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We are to remain in Beleriand a week. This is more of a concession to Homer’s plan than I expected from Athair, since he has still sent Maedhros out “recruiting” in the few towns we have passed along the way, despite our change of route. It is like Athair, to decide that too many hands disrupt the efficiency of a task, rather than considering the danger of the task itself. Since I am as good as useless, and Celegorm killed a man, the most obvious solution to Athair was sending Maedhros alone.
These are rebellious thoughts, yet I allow them to ripple through my mind. We all have rebellious thoughts—except for Maedhros, of late, who returned from each of his solo expeditions alive and well in body, yet with less resemblance than ever to my beloved older brother. It is as if scales have fallen over his eyes or mine, and we no longer see each other clearly.
He has brought four more men into our party, by what I assume are the same methods we quarreled over at the edge of Kansas territory. I do not know why—save for the deadening effect it seems to have on him—I am so shocked and reviled by the thought of trading pleasure for information. Perhaps it is only that I wish to still believe us noble, despite our wrongs, or perhaps it is because I have never been able to separate my concern for my brother from my selfish desire that he be the hero of my own specifications.
He was dreadfully homesick when we left for New York eight years ago, though he tried to conceal it from me. I was struck even then by my unexpected likeness to Athair, and his to Mother, an inversion of what I had believed since childhood. Suddenly I was the one whose head spun with opportunity and whose focus narrowed to a singular interest. And it was Maedhros who, like Mother, yearned to have the whole of his family around him and pined at their absence.
At thirteen, I was a little puffed up to be so sure of myself, while he languished in the rooms of our grandfather's house. To be sure, Fingon and Finrod lifted his gloom somewhat. Within the year my brother was sneaking into galas he was too young to attend unchaperoned, and dancing polkas and minuets as well as he ever trebled a hornpipe in the kitchen at home.
(I was also at many of those dances, accompanied by my professor and permitted to play some of the simpler pieces—at least until Mother caught wind of such activities and barred my attendance until I reached at least seventeen.)
Why, then, do I muse upon these much-older days when I watch my brother laugh and drink by the campfire with the grizzled companions he has collected to my father’s side? Why do I listen for the hollowness of that laugh as I would for a mis-plucked note on my harp?
On so many of these nights, I have retired early.
I wish I could more effectively deny the practicality of his plan, but I cannot. My brother is unusually handsome, effortlessly charming, and more easily welcomed by women than by men, who perceive him as a threat.
(I chided him at first, but what would I do, if I was the eldest and Athair trusted me? Would I be willing to put aside my beliefs, the moral restraints I have contended with since childhood, and use whatever trickery seemed best to me?)
I am not so innocent that I fail to realize how more may be known of a man by his mistress than his wife or his mother. My brother, attuned to the science of smiles, touches, and all manners of companionship, judges quickly and accurately how best to use a situation to his purpose.
Use. There it is; the word that pains me. For of late, I wonder if indeed that is all my brother perceives of himself—a tool to be used by our father’s will. And if a tool is all that he is, if usefulness is all that concerns him, then why would he not employ his wits, his charms, and yes, even his body?
I wonder how much he foresaw when he swore to Athair the path he meant to follow.
Maedhros has always assured me that he does not know what the future holds.
I have been in love half-a-dozen times, though never so deeply as with Annabella. My brother has been in love but once. I knew the girl well enough, but not her significance—I had to learn that from Fingon.
“He was going to marry her, Maglor,” he told me desolately, when he had stumbled home from a tavern under my brother’s lurching weight. I was surprised that my brother had permitted our cousin, younger than both of us and inclined to be prim, to see him in such a state.
Fingon’s words in that moment chilled me; I thought, at nineteen, that I knew my brother’s secrets as well as I knew my own. In truth I had not known that his tryst was broken, nor that it had been a near-engagement.
We stared together at Maedhros’s wax-white face, at the draining shadows under his shuttered eyes, and I doubted he had permitted much of anything.
After that, Maedhros smiled too brightly and drank too often, staying out late and engaging in enough dalliances that I feared rumors would reach our parents’ ears as surely as they reached mine. I never asked him for the exact truth, but there was a slight coolness between us for a time, since I showed my disgust for his self-indulgence in the small pinpricks of a disapproving word or glance.
