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i.
“You understand that what you did was wrong?”
Stony silence.
“Your father will speak to you next, and he may not be as lenient as I.” Nerdanel knows that lenience is not always her strong suit either—knows that it is quite a wild concept in a family of hot, Scots-Irish blood, but she does not stoop to their father’s depths of condemnation.
“We didn’t...” Amrod grumbles, ever the more stubborn, but Amras’s lip wobbles and he says,
“Father Llewellyn already scolded us, and told us we couldn’t serve anymore.”
“And is that not what you were trying to accomplish, my little imps?” Nerdanel’s voice softens, despite herself. She can’t be harsh with them.
They exchange a flutter of a glance.
They are keeping some secret.
They are her sons, and Nerdanel always knows.
“Bairns. What is this really about?”
(They are shifting apart, her boys. Not these two—not the two unruly copper heads, still with the hopeful gaps of missing teeth. But the others—is it any wonder, that Nerdanel speaks soft?)
“Maedhros could show us how to do it better,” Amrod mumbles, and Nerdanel’s heart seems to freeze in her chest.
ii.
Celegorm is still struggling against her, and Nerdanel cuffs him lightly on the back of the head.
“Enough!”
He slumps.
“Celegorm,” she says, as Fingon hands disgruntled Turgon a clean handkerchief for his bloody nose, “Apologize to your cousin at once.”
Celegorm’s eyes flare, blue-grey, and Nerdanel knows that he is getting to age where scoldings and love-taps will not be enough to quell his fury.
“Celegorm,” she says again, but it is only when Maedhros comes into the courtyard—this is all Fingolfin has between his house and stable, a courtyard—that Celegorm says stiffly,
“I am sorry.”
“You broke my nose,” Turgon sputters, and Fingon says,
“It isn’t broken, Turgon, do be quiet,” because Fingon likely does not want to be embarrassed in front of Maedhros.
Nerdanel is used to communicating through glances with her eldest, and she does so now. He nods, and turns his charming attentions to the soothing of his two cousins, while Nerdanel leads her third son away by the elbow.
If this were Maedhros (and it wouldn’t be), she would have only to say, I need you not to be the cause of unrest between our families, and if this were Maglor, she would say, please, for my sake.
But this is Celegorm, and he is, at twelve, a handful.
“What did Turgon say to vex you?” This, when they are standing near enough to the doors of the stable that Nerdanel can hear the whoosh of horse-breath behind her.
Celegorm scowls at his boots.
“Celegorm. You are wearing our welcome very thin here, and thus, my patience.” She narrows her eyes. Is that—a blush?
“It’s nothing.”
“Then why did you strike him?”
“Because he’s a fool.”
Patience, Nerdanel prays. Heaven grant me patience.
“I cannot have you resorting to violence,” she tells him, lacing her fingers together. Celegorm can hear the horses, too, and that should help to calm his nerves. “That is not our way.”
“Said I was never going to have a sweetheart,” Celegorm mutters at last, kicking at a clod of dirt.
This is unexpected. But Nerdanel, having been married to Feanor for almost two decades, schools her face into guileless calm. “Well, my love, you are rather young—”
“He thought I’d care,” Celegorm all but roars. “Thought I’d care about a—a girl.”
Maedhros, at seventeen, is already attracting the attention of every maidenly gaze within a mile’s radius, though his sense of decorum and good manners keep Nerdanel’s mother-heart from worrying overmuch. Romantic Maglor is likely to be much more of a trouble. But Celegorm? Celegorm, who makes mud-pies with the twins and has to be told very firmly to keep frogs out of the dining room?
Celegorm is years away from that—or so she thought.
“I thought I would never have a sweetheart,” Nerdanel confides. “No young man had ever looked my way before your father did.”
Celegorm stares at her, blank and uncomprehending. “I want a dog,” he says. “Just a dog. Not a wife. Can’t you ask Athair again?”
Nerdanel’s tenderness subsides, and she does laugh a little, now. This is a more familiar argument.
iii.
Anaire looks as if she might faint, when Maedhros deposits a blubbering Argon in her arms. No doubt Anaire and her fine organdy dresses will never come to Formenos again. Nerdanel feels a pang of shame, for she knows her whole life is to blame for the chaos that surrounds them, but—
"Curufin," Argon sobs. "Curufin locked me in, an', an' he wouldn't open the door—"
Curufin, who trailed along behind the search party with a face as innocent as new milk, attempts to slip away. Maglor collars him, and drags him protesting to Nerdanel, and Nerdanel must fold her hands into her apron to keep from shaking him.
