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Attending church, Mother says, will drive her to distraction. Athair decides that this is their fault, and they are accordingly lined up from Maedhros (who is twelve) all the way down to Curufin (who is four), and told in no uncertain language that the next child who disrupts Mass will stand facing the corner for a week of suppers.
There is no denying that Celegorm and Maglor tore a hymnal in two last Sunday, since Maglor was not serving; nor is there any doubt that it was Curufin who tied Amrod’s bootlaces together during Communion, when they were meant to be sitting still.
Everyone nods very gravely and says, Yes, Athair, not least because standing in the corner while everyone else eats first is a very dreadful punishment and one that only Maedhros has suffered, at a time before most of them remember.
“I was seven,” Maedhros says dismissively, when Athair has left them to think on their actions. He is in the least danger of causing trouble; he is very orderly in church. He minds the twins and even used to carry Curufin until Curufin started biting his ear. “Come, it’s time for bed.”
“What did you do?” Curufin asks. He is always eager to know about Maedhros’s rare disobedience. Disobedience is a word Athair says frequently, which is why Caranthir knows it.
“I broke a window. Bed, Atarinke.”
Curufin hates to be called by his middle name.
On Sunday, Mother carries Amrod, Maedhros carries Amras, and Athair carries Curufin because Curufin tricks Athair by whining and stretching out his arms. They are all very starched and in their best; Celegorm did not muddy his trousers this morning. Mother’s hair, though, is already springing loose from its careful loops. She ties the ribbons of her hat beneath her chin and sighs.
They ride in the open carriage, because Athair wants people to see them going to St. Mary’s. He says it “does those Puritans good,” and that makes Mother sigh and smile at once.
Athair files into the front pew first, then Caranthir, then Maedhros, then Celegorm, then Mother, than Maglor. On sundays when Maedhros and Maglor are not on the altar, this separates everyone who is best kept separated. Caranthir cannot read the words in the missal, nor do more than hum along to the hymns, but he likes the thundering swell of the organ and the way that Athair keeps his chin and shoulders high and straight when he answers the prayers in Latin.
The visiting priest Father Shaughnessy is preaching when Amras kicks Caranthir in the nose.
Caranthir scrunches his whole face together to keep his yell inside. His upper lip feels wet. He lifts his hand to feel it, and his hand comes away red. He wants to yell even more, now, but Athair is right next to him so he turns to tug at Maedhros’s pocket, leaning out of the way of Amras’s swinging foot.
“Oh, goodness,” Maedhros whispers, and he digs in the same pocket for a handkerchief. Caranthir presses it against his nose and blinks and blinks until he feels dizzy. He wants to cry, but crying will make trouble.
Still, the commotion has caught Athair’s notice, and Caranthir is trapped. He stares up at Athair and Athair stares back, and for the rest of Mass—even when Caranthir waits in the pew with Curufin during Communion—he is shaking in his Sunday boots.
On the steps outside, Athair sets Curufin down. “Run along to Mother,” he said, and he kneels to tip Caranthir’s face up. “The blood has stopped,” he says, flicking away a dark-dried crust with his fingertip, as though the other families are not filtering out around them, glancing from the corners of their eyes and murmuring.
“I am well,” Caranthir says. His voice is so much higher than Athair’s. Caranthir doesn’t know if being well will prevent a punishment, but it is all he can think to say.
Athair’s face is suddenly very soft, as it is when he puts the twins to bed, and he smooths Caranthir’s hair back from his forehead with one hand. “My little red-faced one,” he murmurs, as if they are meeting for the first time—what a funny thought that is!—and then he lifts Caranthir in his arms as if he is four like Curufin, or only three like the twins, and not five like the grown-up boy he is.
“You put your tongue in her mouth?” Maglor almost shrieks, and Maedhros smothers him with a pillow.
“Shh! Do you want to wake the entire house?”
“It’s just—” Maglor whispers now, but Caranthir, pressed flat on the floor under Maedhros’s bed, can hear them perfectly well. “That’s disgusting.”
“I promise you, it really wasn’t.” Maedhros rolls onto his back. “Get your feet off my pillows.”
“You’re doing it!”
“I didn’t say I had to get my feet off my pillows.”
“Fine.” There is rustling up above, and Maglor’s ankles dangle off the bed. Caranthir could poke a finger through the hole in his sock. “What did she do?”
Maedhros yawns lazily. “What do you think? She returned the favor. That’s how kissing works, cano.”
“I can’t believe it.” Another shudder from Maglor. “I will never, ever—”
Celegorm must have skipped sweeping here; there is so much dust and before Caranthir can catch himself he—
—sneezes—
“What the devil?”
His older brothers sound much the same when they’re alarmed, so Caranthir isn’t sure who says that, but the hands that drag him from beneath the bed are definitely Maedhros’s.
“Bollocks,” says Maedhros. “Caranthir, what are you doing here?”
