit or not - but in similar states of distress. The furthest away village had an inn, and I made enquiries about trade, and gave them all the silks I had found in Cardolan Hall. There was a route to Arnor that merchants took and in two weeks, they would pass through on their last trip of the year. The innkeeper said he would do a deal for me.
It was promising, I told myself, when I came back. We still had time.
The next day, Malachy showed up. I found him in the long hall, fixing dried reeds to the badly boarded up windows.
He was wearing gloves, I was glad to see.
"We took them shutters. And the floorboard. And ummm the furniture. Firewood, you see. I'm sorry, my lady," said Malachy, slightly apologetically, as I came in.
"No need to apologise, your need was great. And it was clever of you to take them."
I examined his hands and saw he was healing well. I wanted to scold him for working but there was no other option.
My good mood soured when I went to see Sylvie. She had worked out how much food, and firewood we would need to survive the winter. I had the coin for it, I thought, but it was unlikely that any merchant would have that to spare.
And the firewood… how were we to get enough for the whole village? There were few trees nearby, and Cardolan Hall was all metal and stone now.
Part of me began to think that perhaps Glorfindel was right; there was nowhere safe to run to. Cardolan was not just run down and decrepit, but it was also bleak. Was it my sadness that made it feel like the colour had been sapped out of the land? Or was it this grim winter that was almost upon us? Lindon had been an idyll.
And yet, despite the approaching bad weather, I felt relieved in a way. This was a normal challenge. A mortal challenge. Elves could wear magic rings and change the weather. They could walk across ice for twenty-seven years and live. But us mortals - we had to have firewood when it was cold.
There would be a solution for this problem. It felt like preparing for war. In a way, being in a battlefield had prepared me for the hardships of life, I thought, grimly.
I rode Neya around the villages in loops. Poor horsewoman, indeed, I thought, grimly. I'll show him. I'll show them all!
After a few hours, I stomped into Sylvie's cottage.
"What do you think about moving the entire village into Cardolan Hall?" I asked.
"I… Well. Well, indeed," said Sylvie, looking at me, surprised.
"I think we should pool together our resources. The Hall needs a bit of work, but the walls are deep. We could hole up there for weeks. Together we would be warmer. There's plenty of room for everyone, and for us all to stretch our legs. If we cooked in bulk, we could stretch what we have. It wasn't pleasant, but we lived off stew and then gruel in the war. Could we do that here?" I asked.
For a second, I thought Sylvie was going to say no. After all, this was her domain. I could cook a little, but not in such large quantities. I couldn't organise the whole village - and it was unlikely they'd let me. They were warming to me, but they trusted Sylvie.
"Aye. Aye," she said, mulling over the possibilities. "Six weeks in the Hall…"
"We will all be heartily sick of each other, but we will be alive…"
We walked to the Hall and she showed me what needed to be done. The stone floor needed to be covered - we could do that easily enough with earth while it was still dry. Once Malachy sorted out the windows, we would have to cover the walls in tapestries that I had found in the trunks. And we wouldn't be able to open the windows - we would have to rely on the fire in the large grate for light.
The upstairs would be sealed off. And the kitchen would become the large second room. Sylvie would plan out all our meals in advance. She took me down there, and told me she had worked her way up to housekeeper from dishwasher, and that once there had been twenty people working in the kitchen.
The once busy kitchen was long covered in dust.
"There's a larder. 'Neath the kitchen. But Lord Shentan… well, one day he was up and another day he was another down, and anyways, when drink had been taken, he threw the key into the river."
Sylvie tapped on the stone floor. There was a ring pull, I saw.
Nothing I heard about this Shentan was good, I thought. I wish he were still alive so I could smack him.
"Can't we get in? Without the key?" I asked.
"Malachy tried last winter. Don't know how much is down there that kept," Sylvie admitted.
"It may all be rotted away."
