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Since six months after my marriage (the time it took my father to recover from the shock) Fingolfin and I have dined at our family home on Thursday evenings.
My father and I were not estranged, for those six months; not in the way my family understands estrangement. Rather, my father was too surprised to acknowledge my wife, or so he later said.
I think the apparent rebellion of his docile youngest was too much for him.
Curiously enough, my eldest brother—I refuse to differentiate between whole and half—was the friendliest to me during that interlude, even showering me with jewelry and other gifts where my father supplied none.
I do suspect that, for Feanor, such overtures of kinship were in part motivated by a desire to challenge my mother, whom he likely thought responsible for my father's coolness. Of course, it was not so—my mother supported me privately, in her warm and quiet way, but I also took Feanor’s offerings as tokens of friendship, whether he intended them as such or not.
Therefore, I am on much more amicable terms with him than is poor Fingolfin, who judges Feanor and all his works very gravely while also desiring a gentle word or a kind look above all else. What Fingolfin would give to be called, by Feanor, brother!
I think of these things as I climb the front steps of my father's home. I find myself often drawn to such reflections, in the quiet moments when I am neither surrounded by children nor brothers. Earwen, of course, has heard long my thoughts on the subject; she is the wisest person I know, even above my father.
My father’s servants welcome me with smiles, for they have known me since boyhood. Then my mother descends the front stairs in a rosy dinner dress, and she takes both my hands in hers, that we may kiss each other’s cheeks.
“Good evening, dear son,” she says. “Fingolfin is already here, with Maglor and Maedhros—does Earwen not accompany you tonight?”
“Her sewing circle occupied her all afternoon and she begged to be excused,” I answer. “With especial apologies to you.”
Anaire rarely dines with my parents on Thursday, for her health is indifferent, and so I know my mother depends upon Earwen’s company, that the pretense of after-dinner separation may be kept up.
She does not look too crestfallen, though, for my mother is indefatigable in her willingness to put her own needs aside for others. I admire this trait beyond words, and hope I have inherited it from her as I inherited her blue eyes and golden ringlets.
Together we enter the drawing room, where Fingolfin is deep in conversation with my two nephews. I pause half a moment to observe them. As I child I entertained myself by viewing a room as tableau, seeing it for its pieces and its whole. As a man, I have learned the distinct value of understanding how the cogs of hearts turn in the pursuit of life and business.
Fingolfin stands with his feet planted and his arms folded over his chest, as if he is bracing for a blow. He always stands thus, so I mark it not particularly, but I do notice that he has his solemn face on tonight, the one that makes him look very like our father, when we were called before him for punishment.
(My father’s punishments were far from harsh. His disappointment was made clear through his frown and his sorrowful eyes, and I was likely to throw myself on the floor in tears of apology, knowing that I would soon be swept into a warm embrace with all my transgressions forgotten.)
Maglor lounges with one elbow resting against the mantle, affected as only a nineteen-year-old can be, and a glass of sherry is in his hand. I own myself surprised to see no matching drink in Maedhros’s, since he has been a connoisseur of such for several years at least.
He looks a little tired tonight, a little shadowed under the eyes, but I am not surprised by that —for he has looked quite the same for several months now. I know him to be popular and beloved in society, and can only imagine, with a touch of humor as well as concern, that there must be some demand for gentlemen as well as ladies who look to be on the point of swooning.
They have seen me, and I greet them, and we all go in to dinner. Fingolfin makes his apologies for Anaire, and for Fingon, who has thrown himself with absolute vigour into the study of medicine.
I do not apologize for Finrod’s absence, because Finrod is absent from us all—this past Christmas, he announced his intention of exploring the nation on foot and horseback, and though I am very grieved for it, I knew better than to estrange myself from him if that was his intent.
Still, I miss my golden son. I love him more than myself, for that is as every father loves his children. I know his cousins must miss him too—but a year ago, they were inseparable: bright Maedhros, gentle Maglor, steady Fingon, and my laughing boy.
