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Tr: There’s not a wise man without faults.
Fingon is nervous all through a Sunday dinner, poking at his food instead of devouring it with his usual relish. Fingolfin would ask if he is feeling ill, but that seems more a mother’s province, and Anaire does not appear to be concerned.
At last, Fingon sips his (watered) wine and clears his throat. “Father,” he says, and he is being careful, that cautiousness is not natural to him—“Father, might I invite a guest for supper tomorrow?”
On Monday evenings, Fingolfin often dines with his banker, a few lawyers, and anyone else long since established as a worthy connection. Fingolfin is (at his best) not a fool.
“Whom did you plan to invite?” he asks, staring deliberately at plate, rather than son.
A little pause. Fingon takes another sip of wine.
“Maedhros.”
Finwe had one sister, Lalwen, and no brothers. As such, there are certain lights unknown to him. This is a belief Fingolfin would never own to in his family’s hearing, but knowledge of brothers came first to sons rather than father.
“Feanor is angry at the world,” Finarfin said once, when he was but fifteen and Fingolfin little older. “You oughtn’t take it to heart as you do.”
Finwe said, rather, “I wish you could both be kind to each other,” and Fingolfin tasted the bitterness of those words for years.
Feanor’s decision to send Maedhros and Maglor for education in the city came as a shock, since Feanor despised New York and its political niceties. Fingolfin savored the hypocrisy, a little—but now not even that is left to judge, for he sent Fingon away not for schooling but to enjoy a holiday and feast-day with a family not quite his own.
Feanor’s family.
Maedhros and Maglor have never visited Fingolfin’s home in their single year spent sharing Finwe’s household. Fingolfin knows exactly who is to blame for this sudden change: a mirror would answer the question ably.
Anaire smiles gently from the far end of the table. Turgon and Irisse are strangely quiet, eyes darting between their father and their eldest brother as if they know there is some tension afoot.
Argon is poking at his steamed carrots with a frown.
“Very well,” Fingolfin says, misliking the feeling that Feanor is laughing at him, perhaps from behind the silk-stitched screen, poised by the long bay windows, that keeps away the January chill. “I have no objection.”
Fingon glows.
Fingon is so easily made happy, but not always by what his father would wish. “Truly? Thank you, Father. Thank you very much.”
A shadow does flicker across the silk screen, then, but it is just the trick of a guttering candle.
“You must make my excuses to your cousin.” Fingolfin hopes to approximate some of the smoothness that comes naturally to his father and Feanor both. “As you know, I shall be otherwise engaged.”
As you know.
Fingon blushes, just a little.
As it happens—and Anaire is kind enough not to suggest, as you planned it, husband—Fingolfin is at home when his nephew arrives. His hat and cane are on his arm, but he loiters in the hall so that he may hear the maid answering the bell.
“Uncle Fingolfin,” Maedhros says, bowing, and not looking surprised to see him at all. Maedhros, at sixteen, combines the most striking features of his parents: he has his mother’s flaming hair and melting smile, his father’s delicate angles and arresting eyes. Fingolfin is torn, as he ever is with Feanor, between lauding him and loathing him.
“Maedhros. Fingon tells me your family is well; I hope his report is accurate?”
“Very. I received a letter from my mother just this morning. She always sends her fondest greetings to Grandfather and all our family.”
Ours.
“Thank her for her consideration,” Fingolfin answers. His voice sounds stiff and heavy in his ears. “Unfortunately, I will not be—”
“Maitimo!” Fingon crows, barreling down the stairs at a precipitous rate. “I’m so glad you’re here—quick, you must come in and see our rooms, mine and Turgon’s, and Argon’s, which used to be the nursery and—Father.”
Fingolfin tries not to show his discomfort at how his own presence drives his son to a skidding halt.
“I was just going,” Fingolfin says. A stranger in his own house.
(He has felt like this before.)
Maedhros bows again. He must come here on orders, must have charmed Fingon into offering the invitation, so as to discover every hidden flaw, every weakness—
But no. Feanor has never cared for deep inquiry into Fingolfin’s failings. He has only ever been certain of them.
Outside, the wind is sharp and cold, each breath like frost-limned pain. Fingolfin wraps his muffler tightly about his throat and reminds himself that guesswork is desperate; that it offers no reward.
