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Ithilien was feeling the full hope of Spring. Somewhere through the trees, men made merry, drinking to life, victory, freedom, honour, and to two very tired hobbits.
Said hobbits were now resting in a secluded spot, a little beyond the camp. Gandalf and Strider, or King Elessar, as Frodo supposed they must call him now, had carried them thus, and settled them down with blankets and cushions, so that the pair could enjoy a rare moment of peace, away from the raucous festivities.
Guards were stationed, not too far away, but they waited discreetly behind the trees, within shouting distance, but far enough to create the illusion of privacy.
Merry and Pippin, knights of the Mark and Gondor respectively, were charged with tending to the Ringbearers also, but they were permitted to do so at close proximity, and in casual dress. Indeed, to the untrained eye, neither Meriadoc, Esquire of Rohan, or Pippin, Knight of the Citadel seemed to be tending so much as lolling.
The friendly foursome sat around a small feast, which by hobbit standards just about passed muster as a light picnic.
‘You know, these pink lady apples are almost as good as what we grow back home,’ Sam said, wiping juice from his chin with the back of his hand. ‘One bite with your eyes shut, and you could almost be back in the Shire.’ He held out an apple. ‘Here, Mr Frodo. You tell me, nearly as sweet as my old Gaffer’s, don’t you think?’
Frodo smiled, took a bite and agreed the apple was indeed very sweet. But as for almost being back home, well, the Shire still felt rather far away. A distance that Frodo feared couldn’t be covered by apples or feet.
Pippin and Merry were helping themselves to the last of the chicken, and bickering over a small difference in detail recollecting one of their adventures.
‘Really Merry!’ Pippin said. ‘You should have been getting all this down, what with all those days you had at leisure, lazing about the Houses of Healing. While poor Sam and Frodo and I have been taking on the might of Mordor itself, you were dozing in the gardens, smoking your pipe and eating up the stores of Minas Tirith. You have no excuse for not putting that time to good use.’ Pippin shook his head and tutted. ‘Our legend ought not to be forgotten, and seeing as you weren’t collecting any stories in
that
time, it would have been the perfect chance for you to get some of it down in writing.’
‘I beg your pardon, dearest Pip, but I’m afraid I was rather distracted during that time.’
‘Oh yes, with what? Guarding the walls of Minas Tirith with your smoking pipe?’
Merry stretched out and folded his arms behind his head. ‘Oh, to be sure, we had no battles or quests to be getting on with, but there was excitement enough.’
Sam looked up from his apple. ‘What sort of excitement? You haven’t told us of any excitement.’
Merry just smirked. ‘I don’t know if there is anything to tell, just yet,’ he said. ‘But certainly, we were all getting our hopes up that there would be.’
‘Alright Merry,’ Frodo said. ‘Stop teasing and tell us, what excitement did you have in the Houses of Healing?’
‘Well,
I
didn’t have any excitement, per say-’
‘Hah!’ Pippin said, slapping the ground, too lost in his gloating to see Frodo’s wince. ‘I knew you were just fibbing.’
‘But there
was
a spot of excitement for a certain lord we all know,’ Merry said, lifting an eyebrow.
‘What lord?’ Sam said, running through the numerous lords and knights and kings they had met over their travels. ‘Not Lord Faramir?’
‘What’s been going on with my Lord Faramir?’ Pippin demanded, all teasing falling away as he bolted upright.
Last he saw Lord Faramir, he was barely out of the grips of the Black Breath. For all his strength and battle prowess, Pippin thought he looked as though a light wind would knock him down. The last thing he needed was any more excitement.
Merry patted Pippin’s shoulder. ‘Nothing to concern yourself with Pip. Like I said, it might all be nothing yet. Really I shouldn’t have said anything, not until it’s all confirmed.’
‘Until
what
is all confirmed?’
Merry gave a lazy shrug, and started picking at strands of grass to weave into a necklace.
‘Just tell him Merry,’ Frodo said. ‘Before Pippin blows his top and our picnic is ruined.’
Merry smiled at the trio, putting on an air of indolence. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘only until it’s all confirmed that the many hours he spent walking and talking with a certain lady are to lead to something more serious.’
Pippin froze in his bouncing, and his eyes grew wide. Sam and Frodo looked at each other, wondering if Merry spoke of the lady they were both thinking of.
‘You don’t mean-?’ Pippin said.
Merry nodded. ‘I do.’
‘What, Lord Faramir?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And
Lady Éowyn?’
Merry beamed.
‘Does anyone else know this?’ Pippin asked.
‘Only everyone up in the city,’ Merry said with a chuckle. ‘Seemed half the gossip was about those two. But here, I cannot say. I haven’t told anyone, and if word has reached my Éomer King, we would know of it.’
Sam sat up a little. ‘How did this happen?’ he said.
‘My lady went to him, second day after the host left for Mordor,’ Merry said. ‘She wanted leave to join them, see, and she hoped Lord Faramir would grant it her. In the end, he got her to settle for a window facing eastward, and freedom to walk the gardens. She didn’t want to be stuck in bed, you understand, so he told the Warden that she was to be allowed to get up and walk as much as it pleased her.’
‘That was very courteous of him,’ Frodo said. ‘But Lord Faramir was courteous to us also. Surely such an act could very well be nothing more than a good deed for a fellow soldier, and sister of an ally?’