It seemed to affect him. He attended Mass with me as regularly as ever, though he rarely took Communion, but we no longer prayed our evening rosary because he was not at home. Yet one day he gripped me by the shoulder and asked, with blinding sincerity, “Macalaure, do you hate me?”
I began to weep. I was nineteen, and far too old for such childish behavior, but there it was. Suddenly I was struck by how I had allowed my pain over his suffering to become bitter disappointment. I saw that his sin was not self-indulgence after all, but something sharper and lonelier. “How can you ask such a thing?” I cried, and flung my arms around his neck, knowing that such frank affection would reassure him better than words could.
If only he would ask me now, do you hate me, that I might give the same answer! But instead I am minding the twins in the town square, as Athair pores over an enormous map (mentally comparing it, I am sure, to his own), and Maedhros has disappeared again.
Had our road been one of joy and hope, I would find Beleriand very different. I imagine arriving here with our cousins as one remembers a far-off dream. Finrod would have been bounding ahead of us, eager to retrace his steps, and Fingon would have been dragging his feet, not out of a lack of enthusiasm but because he is so easily distracted by the prospect of new subjects to study.
My cousins might as well be ghosts, now. As it is, I cannot share the twins’ excitement over hard candy and bolts of cloth and the long-horned oxen that snort and stamp in the streets. I watch Athair, and I wait for Maedhros, and I examine the invisible contours of the hole I am sure I feel in my chest.
Evening settles in and we repair to the camp we have made on the outskirts of town. Even here, Athair will not spend his money on an inn. The new men—most of whose names I do not care to remember—light pipes around our fire, and between the flicker in their bowls and the jumping flames and the glow of Beleriand’s lanterns, I feel as if I am surrounded by golden and watchful eyes.
Athair stands when Galway and Jethro return, their wallets lumpy with winnings.
“Where is Maedhros?”
I have risen to my feet as well without even realizing it.
They exchange a quick glance. “He was still occupied,” Galway says at last, in his lilting brogue. “We didn’t wish to disturb him.”
“Had his luck gone so badly at the tables?” Athair demands, harsh with disbelief. Maedhros has never lost a round of poker in his life, that he did not mean to.
“No, he…” Jethro shuffles his boots. They may be rough men, but I know that they respect Maedhros, and doubtless our father, and understand that the business of what Maedhros does out of Athair’s sight should remain so. “He seemed as if he might spend the night.”
Athair scoffs. I wince.
Athair begins to say, angrily, “He does not have my bidding—” but then he stops. He does not want strangers to be privy to our family troubles, especially if those troubles call into question the legitimacy of his own authority. I know my father too well to pretend that I only speculate.
For my own part, I am sick to the very pit of my belly. I know what keeps Maedhros busy, though I will not give voice to it. What I do not know is why he is late. The last time he was late, Celegorm was a fugitive.
I stand aside, and ask quietly if I may look for him.
“Alone?” Athair glares. “No. I shall go as well.”
He must be distressed, if he would even consider leaving my brothers under Celegorm’s care. That, or his trust in Galway and Homer is more than I had thought. I shall not argue, though—I am selfish, and my loyalty is with Maedhros. I cannot let Athair go alone.
We ride back to Beleriand at a swift gallop. When we dismount by the posts outside the eating-house, Maedhros’s horse is still tethered there. I see that Athair is almost trembling, as if a frisson of some dread passion has overcome him.
“Athair,” I ask, “What ails you?”
“I ordered him to follow a spy,” Athair answers, glancing swiftly about to make sure we are not shadowed. “A woman. If the enemy…”
“The enemy?” I know he means Melkor, and I know, I know that we face real evils—but when he speaks so, when such madness takes him, I wish that Mother was still with us, or that Maedhros was by my side to tell me how to act.
Of course, it is this very madness that has driven them both away.
“Athair,” I say, certain only that I know where to search, “Let us go in and look for him.”
Athair stands in the doorway and scans the room with flinted, seeking eyes. I swallow my fear for a moment and speak to the first woman I can find. She has red hair. I try not to look at it.