Maedhros is a common enough fixture after that.
“You will be hopeless, of course,” Feanor says, his dark head bent and face thus invisible, as he laces his soft shoes.
Fingolfin can scarcely breathe.
(Why does despair feel the same as hope, and shame the same as affection, at least in his lungs?)
If he thanks Feanor for teaching him, he will seem like the begging child whom he yearns, at eleven, not to be. If he says he does not care if he is hopeless or not, he will seem ungrateful.
“I’ll try not to disappoint you,” he says instead.
Feanor lifts his head, and almost smiles.
Maedhros declaiming Shakespeare in a Scottish accent rich as plumcake, Maedhros making intricate shadow puppets with his fingers until even Turgon is coaxed into a smile, Maedhros telling ghost stories that are eerie and fantastic and strangely beautiful like Feanor’s—
Maedhros laughing as Fingolfin is sure Feanor never has.
“Maglor has not joined us yet,” Fingolfin says. Too bluntly, of course, but he is trying to grow used to that. To the way that his words will never flow with the quicksilver grace of his half-brother or his half-brother’s son. “Do his lessons keep him so occupied?”
“He is an extraordinary talent,” Maedhros answers. Confidence, not arrogance: difficult to achieve at sixteen. No—seventeen. It is April, and Maedhros is seventeen. “I would not interfere with the work of genius.” Would you? He does not add, but the quirk of his lips might as well.
Feanor never doubted that his children would outstrip their masters.
Feanor wears his talent like a crown in a kingless country. Fingolfin would hate him for it, if he could.
“I don’t fiddle half so well as Maglor, Father,” Fingon admits placidly.
“You don’t fiddle well at all,” Turgon grumbles, and Irisse giggles and so Fingolfin has to say,
“Children,” a little severely, before he can say anything else. “We have enjoyed hearing him play at your grandfather’s house.”
“So have I,” Maedhros agrees, warm with affection. “But you ought not to be so hard on yourself, cousin. Your accomplishments in music are greater than mine.” He adds, all immutable ease: “Athair discerned early how limited my talents were, in that regard.”
“There are more beats than the music will tell an untrained ear,” Feanor says. “It is a dancer’s duty to listen for them. Of course, you are not destined to be a very great dancer, but—yes, like that.”
“I think I prefer reels to jigs,” Fingolfin announces breathlessly, so that he does now show how proud he is at having made Feanor interrupt himself.
“The hornpipe is better than both,” Feanor answers, with a superior smile. “But you are far from that, yet.”
“He is so much more pleasant to us than Feanor ever was,” Anaire murmurs, looking at him by means of the vanity glass. She is unbraiding her long hair, and the way the smooth dark tresses slip over her shoulders sets Fingolfin’s heart racing faster, even now. “Almost loving. Yet, I cannot trust him. Can you?”
He would answer no, save for the fact that loyalty wars within him at the prospect of such a brutally direct question. “He is only a boy.” Seventeen is still very young, is it not?
Not quite a man.
“I will entertain him so long as it keeps our boy happy,” Anaire continues, “But to think that he is watching us—oh, Fingolfin, if you even suspect for a moment that this friendship may someday hurt Fingon, will you promise to put an end to it?”
Fingolfin’s throat is strangely tight. He says, “I will protect our son.”
“There is a lightness to the form of these steps, but it comes naturally, or not at all.”
Maedhros does not confine his visits to Monday. Often enough, he can be found spending Saturday forenoons in the tearoom, orchestrating late Friday frolics up and down the broad stairs. He teaches chess to Fingon and Turgon both, and next to Irisse when she commands it. He carries Argon on his back until Fingolfin must grant a smile to the sweet tenor of his youngest’s laugh.
Maglor begins to make the occasional appearance, and that is something of a comfort, even though Fingolfin half-believes it to be a calculated move. Maglor is like Feanor in face and darker mood, but he has not the swelling sea-strong wave of charm that Maedhros unleashes so effortlessly.
Maglor brings his fiddle with him, and plays after supper until Anaire’s eyes shine. She will forget her grudges for the love of beautiful things.
Fingolfin’s hands clench on his knees.