I walked outside and looked at the river. It wasn't deep, I thought, perhaps six feet. And there weren't a lot of weeds. The water was, however, ice cold. I took off my boots and stripped.
"Milady!" gasped Sylvie.
"It's just Minnow!" I said, wading in. Would I hear the strange voice again, I wondered. Perhaps it was only in lakes that it could be heard. I dove under the water.
"Minnow, listen to me… The river will freeze soon. The ice is coming… the snow is coming…"
It took almost an hour for me to find the large iron key in the waterbeds. As I rooted around in the waterbeds, I listened to the strange voice whisper in my ear. It asked me to listen, and it talked incessantly of snow for some reason… I shivered as I wrenched myself out of the river and Sylvie wrapped me in a dusty tapestry. I sneezed.
Sylvie slid the key into the stone door, as I rubbed myself down and squeezed the water from my hair. The door made a clanging noise, and I wondered if was Dwarf made. It swung open. As our eyes adjusted, I sent a prayer up to the Valar that the larder had something we could use.
Sylvie made a strangled noise, and I followed her down the steps into the dark with my heart sinking. But I was met with a sight that gladdened my heart. Jars and jars of pickled vegetables, bottles of oils and vinegars, and sacks of grains. And a rather extensive wine cellar.
"Thank the Valar," I whispered.
"Oh Minnow," said Sylvie, crying. "There is hope after all."
We took an inventory, then had a cup of tea. Lucie joined us, and together we started to plan how we would make it through the winter.
A few days later, Sylvie rounded up the villagers and in the Hall, I stood before them and laid out my plan.
"What do you say?" I asked, after a moment. I had expected push back, criticism, jokes about me. Even anger. But instead I was looking into hopeless faces.
"Is there any point?" asked one man, who was holding a cane. is name was Tobias, I remembered. His voice was desolate. How much had war and taxation taken from these people, I thought sadly. Poverty was such a burden.
"Yes, there is, Tobias," snapped Sylvie. "I was of your mind, that we let the weather take us how it wants. But there's fight in my old bones, why not yours, too? Together, we stand a chance."
"If Minnow and Sylvie say it can be done, then I will do it," said Malachy, with feeling. I smiled at him.
"Aye," said Lucie.
There were a few murmurs of assent. I asked them to vote on it as I wasn't sure what else to do, and all hands went up in favour of spending the winter at Cardolan Hall.
"What did you want? A rousing applause?" asked Sylvie later. I snorted. I think I had.
There was a flurry of activity in the weeks that followed. Malachy and I attached a cart to Neya to fetch supplies from the merchants, bringing back a huge amount of root vegetables, and other things Sylvie had asked for with the rest of my coin. We tried our best to insulate the hall.
But it started to snow. At first it didn't settle, but it was only a matter of time. How could something so beautiful be so cruel, I thought, catching a snowflake on my tongue. Inside, looking at a map of the surrounding land, I wondered how well other villages were faring.
"It's starting earlier than I thought it would. It will be much, much worse than last year," said Sylvie when I met her in the kitchen. She had spent an entire week scrubbing ten years of dirt and grease from every inch of her old domain.
My heart sank. The voice in the river had told me the river would freeze, and I had seen chunks of ice in it this morning.
"Sylvie," I said. "How many villages could get here in the next week?"
"Perhaps all five. Maybe a hundred people. Maybe more. Why?"
"Send word for them to come here - we have to batten down the hatches soon and I think it's going to be a lot worse than we realised," I said.
"We don't have enough even for Cardolan," whispered Sylvie.
"Tell them to bring everything they can carry - all their food and firewood!"
Malachy jumped on the horse and rode off into the falling snow to tell everyone they could come and sit out the winter with us.
A few days later, men, women and children started drifting into the village. They carried all their belongings on their back and it wasn't much. But it was something, and every bit would help. I welcomed them in with a smile, and Sylvie gave them a task to keep them busy.