“I must find my brother,” I say, in as low a voice as I can, among the crowd. “He is tall, and handsome, with hair like yours—”
She lifts her brows in acknowledgement and points upwards. “Zella’s had him for hours.” When she smiles, it twists to show a glint of gold between her lips. “I would have, if I could, but Zella’s too nasty a bitch to cross. Door on the left, if you dare.”
I swore—to myself, since Maedhros did not ask it of me—that I would never say to Athair what I knew. Now, leading the way up the back-stairs, with him following me silently, I fear I betray it anyway.
There are three rooms at the top of the stairs. The doors are closed, but Athair and I have ears, and we can hear what goes on behind them. Athair makes a sound of disgust.
“Maglor—”
I want to weep, but I am not a child, and I cannot be so weak. “Athair,” I say, “Try to understand—” That he does this for you, only for you. That he would die for you, and I fear he already has.
There is silence behind the door on the left. I reach for the handle, and I pause.
“Please,” I say. “He would not want you to see him like this.”
“Then he should not have lowered himself thus,” Athair snaps, and my head jerks back as though it was his hand, rather than the words, that struck me.
This falls like a blow, too: the sight of my brother, stripped to the waist and still as death, his throat and his hair darkened by blood.
(We stare together at his wax-white face.)
Athair cries out—not as he did when Mother left him, nor even when the bullet tore through her arm, but as he did when the news came that Grandfather Finwe had been gunned down outside his own house.
I am at Maedhros’s side in an instant. I avert my eyes from the scratches on his chest, for they distress me in a different way, and ascertain that he lives from placing my fingers against the pulse in his neck. The wound there is a nasty one, and I see—
Teethmarks.
Bile surges up in my mouth. Who has done this to him? Why did he allow it, and why does he not wake?
Athair has approached—at first I thought him frozen, but he moves—and as he leans close to my brother’s face, his nose twitches.
“What is it?”
“He’s been drugged.” Athair’s voice is grim but quiet. “I was right. I was right.” He repeats himself, rote and mechanical, as if the certainty of it will comfort him. Then he turns away again, never touching his eldest son, and it is left to me to staunch the sluggish flow of blood with my handkerchief, to bind it around Maedhros’s neck with a strip torn from the hem of this, my last good shirt.
Anything, for him.
I slip my arm under his shoulders—there are scratches welted there too, and I wince in sympathy. He is heavy when unconscious, but as I ease him upright, his eyes flutter open.
“Macalaure?”
Across the room, Athair’s shoulders stiffen.
“Shhh,” I whisper. “You are safe now.” That is a lie, of course. He closes his eyes again, and the furrow between his brows pinches as if his head aches.
“Something was burned here,” Athair says abruptly. At the sound of his voice, Maedhros’s eyes snap open, and I feel the muscles of his back and shoulders tense. He grinds his teeth as if the efforts hurt him, and pushes my hands aside.
He does not speak to Athair, and Athair does not look at him.
“What was burned?” I ask, as Maedhros stands on unsteady feet. I do my best to be ready to catch him, but he shies away from me.
“Paper.”
Maedhros stoops to collect his shirt, his coat, his boots. It is too much for him; he slumps first to his knees, and then he vomits, doubling over until his forehead touches the floor.
Athair gives another choked cry, and all but runs from the room, slamming the door behind him.
I hold my brother’s shoulders while he retches, and I lift the hair from his face, and I mutter something soothing—though I, the poet, know not what. There is nothing more but liquid in his stomach.
“You drink too much,” I whisper, but he does not laugh. How could he?
“Oh, God, Maglor,” he mumbles at last, swiping the back of his hand across his lips. “Oh, God." His voice rises a little, almost hysterical, before he reins it in with a degree of control that he, more than our father, has always seemed to possess. “Jesus.”
None of these, I think, are prayers.
I hold him until he stops shaking. And then I help him dress, and neither of us speak, and he does not look at me, not even when I dab his flushed cheeks with my other handkerchief.
With his shirt and coat on, only the bandage at his neck should look different. But I can see his eyes, and the scales are gone. We see each other clearly.
I reach up to stroke his cheek, as Mother might have, once. No doubt he loathes the reminder, but I have known Maedhros all my life, and I know that touch is a comfort to him, whether he believes he has earned such gentleness or not.
“Come,” I say. “Come with me.”