Caranthir squirms in Maedhros’s grip—it’s quickly becoming as steely as Athair’s, even though Maedhros is sixteen, and not yet grown. It is evident that some explanation must be given.
“I borrowed one of your books,” he says. It’s flat on its spine under the bed; Oliver Twist. “I was just going to put it back—”
“And then we came in for a private conversation and you hid under the bed to listen, you loathsome little snitch?” Maglor is practically purple in his fury.
“Maglor.” Maedhros shoots him a warning look, before turning back to Caranthir. He lets his shoulder go, and says, as gently as if Caranthir had come crying over a scraped knee, as he might have when he was a child—“I don’t mind you borrowing the book. But you should not hide and listen as you did.”
There is a little pause.
Maedhros asks, “Did you understand what we were saying?”
Caranthir shakes his head. He has a vague understanding that kissing is for married people, since Mother has said that very, very sternly at the dinner table, without anyone even bringing it up, after Athair mentioned something about one of the neighbor daughters being in “confinement.” But Caranthir does not know whether tongues are equally limited. “No.”
Maedhros smiles—the bright and lovely smile that shows the dented dimples in his cheeks. Mother calls it blarney when he smiles like that. “Well then, will you trust me?”
“Maedhros…” Maglor purses his lips.
“Maglor.” Maedhros’s smile doesn’t even twitch. “Caranthir, do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, very good. When you’ve done something you shouldn’t—like listened to other people’s private talk—there’s a way to make it right.”
“Yes,” Caranthir says, because he may be only nine but that he understands. Then—“How?”
“By forgetting everything you heard,” Maedhros explains, very seriously. His smile fades into something solemn, something that seems like he trusts Caranthir too. “And never telling anyone about it.”
(Caranthir never does.)
“Caranthir, will you flute the pie-crusts?” Mother asks. There is flour in her ruddy hair and down the front of her blue-flowered frock. The house is in chaos; it always is before a ceili, or a church supper (when Athair used to agree to let them host those), and now Grandfather and Indis and both uncles’ families are coming.
Caranthir does not want to make the piecrusts until she says, “You are the only one who does it right.”
The first time he rides without Athair or Maedhros guiding the reins.
The Christmas that he receives a racer sled, its tracks painted red, just after a foot of snow has blanketed Formenos in soft white.
Grandfather teaching him to make a kite, Mother taking him to choose flower-seeds for the prayer garden, Maedhros dragging him out onto the floor to dance.
He would save these, if he could.
“What have you here?”
It is Maedhros, come round the edge of Athair’s wagon very quietly, lifting the flap to peer down at what is doubtless Caranthir’s startled face, at his hands hastening to close the box of treasures.
“Nothing.”
Maedhros looks exhausted, and he smells not quite like himself; more like whiskey and sharp sweat. He and Maglor rode out hours ago and have only now come back.
“You need not tell me,” Maedhros says. “I respect your secrets.”
Sometimes secrets are all that Caranthir feels like he has.
“Wait,” he says, and he tucks the box under his arm. “Can I—show you?”
It is late, but Maedhros does not sleep very much, even when he looks as tired as he does now.
Maedhros’s eyebrows lift, beneath the tangle of his hair, but he nods. “If you wish.”
There are a few trees here; sparse, stubborn things. They sit against one and Caranthir opens the box.
“Someone had to keep all this,” he explains.
Beside him, Maedhros breathes sharply in, and it is a while before he breathes out.
“Are those—”
Caranthir nods, his fingers scrabbling as the bottles roll against each other. “Mother’s paints.” He bites his tongue and then adds, “Do you want any of them?”
Maedhros’s hand shies away from the box, and reaches up to ruffle Caranthir’s hair instead. “No, no,” he says softly. “They rightly belong to you.”
“Because you do not deserve them?”
Maedhros’s hand goes still.
Caranthir could kick himself; the words always come out wrong. “I mean, I know that that is what you think. It’s not true, though.”
“You don’t think so?” Maedhros asks, in the same charming tone he used to use when he would say things like, would you really want Celegorm to die, Caranthir? Do you not think you would miss him?, when Caranthir was vexed over a broken toy or something equally small.
“I love you.”
Maedhros’s breathing flutters out again. “I know you do. But that does not mean you know what I deserve; quite the opposite, in fact. Love makes us overlook terrible things, you know.”
“Is that why Mother stayed as long as she did?”
“Love seems to make you brutal,” Maedhros observes. It is not an answer to the question, but he runs the tips of his fingers over the little jars at last. “In your honesty. We ought to listen to you more. Perhaps then—”
“I’m sorry,” Caranthir says. He is not Mother or Athair or the oldest or the youngest. He is strung in the middle of a decade of sons, and is rather useless for it. “I am not good at this.”
“On the contrary,” Maedhros interrupts. His smile, in the dark, still shows his dimples—if nothing else. “You are very good.” With his right hand, he closes the lid of the box.