"Curufin, is what your cousin says true?"
Curufin blinks slowly. He is too young to—to look like Feanor when he lies.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Curufin says, squirming against Maglor's hold, and Nerdanel feels the flare of anger, and her cupped palm smacks against his ear.
"Curufin!"
He cries—and there is more chaos, and Maedhros trying to distract Anaire, who looks as horrified as her little son. Nerdanel is stricken, and hugs Curufin's skinny little body to her breast, and he goes stiff and rigid against her.
When Feanor hears the story, he only laughs.
iv.
Another winter turns to spring. And in May, Nerdanel counts the days until her sons return. Maedhros is nineteen now, and Maglor is seventeen, and Nerdanel believes herself well able to read her sons' moods from their letters.
"How is he?" she asks, when the week of their arrival has come and gone, and Maedhros is on his hands and knees beside her in the garden, pulling up virulent June weeds.
"Who?"
"Macalaure."
"Oh." He looks a little surprised, and she wonders at it, for he has always anticipated the question—has always been so ready to put his concerns for his brothers above his own. "He is very well."
"He is behaving—properly?"
Maedhros tugs at a dandelion, and lays it aside almost as carefully as one would a flower on a grave. "Mamaí, has he given you cause to worry?"
"His letters have been absent-minded, and yours discreet. If he has had his head turned by a young lady—or by the company of young ladies generally—"
Maedhros swipes the back of his hand across his brow. "Not at all. Maglor is a perfect gentleman, I promise. When he does fall in love, I have no doubt it shall be after an appropriate interlude of Masses and minuets."
Nerdanel knows only that she found a crushed flowerbed and a hair ribbon threaded through the ruins, and it coincided with a ceili Feanor insisted on hosting for the local families, two weeks since. Maglor seems the most likely culprit, since Celegorm is still too young and Maedhros—
Maedhros is a perfect gentleman.
"As long as he has your example, my love," Nerdanel says warmly, "I shall not worry at all."
v.
Caranthir is her easiest child. Feanor disagrees; Feanor insists that he is moody and recalcitrant, and does not believe that he should be allowed the privilege of his own room. Nerdanel points out that he is a restless sleeper—as is his father, though she does not say that—and that the "room" is little more than a broom closet.
Feanor, for once, subsides.
"You are very quiet today," Nerdanel observes, when their hands are deep in flour and lard together, crafting the crusts for the latest round of pies. There is a baptism to be held today, and the family is poor. Nerdanel does what she can.
"What is a mortal sin?" Caranthir asks, brows and tone quite gruff, but his gaze cast down.
"A mortal sin?" Nerdanel's heart pinches a little, as she always does when she is reminded that her sons are growing up. It is an utter divorce of the soul from God. A spiritual deadness. "It is a grave wrong. Something we choose, knowing how it will hurt the Lord."
"What if don't choose it," Caranthir suggests, carefully. "What if...what if I can't stop choosing it?"
It is times like this that Nerdanel feels alone.
"I live with you day in and day out," she answers, low and calm. "I do not see you like this. What troubles you?"
"I am so angry all the time." Caranthir sighs explosively. "And I feel as if I don't want to forgive anyone, ever. Not the twins, or Curufin, or—"
Athair, Nerdanel's mind supplies, before she can prevent the thought. Two days past, just before Maedhros and Maglor departed after Christmas, Feanor and Maedhros had a rare quarrel. Nerdanel could not hear what went on behind the closed parlor door, but whatever it was, it stoked Feanor's rage to white heat.
Caranthir had cried.
"Forgiveness is a long road," she tells her middle child, who looks nothing like her except that he, like her, is rather plain. A sparrow among bright songbirds. Nerdanel adds, "It is not a sin, to find that road difficult."
vi.
"We will never have to spend summers apart again," Maedhros coaxes, as Nerdanel clucks over which quilts it is practical to bring and which must be packed away—forever. "Think of that, mamaí."
"I know, I know," Nerdanel murmurs, and then realizes that it does no good to complain aloud, to sound unhappy, especially not to him. She sets down her bundle of quilts and throws her arms around him instead, knowing that the touch will steady whatever doubt formed in him to answer her frown. "I shall be grateful for every summer, and care not for earthly things."
"Am I not an earthly thing?" Maedhros queries, light and quiet, against her hair.
"You are an angel," Nerdanel says, and she releases him, and if she does her best to forget the past—perhaps she need not worry what lessons, over time, she taught her eldest.