“Uncle,” Maedhros says softly, having crept up beside him unnoticed, “If you would like to put in a word for Fingon’s with Maglor’s music instructor, I’m sure I could see it done.”
His smooth brow and curling lashes give him such an affect of innocence. And what, really, has Fingolfin seen but innocence? Feanor has written no scathingly knowledgeable letter. Finwe has issued no worried reprimand.
Maedhros has either found nothing untoward to report of Fingolfin’s stiff manners and deficient household, or his object is not to spy at all.
Fingolfin is not sure what which of the two outcomes he would prefer. Pride suggests the first. As for his heart—
Feanor drops his shoes with a careless clatter. “That’s enough,” he says, lips thin, but eyes afire as always.
“Enough?” Fingolfin chews his lip. A habit learned from Feanor, not that that matters.
Feanor shrugs. “You’ll do.”
“Next week Maglor will bring his fiddle,” comes Maedhros’s voice, “And then I don’t doubt you’ll feel it come together.”
“I’ll try not to disappoint you,” Fingon answers.
Fingolfin stands stone-still outside the door of his own library.
An instant later, there comes the hesitant tap-tap of wood-soled shoes on wood-planed floor.
“A brush to start. Not a treble—those have two sounds.”
“Two taps?” Fingon asks.
“In a way. Here, it’s better if you watch me.”
Fingolfin listens, as Fingon must also, to the delicate staccato. It seems to be both endless, and over too quickly.
“It’s called the Blackbird. They’re eager, sprightly things, you know.” Maedhros laughs. “Rather like you.”
“Am I not cano anymore?” Fingon sounds hurt.
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll always be that.”
Maedhros asking Fingolfin his opinion on the best vintages. Maedhros promising to teach Argon how to shoot, only when you’re old enough, of course. Maedhros grinning with just as much sweetness as shame, when Fingolfin catches him in the middle of a striking Finwe impression.
Or maybe, Fingolfin reflects later, the impression was not of Finwe—but of himself.
Easter, a year later, and Feanor is in a fouler temper than usual. Fingolfin doubts that he will come to the city for a holiday again, even for a solemnity. Feanor hates all that he encounters here too much.
Maedhros, who will be eighteen two weeks hence, is a little pinched and nervous, not at all like he is during his evenings at home.
It isn’t his home. You know that.
“Fingolfin,” Feanor exclaims, needle-sharp. “My, you are grown greyer than a fox. Do you not think so, Nelyafinwe?”
Fingolfin does not care if Feanor thinks him old. Nor does he understand Feanor’s fickle favoriting of his children’s many names.
“Uncle Fingolfin,” Maedhros says, bowing slightly. “I hope your family is well.”
Maedhros joined them for Palm Sunday dinner, a week before.
“They are, as you see.” Fingolfin is waiting. Waiting for the insult; ready, almost, to accept the faint consolation that Maedhros appears at least to dislike his task of exposing years’ worth of insight. “But you—”
“I have scarcely seen them since Christmas,” Maedhros says, very somber and pleasant as he lies.
Feanor lifts his chin. “No doubt Fingolfin keeps them slaving away at their slates, training them in the business of accounts. Too busy for society. Certainly—” this with a glance at Aredhel, who dashes by in pursuit of rowdy Celegorm—“for style.”
Fingolfin, for once, scarcely hears the words. He wonders what has come over Maedhros.
He never exactly finds out. Maedhros is absent from their family table for three weeks. Then Fingon, quite cheerfully, announces that Maedhros and Maglor are moving into their family house at Valinor Park.
“Uncle Feanor believes Maedhros is old enough to manage it,” Fingon says. “May I take supper there on Fridays, Father? I promise I shan’t be remiss in my studies.”
(Fingolfin says yes.)
Maedhros attending Sunday Mass with violet shadows beneath his eyes. Maedhros laughing with Fingon and starting in on his second bourbon before Finwe even has dinner served. Maedhros—
That good-for-nothing nephew of yours, Maedhros Feanorian. Goddamn him, Fingolfin, if I catch him near my daughter again, even your good will won’t stop me from—
Guesswork is desperate; it offers no reward.
When Maedhros lies, he looks exactly the same as when he tells the truth.