Luckily, a few came with quite a bit of food (or a lot of a clear drink they made from potatoes that I refused to drink) or firewood. There were a lot of children, mucky and malnourished as it was. I spent a lot of time inspecting them, and cleaning their cuts. They were unruly and not in the least bit scared of me (like some of their parents who were confused by the dark noblewoman with unruly hair), so I set them to gather Athelas for me in the grounds. If I made it into a competition, where the winner was allowed to pet Neya, I found that they were enthusiastic. We brought all the livestock inside, which was mostly chickens (who would give us eggs, thank the Valar) and some cows.
Then, finally, we locked the door. For around six weeks, we would stay within the deep walls of Cardolan Hall and ride out the worst of it. It felt like a prison sentence. But I was determined we would all survive.
I think there were about five hundred of us in the hall in the end. It was funny to think the long hall was probably used for feasts, or dancing, or whatever noblemen usually did. Demand tithes? And here we were, four hundred adults and one hundred children, covered in blankets, crowded on the ground, shivering through the night but nevertheless, a lot warmer than we would be in the cottages.
The first few days went by in absolute chaos. Squabbling, losing essential items, tears and tantrums. And the children were also rowdy. I was exhausted, but Sylvie seemed to be enjoying herself - telling everyone what to do. Neya was feeling cooped up, even as I led her around the house, then rode her up and down the stairs. Eventually I gave in, and let the children pet her, climb on her and lead her about. She tolerated it better than I would have expected.
Soon, we fell into a rhythm. Occasionally, I woke up with a chicken on my head. days. For whatever reason, it liked to roost on my head. There was so much to do - and all I seemed to do was go between groups of workers informing each what the other was doing. The men needed to bring more snow in so we could boil it so it was drinkable. The women were making porridge, and so someone needed to clean the bowls again. The kids needed to make less noise as they were getting on everyone's nerves. The latrines… well, you can imagine.
As the wind was battering the shutters, I cajoled ghost stories, local legends, and funny stories out of everyone - until they ran out of their favourite fairy tales.
"Anyone know any songs?" I called out. We sang rousing songs of heroism, and a few sad ballads about star-crossed lovers. In the dying embers, I looked at Glorfindel's necklace again.
After a week in Cardolan Hall, Malachy informed me that he'd never seen snow so high - he was collecting it through the window from the first floor. I trudged up the stairs, my breath turning to fleeting mist in the cold air around me, as I slipped into the parts of the house we hadn't insulated. I wrapped the blanket I was using as a cloak closer to me. Malachy and another villager scooped up snow in big pails.
"It's covering your cottages," I observed.
"You've saved us, milady," said the villager.
"Perhaps we saved each other," I muttered, looking out at the expanse of white in front of me. I could see a chimney popping up from under the snow many feet away, and some lonely tree branches. But otherwise, it was a sea of snow. It was beautiful, if treacherous.
We had made the right decision, I thought, walking down the stairs holding two pails of snow. The hall was misty, sweaty and smokey - but it was warm and full of life.
A little girl climbed into my lap as I was eating the evening meal and showed me her doll. I was suddenly intensely homesick for Joy.
After a few sing-a-longs, we grew tired of our croaking voices, and everyone seemed to have run out of stories.
"Tell us about the Elves, Lady Minnow!" cried a young girl. I smiled.
"Tell us how you became a lady, for I ain't never heard of a lady fish before!" cried another voice, and we all laughed.
"If that's what you want - the story of how Fish Girl became Lady Minnow," I said.
But it was a long tale. So I told it in small chapters, leaving my incredulous audience on cliffhangers that made the beg for the next part of the story.
"I'll tell you what happens next tomorrow evening, Brodie," I said to a young boy whose grubby face was looking petulantly.
"She obviously doesn't die after the water broke and flooded that valley," said a young girl, rather smugly.
"How do you know, Bennie?" he asked, annoyed.
