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Fingolfin has had many doubts about the wisdom of permitting his eager eldest to study the grisly details of the human body, its illnesses and failures, at the tender age of not-yet-eighteen. But if he had not authorized it—had not gone to the (significant) trouble of reasoning with the head of a suitable academy as to Fingon’s maturity and diligence—he is sure that his son would have found another way to learn. Perhaps he would have taken up even sooner and more entirely with the canny but disreputable Olorin, and traipsed through every gutter of Queens.
As it is, Fingolfin finds himself grateful for the first time that his son is busy with his lectures and absent from the house. It makes it impossible for him to interrupt—or overhear—this meeting.
“Uncle!” Maedhros says, tucking his silk hat beneath his arm and stretching out a hand too beringed for Fingolfin’s taste. Maedhros’s hair seems quite untouched by the hat; it falls in smooth, thick waves, and is, in its signature ruddiness, the brightest thing about him.
Behind the beguiling smile, Fingolfin realizes, his nephew is very pale.
“Pray sit down,” he offers, when they have shaken hands. Maedhros wears a light blue coat and dove-grey breeches. His riding boots gleam with fresh blacking; the linen and lace at his throat is stiff and fresh. He must have come by carriage, then; the boots are only a conceit.
Does he anticipate Fingolfin's purpose, and seek to disarm by a neat disguise?
“I hope my aunt and cousins are well,” Maedhros says, taking the chair and resting his hat against one cocked knee.
“Very.” Fingolfin does not wish to be misled by Maedhros’s charm—a constant challenge since the lad was nine or ten—but for politeness’ sake, he forces out, “And your family?”
“I last saw them at Christmas.” It is now March. “They were in good health then, thank you.”
Fingolfin will engage in no more pleasantries, and pleasantries are all his nephew knows.
“I called you here to speak plainly.”
Maedhros lifts one aristocratic brow, as if he is bemused but interested. “Indeed?”
Cold-blooded, Fingolfin thinks. Like Feanor. Feanor, whom he also loves. “I am seriously considering,” he says levelly, “Whether or not to allow my son to continue his friendship with you.”
Apparently Maedhros’s porcelain cheeks can whiten further, for they drain now almost to the color of bone. He has fewer freckles in the winter than in summer—not the only trace of Nerdanel he bears, nor the most striking—but they stand out as if specked by the tip of a golden pen. “Beg pardon?”
You can try, Fingolfin thinks grimly. He is glad, at least, that Maedhros appears to appreciate the severity of the threat. Feanor—and some of his sons—would be likely to point out that Fingon is practically a man. That Fingon lives half outside his father’s home, and is therefore no longer subject to his commands.
Feanor would say all this, while in the same breath declaring himself wholly the monarch of his own family, from Nerdanel and Maedhros down to the twins.
“Plainly, as I said.” Fingolfin clears his throat. “I cannot shut my eyes and ears to—reports—of your behavior these last few months.”
Maedhros does not move, not even to bow his head in the shame that Fingolfin believes to be well-earned, but two high points of color appear in his cheeks. They make him look ill. He does look ill, Fingolfin sees now—not merely pale. His skin is almost translucent, stretched across the handsome angles of its frame.
“Uncle,” he says, his voice still very pleasant, though a little faint, “Surely, you cannot believe the gossip bandied about—”
“By my trusted associates and friends? Indeed I can. Last I knew, you contained yourself to dances and flirtations. What I heard from Mr. Tibbs—and from Mr. Guilder, come to that, was far beyond flirtation.”
He recognizes those names, Fingolfin can tell, because he bites his lips and says nothing.
“What they discovered, of their own daughters, and you—can that rightly be called gossip?”
Maedhros is not a coward. Fingolfin will grant him that. “No,” Maedhros answers quietly. “I suppose it cannot.” His right hand—the one with the rings—clamps against the knee of those smooth trousers. “I do not deserve forgiveness or approval, I—I know that.”
“Yet you deserve the association of my son?”
“No.” It is almost a whisper now. “Not—not deserve, but please, Uncle. I—”
“He is seventeen.” Fingolfin forces not politeness now, but coldness. “I am sure you perceive my predicament.”
Maedhros’s eyes flicker, as though weariness overcomes him and sleep takes them to half-mast. But no, he is alert; Fingolfin can only imagine that his heart beats at the same staccato pace with which one finger taps his kneecap.
He is pitiable, is Feanor’s oldest son. Feanor might hate him for that; Fingolfin cannot.
“Fingon worries for you,” he says, in a slightly gentler tone. “Did you know that?”
A nod. The affectation of dandiness is paper-thin, now.
“He is busy with his studies, too.”
“Very.” The corner of Maedhros’s lips hitches in a ghost of a smile. “He talks of little else.”
“At home, also.” Fingolfin leans forward. “Would you add to his worries? As his friend?” He does not drag out the pause, because that would seem like cruelty. “I know you care deeply for him. I know you are more than these indiscretions. But you must show me, Maedhros.”
He is his father’s son. Fingolfin knows that his pride is scraped raw; but he is his mother’s son too, and something that is neither of the two. He nods again.
“No harm shall come to Fingon because of me,” he says. And then he smiles—a beautiful, if fragile thing. “Nor because of my misdeeds. You speak very plainly, sir. I shall feel the smart of it for a week.”
“And I shall not warn you again,” Fingolfin says. “But I will accept your word on the subject.”
They both rise. It seems wrong to take his hand this time. At the door, Maedhros turns.
“Two weeks ago Fingon dragged me home dead-drunk,” he says, in the same tone as he might use to speak of the day’s weather. “It seems the sort of thing you should hear from me, though I do not remember it, and he likely does.”
Fingolfin opens his mouth to be angry, to rescind the tentative goodwill of a moment ago, but instead he asks simply—“Why?”
“Why? Because he is an excellent cousin, and held my hair out of the sick. Or so Maglor tells me.”
“No,” Fingolfin says, quelling his disgust with difficulty. “I mean, why did you do it?”
Maedhros will not answer that; Fingolfin can see that at once.
“Does your father know? That you have apparently decided to…risk your security and your reputation in such a manner?”
Maedhros does not seem offended by the question. He tugs on his kid-gloves, staring at them as if they are the most interesting objects in the world. “A better question,” he returns, “Is—do you know my father?”
No. Fingolfin bites down hard, as if to catch in his teeth the greatest tragedy of his life.
“It will not happen again,” Maedhros says. “Trust to the rumors that you do not hear.”
With that, he is gone.