‘Oh, very easily it could have been,’ Merry said. ‘But he asked her to walk
with him
. He said her presence would be a great comfort to him, in the days of waiting.’
Frodo’s lips twitched, but still he affected some scepticism. ‘Waiting is always better spent in company than alone,’ he said.
‘He called her fairer than all the flowers of Ithilien!’ Merry said. ‘My lady told me so herself.’
Frodo shrugged. ‘Chivalry.’
Sam shook his head. ‘Now Mr Frodo, we only spent a little time in his lordship’s company, but he was a plain, fair talking chap, for all he used a lot of long words. He spoke with no sugar and honey, and spoke nothing that was empty. Everything he said, he meant.’
‘Very true,’ Frodo said. ‘But Merry, you told us yourself that your White Lady is a beautiful maid, near as beautiful as the elven maidens we saw at Rivendell and Lothlorien. And from all the talk we’ve heard of her since coming here, if everyone who called her fair has to be in love with her, then two thirds of the camp must be under her spell.’
‘I think they are a little,’ Pippin said.
Frodo allowed that to be true. The Lady of Rohan’s deeds had won her great renown. Her valour, combined with her reported beauty, was enough to charm even the hearts of men who’d only ever heard her name.
As for the men who knew her, the doughty Riders of Rohan who looked rough yet treated Frodo and Sam with warm civility, they spoke of her as both a queen to be revered, and a dear sister to be treasured.
However, in the voices of others; Strider and Legolas and Gandalf, Frodo had also heard a strain of pity whenever the Lady Éowyn was discussed among them. And there was sadness in their eyes as well, at the mention of her name.
It was slight, but Frodo was quick to spy it, having become all too familiar with spotting pity in the eyes and voices of his friends, lurking underneath the veneration.
‘So go on then,’ Frodo said. ‘Did she walk with him?’
Merry nodded. ‘Every day. Sometimes I joined them, sometimes I let them be. They used to sit together under an old tree, and there they spent the hours of waiting. Now and then, I saw, he managed to make her smile. Even laugh, at times. And I tell you, the nightingale would shut its beak in shame, if it heard the music of my lady’s laugh.’
It almost made Frodo smile to picture it. Lord Faramir was a good man, and while he didn’t know Lady Éowyn, he knew Merry loved her, as he had loved her uncle, Theoden King. Her brother, Éomer King, clearly adored her, and all who had met her seemed to wish her well. Frodo was content to join their ranks, especially if it meant joy for Boromir’s brother also.
Still, he needled Merry a bit. For Merry was his cousin, even if he was probably correct.
‘So they sat together, walked together, and sometimes he made her laugh,’ Frodo said. ‘I can see how that set the gossip’s tongues wagging, but as you say, it confirms little.’
Merry scowled. For all that he’d taunted Pippin in his equivocations, to his mind, there was no doubt. Lord Faramir was in love with his Lady Éowyn, and his Lady Éowyn, dearest shield-sister, was there in heart also, and only a little way behind in her head.
‘He had his mother’s old mantle brought especially for her!’ Merry said. ‘A right handsome thing it was too. Blue, with silver fastenings and stars embroidered all over the hem and throat. He put it about her himself.’
‘Did he?’ Pippin said. He looked at Frodo. ‘Come now, cousin. Men don’t go around giving away their mother’s clothes to just anyone!’
‘They might do in Gondor,’ Frodo said.
Sam shook his head. ‘The ways of the big folk are different to ours,’ he said. ‘But not
that
different.’
At last, Frodo had to concede. He would not quarrel with Sam on this. ‘I suppose you are right, dear Sam,’ he said. ‘We might have travelled far, and seen things strange and terrible, and learned secrets of the world too wonderful to believe. But for a man; gentle and sincere, to call a lady fair, seek out her company before all others, and wrap her in his family’s mantle, can only mean one thing.’ He nodded at Merry. ‘Go on then Merry, what else did you see between them?’
‘Well
I
didn’t see it,’ Merry said, ‘but a good many others did. They said, on the day Mordor fell, at that very moment the Ring was destroyed in truth, he took her in his arms, and kissed her.’
‘On the lips?’ Pippin asked.
‘No, on the forehead,’ Merry said. ‘But it was very tenderly done all the same.’
Merry and Pippin broke into speculation as to whether or not kisses had been exchanged before that moment. (Merry said surely not, or the lady would have told him. Pippin thought surely so, and why was it Merry’s business if they had?)
Frodo could feel Sam’s eyes on him. He’d felt them ever since Merry mentioned Mordor and the destruction of the Ring.
Very well Frodo remembered the moments that followed atop Mount Doom. There’d been a sense of weightlessness, as the Ring had been lifted from him. And a feeling, not quite of despair, but of all hope being gone, and the end soon to be at hand. Around them, there’d been fire and ash. The air burned, scorching their skin, their lungs, their eyes, and all that was real and good lay only in Sam’s arms.
And yet, somewhere in the world, at that exact moment in time, a good and honourable man had been holding a valiant lady in his arms, and kissed her on the brow. Just knowing that somehow made the memory of that moment less terrible.
Frodo smiled at Sam, gave him a nod and a pat of the hand, and lay back into the grass, hoping to catch a few minutes of sleep.
He dozed off, listening to Pippin and Merry, and in time, Sam, bickering and gossiping and delighting over the rumoured courtship.
The grass smelled sweet, and Frodo could taste apple on his tongue.
Sam was right. For a moment there, it was just like being back in the Shire.