"She ain't dead!" said the girl, triumphantly. I had to laugh.
"It sounds mad, but I can tell you're holding a lot back even in that crackpot tale of yours. Elves, Dwarves, princes, strange lands…" said Sylvie, with narrowed eyes, as we washed dishes together.
"Aye, well. It was pretty mad," I said, cleaning the last of the bowls.
But it was cathartic. I think part of me wanted to prove that I was still Minnow - isn't that why we tell our stories, after all? I may have been raised from the ranks - as the soldiers said - but I was still a healer from Tolfalas who didn't quite know the social etiquette and didn't quite care either. I wanted them all to see who I was - who I really was. And yet, there were some parts of my life that had to remain hidden. There were some topics I couldn't broach. Anarion's desire for me to be his queen. Isildur's predatory behaviour. What he had tried to do to me. What he had actually done to me. He was still their king. And… I didn't quite want to tell a large group of people about my Elvish lover, and I didn't think I could talk about Glorfindel in those terms without weeping. So I skirted around the issue, and instead implied I went to Lindon to learn healing from Lord Elrond.
I also skipped out the angry mob who had torches, and focused on my sadness at losing a baby - and the angry and violent father.
It still made a good story, and I enjoyed making them cry - or shout with excitement.
"I can tell that it's Glorfindel that you fell in love with," said Sylvie one day to me.
My heart squeezed at the sound of his name.
"You talk about Elrond more - you clearly admire him and his beautiful hair - but the other Elf… he's like a shadow over your whole story. You mention him like a healer talks of a wound," she said. Clinically , she meant.
I cried into Neya's mane for an hour at the thought of speaking of Glorfindel so coldly, of him being a wound in my heart (in my soul), and for the first time, I thought of him and how he was. Was he missing me as much as I missed him? I slept on a cushion next to Sylvie, amidst the snoring of hundreds of people and I was just as alone as ever. His absence was conspicuous in my stories about the war - and in my life. Was it the same for him? Was he learning not to love me anymore? Did the space I used to occupy still exist, or was it swallowed up with duty, scholarly pursuits, his family, his friends?
It hurt to think of Glorfindel crying over me - but he had said that my death wouldn't break his heart and cause him to fade. So perhaps he was more resilient than I was.
"We've broken the storm, I think," said Sylvie. It had been a month. Short days, long nights, not a lot of sunlight, and smokey fires. I hadn't changed my clothes in that length of time - which was a record, even for me. Even Mordor hadn't been that bad, I thought, morosely. My hair was matted; I would have to cut a lot of it off.
"How much longer?" I asked.
"Two weeks, maybe," she said.
"We have enough food?"
"Just," she confirmed.
In the end, we stayed a little longer in the Hall than strictly necessary. Lucie cut my hair shorter than it had ever been, and threw my hair on the fire (she said it was for good luck but I think she just wanted to destroy it). We started bringing in water to boil to wash - and I gave Neya a big rub down in the kitchen which upset Sylvie.
"It's not clean!" she objected. "A horse in the kitchen!"
"Nothing is clean anymore," I said, cheerfully. "I for one am filthy."
"Neya! Neya! Neya!" cried the children and ran under her legs. She snorted at them.
The men started to clear a path through the snow, and a week later, reached the cottages. It was started to thaw, I thought. There was a lot of damage to their cottages, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. We started roaming upstairs more, and the kids played hide and seek. One day, I was so tired that I slept until after lunch and Sylvie actually let me.
"You shouldn't have!" I admonished. She smiled at me.
"You're a good lass, Minnow," she said, and stroked my hair. Alarmed at my own feelings, I burst into tears and embraced her. "I know," she said, stroking my back.
"Are you crying because you saw your hair?" asked Lucie.
"No!" I yelped, my hand going to my hair.
"Oh, good, because it's not that bad," she said, and ran off. I looked at Sylvie in consternation.