He says nothing. But I can read the words I would rather die here, written on his face.
“You cannot die,” I say fiercely. “For I will walk the rest of the way to the west coast and into the ocean, Maedhros. I swear to God I will.”
He blinks, and he follows me, and for the length of that foul dark stairs, and the passage of that jostling crowd, he is the younger brother and I am the elder.
(It is too much. It is not something I could bear for long, I think.)
Outside, in the dark, Athair’s shape is recognizable beside the three horses. Maedhros halts, just one step, and then resumes his pace.
“Are you well enough to ride?” I ask, as we mount, and he nods. No one speaks again until we are at the camp. Only Galway sits up waiting, watching by the fireside, and he lowers the brim of his hat in greeting and otherwise leaves us alone.
Athair dismounts, ties his horse, and taps against the hatch of the wagon. “Celegorm.”
Celegorm’s head pokes out. They are all in Athair’s wagon tonight, because they were alone.
“Yes?” his head looks like a thatch of hay. Good, I think. He has been asleep.
“Go and clean your brother’s wounds.” Beside me, Maedhros is as still as a statue, his chin dipped towards his chest.
I bite my lip so hard it bleeds.
“Maglor,” Athair says, so quietly that I scarcely hear him—and that is not the Athair I know. “I would have a word with you.”
We walk across the camp. I am thinking strange thoughts—of birds in cages, their wings tearing at the bars if they even dare to fly. Of the fact that Athair raised us to be Catholic before all else—or so he said—and yet we have not attended Mass since our departure. None of us could take Communion now.
We are fifty yards from the wagons before Athair addresses me again. “How,” he asks, “Did you know?”
“How…”
“You knew where your brother would be.” Athair’s face looks to me as if flesh and blood were layered over a hurricane. “How?”
Maedhros would not want me to tell. But Maedhros is my brother, not a hero, and I cannot give him what he wants. “How else is he to glean the secrets he does?” I ask—and I am no hurricane. Certainly, I am no hero. And yet, I find a way to say the words. “He knows how much you have to…learn, before you can trust anyone. In exchange for that, he—he sells himself.” To my knowledge, no money has changed hands, but it is still the truth.
Athair stares at me for a terrifying moment. My father is the most brilliant man in the world, and yet he does not understand children better than any other father.
There is a rebellious thought.
“But I…” His voice trails away. He is not Athair in that moment; he is only Feanor, and Feanor is all alone. “I would never ask that of him.”
My father is the most brilliant man in the world, and sometimes, he is a fool.
“You do not have to ask anything of Maedhros,” I say. I mean the words to be sharp, but my voice is as flat and heavy as a flagstone—something to be walked over, a bridge to someone else’s fate. “Did you not know?”
I leave him there. I turn, and I go to my brother, who deserves softer hands than Celegorm’s. As I walk, I hear my father whisper my mother’s name. Tears sting my eyes, but I do not turn back.
Maedhros is not asleep. I did not expect him to be. His coat is laid across his lap, and he is rifling through the pockets with quick and frantic hands. When he sees me, though, he tosses it aside, as if I have caught him at some guilty act.
“Maglor,” he says. His tone is light enough that the slightest breeze would tear it.
“Celegorm?” I ask.
“Gone to bed again. But he did well. A regular medic.”
I sit down beside him, not asking for his leave. The coat, I am careful not to touch.
He breathes like a man about to run a race; deeply, with each breath following the one before it too closely.
After a time, I tell him, “I am sorry.”
“It can be worse,” he answers. “I know that, now.” There is much he will not say, and I would not ask. I wonder if I should offer to sit beside him all night, for I fear his calm will not last and that he will harm himself. I do not know why it has taken me so long to admit that fear.
But before I can speak another word, there are footsteps heavy on the ground nearby. We both scramble to our feet.
Athair stands before us.
For an age—or perhaps just for the hairsbreadth second that it takes for a bullet to fly—not one of the three of us breathes.
Then Athair steps close, and he lifts his hand to Maedhros’s cheek, so that his fingers brush back my brother’s bright hair. The pad of Athair’s thumb traces the hollow shadow beneath Maedhros’s eye.
They say nothing to each other.
Then my father turns aside, and walks away—
But my brother lives.