All such fellowships are broken by time, if not by temperament.
Our father is late at business with the city council, and so he does not join us either. Mother assures us several times that he will be along shortly, and each time we all assure her that she need not worry. It is Father who will be distressed more than anything; he will storm in with hands outstretched, explaining that he was duty-bound to see a plan through, or something such, and he will embrace us all in turn while vowing never to be late again.
Maglor eats daintily, at first glance, but he tucks food away at an astonishing rate. Maedhros takes small portions and picks at them. I see my brother watching him, and Maedhros must catch his interest too, for he ducks his head and attends to his food in earnest.
This is curious to me. When has a son of Feanor ever cared for a half-uncle's good will?
There is a commotion in the hall, and Mother clasps her hands together. “There he is!” she cries, and we all turn in our seats to greet Father—
But it is not Father. It is Feanor, and though he is dressed for dinner in clothes as fine as his sons, I have never seen a man look more out of place.
It is by his own design; he has no love for my Mother’s home, and visits it only ever to see Father, treading gingerly over the carpet as if the touch of the place dismays him.
Father is not here. The full meaning of that fact, and what it will mean for this evening, crashes upon me as if the chandelier fell from the ceiling.
“Feanor,” Mother says. We all rise, and I know without looking directly at him that Fingolfin is drawn as tight as a wire. Wires have, I think, so little give—yet he stretches as much as he can. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
Her voice does not shake, but I hear the uncertainty in it.
Feanor must too, for he smiles thinly and replies, “It was my understanding, ma’am, that my father hosted his sons and theirs on this evening each week. Unless I have interrupted a meal between a mother and her sons, in which case I have no place here.”
The silence that falls is broken by the legs of Maedhros’s chair scraping back as he leaves the table and steps forward to face his father.
“You are always welcome here,” he says smoothly, and I do not begrudge him his usurping of Mother’s place—nor, I think, does she. I look at Fingolfin to discern whether he does, but his face is set grim, and that could be for many reasons.
“Do take a seat at the table, Feanor,” Mother offers, but he lifts a hand that is bare of rings save for his wedding band.
“Not at all, ma’am. You have finished, and who am I to expect coddling?”
“Join us for coffee, then,” I say, and I step forward beside Maedhros, who is still nearly a boy (I would know, having been a father by his age, and very nervous about that and everything else), that he might not have to face Feanor’s gleeful pique alone. “We spend an hour or so in the drawing room, and you must be tired from traveling.”
“You are so very kind, Finarfin,” Feanor says, and he says it coldly but I make my smile warm in return, unwavering. I am satisfied when his eyes dance away, seeking a new target.
I am less satisfied that the target is Fingolfin.
“I shall not stay, of course,” Feanor adds. “If...anyone...objects.”
No one objects. No one even sighs, though I suspect I am not the only one who wishes to.
Our motley band parades into the drawing room, and there Indis asks Maglor if he would play upon the harp.
“An English harp,” Feanor remarks, eyeing the graceful instrument in the corner. “Good heavens, Kanafinwe, will you even be able to tune it?”
Maglor flushes and Maedhros is biting his lip and Fingolfin says, in an attempt at friendliness, “I have seen him play it just a week ago, very well.”
“Indeed!” Feanor cries, merrier than I think any of us would hope him to be in this moment, “Well, if you have lauded his talents, what else do we wait for? To the harp, Maglor. Fingolfin demands it.”
Maglor looks between his father and his brother. If he looked to me, I would give him a smile of encouragement, but it is Maedhros’s slight nod that sends Maglor to the harp at last. His fingers draw forth a few tentative trills, and even those preparatory notes are somewhat soothing. My mother sits upon the chaise beside him, and that leaves me and Fingolfin, Maedhros and Feanor, standing at four points of a map we dare not sketch, as servants trundle in the silver samovar.