"It's bad," she told me, and patted my shoulder. "She's shorn you like a lamb."
I groaned. It did feel very short at the back, I thought. It would grow back, I told myself.
As we started moving people back into their cottages slowly, and all wrapped up, I took a short walk around the gardens. Lucie decided to follow me around in case I fell over in the snow. Once she had learned I grew up somewhere even further south than Minas Tirith - the most southern place she had ever heard of - and had never touched snow before, she began to think that I would slip on the ice and kill myself. She insisted that I would not be the first southerner to prove myself utterly useless in the harsh climate of the north.
I had not instilled much confidence in her by making a snowball and throwing it at her back. But I was glad of the company.
"What's that?" I asked Lucie, pointing to a strange white flower.
"Eh? That's a snowbell, Minnow! Fancy not knowing what a snowbell is!" said Lucie. I looked at the strange little white flower. It was drooping, as if it were sad. But it had popped through the snow. It was growing in a hostile environment.
"It's beautiful," I murmured to myself.
"Aye. Aye," she said.
And then, just as snow was becoming manageable (only up to our thighs and the men had created roads through it) came a new challenge. Not everyone wanted to go home. We had, apparently, made a good impression on our neighbours. I think a lot of this was down to the fact I had de-loused everyone before we all huddled up in the Hall together. I shuddered to think of what would have happened if I hadn't. The itching would have been unbearable.
"They don't want to leave. They don't want to go home. They want to build houses here," said Sylvie. She told me that everyone who had stayed in the surrounding villages had frozen to death.
We both shuddered.
"Any objections?" I asked.
"Strangers," she muttered. "But we need them, don't we, Minnow?"
I grinned.
In a few short months, our village had grown. There were now over five hundred people living in it, and someone was building an inn. An inn! I couldn't believe it. The place was on the verge of bustling, I thought. Malachy was busy and had teamed up with a stonemason to build cottages around the Hall. It no longer smelled of urine. We planned our little town's growth, and even started thinking of the future.
"If we build an inn, milady, then merchants will come," Granton the man who wanted to become an inn-keeper told me. His smiling, hopeful face made my heart soar. "We can brew ale!"
Sylvie narrowed her eyes at him.
"But not too much," he said, hurriedly.
"And to be drunk responsibly," she told him. He parroted it back to her and she nodded. I winked at him, and he smiled.
In the spring, the snow disappeared, and colour came back into my life - and my heart. We planted vegetables, and I started making Athelas paste again. Our food started to improve in taste, but we were still making it in the Hall. There was still not quite enough to make us feel full, but we weren't starving. The inn was attracting merchants, and Granton was sourcing bottles for his home brew.
"What's this?" asked a merchant who was staying at the inn. He had wandered into the Hall, which I had cleaned since our long stay in it, and was thinking about what it should be used for in the meantime. It was too big for one person, that was for sure. I had set up a workshop, and a sickroom, which kept me busy, but I was wondering if the Hall could be turned into a school.
He had found my workshop where I was making Athelas paste in bulk. I was grinding the dried herb in a mortar and pestle I found in a cupboard. I explained what it was and he looked amazed.
"This paste can last for months, you say? Where did you train?"
"With Healer Thavron in Minas Tirith. And Lord Elrond in Lindon," I told him. He looked me up and down. I wasn't an impressive sight, I thought. My dress had seen better years, and my hair was now growing upwards instead of down. He probably thought I was a liar.
"I'll buy 500 jars of Athelas paste for 500 castors," he told me. I gaped. I hadn't even thought of selling my paste. I had been giving it out for free to the villagers so that they didn't come into my sickroom for mild injuries. People with children were going through it especially fast.
"Deal!" I said, shaking his hand. Lucie who was next to me squealed. I gave him a jar in the meantime to test it out, and he said he'd be back in three weeks.
"Minnow, you don't have 500 jars," she told me as the man wandered back to the inn.