“How long do you stay in the city?” I ask Feanor. He has been here more frequently, of late, though only to speak to Father. I know not why; it does not appear to stem from any increased conciliation between him and my mother or Fingolfin. I wonder how he fares with his sons.
“A night only...I have business on the morrow.” When he says it, he looks at our brother, as if the information is a challenge. Half- , Feanor would say, but I think whole in heart, no matter what you do .
“Maglor and--we thought the rain on the roads would delay you until morning,” Maedhros says, taking the steaming cup that one of the maids hands him. “Else we would surely have urged you to accompany us here—”
“No doubt,” Feanor says, sounding doubtful. His eager eyes flicker around the room again and, addressing his eldest son as if doing so does not require him to look stonily past Fingolfin, he adds, “But where is your inseparable cousin? Does Fingon not join his family tonight?”
Maedhros flushes a little at this, and his eyes slide right to Fingolfin. I assume that this is because Feanor ought to ask a father for a son’s whereabouts, not a cousin for a cousin’s.
“He is very busy with his studies.” It is unlike Maedhros to mumble.
“His studies!” Now Feanor turns to Fingolfin, and it is no polite shift. “I hear much of your children these days, sir! The eldest to be a doctor before he even is old enough to drink a doctor’s fill, and Turgon as busy with figures as with figures, if gossip is to believed.”
What would be anger in others is grief in me. I feel his slights, so barbed, and know that they must hurt the one who sends them nearly as much as the one who receives them—and oh, why must it be so?
Fingolfin does not blush. “I do not think gossip is to be believed,” he answers slowly. Beside me, Maedhros’s breath grates sharply.
“How can you?” Feanor crosses his arms and his fingers tap sonatas at his elbows. Maglor is playing, and both he and Mother are leaning a little towards us, though with their faces turned away—I know they want to hear. I hope they have not heard Feanor’s jibes. “When it would harm your house.”
Maedhros’s knuckle are white around his cup. I do not know how he can hold it so tightly; the cups are made of the same silver as the samovar, and leach heat quickly.
He is looking at Fingolfin.
There is something, I think, that I must not understand.
Fingolfin looks not at Maedhros—if he did it might answer my questions—but instead sets his own cup aside and turns towards Feanor with something of Mother’s tireless patience in his eyes. Fingolfin’s eyes are not the sky-calm blue of Mother’s or mine, nor yet the stormy grey of Father’s and Feanor’s. They are somewhere in between.
“Many things may harm a man’s house,” he says, “And gossip not least among them. But if you ask if I am grieved to have one son a butcher-handed sot and the other a rake, I am not. For Fingon and Turgon are neither of those things.”
They pay no heed to it, but for my part, the only sound I can hear is Maedhros’s uneven breathing.
Feanor’s eyebrows take dangerous flight. “Do you take insult, brother?”
Do not call him so in cruelty, I beg, and once more I am reminded that even when justified, I cannot be angry at these hurts.
“Insult?” Fingolfin asks, and he looks very weary. There is grey around his temples and a furrow in his brow. My brothers and I are middle-aged, but Fingolfin is the only one whom I can imagine old. “No, I take no insult. But I will take my leave, for the hour grows late and Anaire is still unwell.”
I breathe now. Fingolfin can, and does, take insult at Feanor’s words—an exchange such as this may one day lead to blows. But not today. Not, for a reason I do not quite understand, will that day be today.
“Good night, Feanor,” Fingolfin says, inclining his head. And then he turns and returns Maedhros’s look at last, and says, “Good night, nephew.” I am struck by a sudden softness in his gaze.
Maedhros whispers farewell in return, and puts down his cup at last.
Feanor stalks across the room to Maglor, and Fingolfin bids our Mother goodbye, and I am left alone with my eldest nephew, to whom I know not what to say, torn as we both are by hearts that—I think—desire harmony.
When I look at his empty hand, it is reddened by a slight burn, and it is shaking.