"Yet," I said. Finding the jars would be more difficult than finding the Athelas, I thought. I set my rabble of children out to find the weed, and set to work in my workshop. Lucie helped me with the grinding, and proved an adept assistant, and Sylvie sourced one hundred jam jars from about the house. Everyone in the village gave me any spare jars and bottles they had, and Granton provided the rest.
"I stink of Athelas," said Lucie, two weeks later. We had filled three hundred jars and my hands had turned green.
"If we can sell 500 jars to this merchant every few months, this village will be rich, Lucie, rich!"
"You don't want this money for yourself?" she asked, confused.
"We need money for next winter. And money for this Hall, it's falling apart. And we could all do with new clothes, and new shoes!" I said, almost salivating at the possibilities. "We could buy chickens…"
"We could have eggs every day!" said Lucie. We both looked at each other in awe.
"We could buy salt," I said, almost drooling.
The merchant came back and we loaded up his cart with the jars. "If you want to buy more, you'll have to provide us with jars," I told him, counting the Castors. He nodded.
I gave Lucie 50 Castors for all her help and she ran off with it, turned round, ran back and kissed me on the cheek and then shook me. "MONEY!" she shouted, then ran back to her cottage.
I laughed at her. But I enjoyed spending the money too. I called together a town meeting, and as a group we decided what to do with the money. We bought leather to make everyone boots, and new tools for Malachy and the stonemason. We bought three more cows and ten more chickens. We bought twenty sheep, and the means to spin it. We bought salt. We bought wood to make proper shutters for the Hall's windows. We bought cloth and a seamstress made us all new clothes.
Someone bought me hair oil. They left it in my workshop for me. I don't know who it was. Perhaps the whole village had clubbed together. Perhaps it was Lucie, or Sylvie. But it made me cry.
More merchants arrived demanding Athelas paste. Once we sorted the issue with the jars, we had a cottage industry going. I paid the unruly children to gather it, and between Lucie and I, we could now fill 100 jars a week.
As the merchants waited, the inn sold them beer, and we pushed wool cloaks on them. A man started glass blowing, and suddenly we didn't need to rely on merchants for jars anymore.
Malachy made me furniture for the Hall, and while we kept putting on food for the villagers, no one was starving anymore. Sylvie started baking bread, and the farmer with the cows made cheese. Unfortunately, with the inn came riders from Arnor with letters. One such letter was a demand for taxes.
"Apparently, Cardolan is seriously behind on payment," I told Sylvie. "Since we're now effectively surviving on a barter system, I'm loathe to give them our hard earned money."
I ignored the first letter. And the second letter. The third letter I sent a terse reply to. I wasn't keen on giving the crown - who had essentially left us to die - a single penny. The letters kept coming, until I wrote one that very plainly laid out my feelings on the matter. And then they stopped.
Anarion could come here in person and argue it out with me, I thought, grinding Athelas. We were making so much money, I had become over-confident.
But one day, near Midsummer, we had a visitor that wasn't a rider or a merchant.
"There's a carriage, miss!" yelled Malachy, running into the Hall where Lucie and I were in our workshop. "An official Royal carriage."
"Do you think they'll put you in prison, Minnow?" asked Lucie, conversationally. I rolled my eyes, and wiped my hands. I stomped out the Hall, furious. If Annie had come all this way to demand money from me, from these people he had let wallow in poverty, I was going to give him a piece of my mind - king or not.
It was true. There was a fancy carriage sitting on the road outside the Hall. It was gilded with gold, spindly and shining in the sun. I hated it with a passion.
"We aren't paying your damn taxes!" I yelled.
The carriage door opened, and a familiar head poked out. "I thought I recognised your dulcet tones, Minnow!" cried a voice.
It was Elwen!
N/B Thank you for reading - and everyone who comments. Always keen for reviews, comments and constructive criticism. Let me know you're reading! It does make me update faster...