Work Text:
When the skillet is hot, Nerdanel drops in a knuckle of butter and lets it sizzle. The basket of eggs beside her is no less full than it should be, since her hens are setting on spring time. She cracks a dozen over the cast-iron and listens as the whites shrivel and sing.
It has been two days.
Two days of April, in which rain falls relentless. The sky is torn open, gaping and weeping, and the grey darkness of morning and night seems to promise mockingly,
I will always be with you.
Nerdanel will not return the favor. She does not weep. She did not weep in the empty house, when the sons they shared bid him farewell.
It is God’s truth that she does not weep for all that first and longest week.
“Mamaí,” her eldest says, tall enough to fill the doorway more than anyone in the family but Feanor, yet still so slight of frame, “What did you say to—"
Her body, once full and soft and beloved, is like a bundle of kindling now. She feels the snap, the crumbling ash. “Maedhros. Whatever passed between me and your father isn’t yours to concern yourself with.”
He shifts from one foot to the other. There is a bright blush rising, separate from the sunburn on his cheeks. Nerdanel can see it on his throat, his ears.
“Beg pardon,” he murmurs. “I—the twins—they said you told them that they might go to bed without bathing, and I…”
Nerdanel knots her hands in her apron. “Maitimo, I…I am sorry—”
“No,” he says, with his father’s quickness. “I shouldn’t have troubled you.”
The servants are gone. She never wanted hired help, as it was; she was a Scotswoman. He had insisted that, with seven sons, she could use the assistance of maids.
Nerdanel paid the farmgirls their full week’s wage from her pocket-purse. Then, she retired to her kitchen, for it was baking day. The boys have eaten; Maitimo took the younger boys to hunt for frogs, his slate abandoned on the dining table. Maglor is at the piano, picking out a melody of his own with maddening precision.
Nerdanel kneads her bread fiercely. It is hers again, this bread. This windowed room. When the weather turns, sun shall creep in once more, begging forgiveness for its time away.
She had held him very tenderly, the night before—
The night before.
She had thought him frightened, though she never expected him to admit it. Whenever his mind and memory overwhelmed him, filling him with hints for a dark future, he trembled in both waking and sleeping. He began many works and finished none. Even now, at the backdoor, a heap of fishing tackle sprawled in disarray with its own story to tell. He had vowed that his eldest should learn to fish properly, Wednesday last, but they had returned before an hour was gone.
No fish.
Nerdanel slams the dough with the heel of her hand.
All her life since the day she met him, all her hopes since she chose which to lay aside, all her worries given new foundation. This is life with Feanor, and she has rewarded him for it. Seven sons in ten years. Her body changing as if shaped by one or another of their tools. Her weariness, her grief, her loneliness—all paling and fading before his light.
She could never deny him for long, heart or hearth.
Feanor did not tell her where he was going. He took the money locked in the hidden chamber of his celebrated parlor clock. He tried to make her kiss him, but did not linger when she would not comply.
He did not kiss Maitimo, either. She saw as much through the kitchen window. She wondered why, without the humility to ask.
Was it love, or the absence of love?
She expects Curufin to ask where Athair is, for Athair is his favorite. But her little mystery is quiet, sucking his thumb for all that he is five years old and broke the habit some time ago. The twins, in bright contrast, want to sit her in lap together. As soon as she has lifted them up, however, they fight, and she must quell the temptation to push them away.
Maglor and Celegorm are playing a game on the braided rug that is sure to end in tears. Caranthir crouches beside them, disregarded by his brothers.
Maitimo is doing his sums, the chalk scratching lightly, but Nerdanel knows, too, that he is watching her.
Easy to be angry, remembering the oneness of herself and her child-husband, when the redheaded babe was all they had. Easy to be…comforted, if she looks at him through an artist’s eyes, filling out the delicate limbs with a little strength, casting the sharpness of his features as growth rather than youth.
She thinks of rations. Rations of beef; how long they can afford to feed the milk-cows and whether it would be best to butcher them; potatoes; the herbs on the windowsill.
Feanor took the money that, by rights, his…but she has a garden, doesn’t she? She has seven sons, and the eldest is not really a child anymore.
They can survive.
(How long.)
She wonders if he told his father.
She wonders—why.
His life is full of letters, full of treatises and debates. The corners of his arrogance are dark with lurking enemies. Nerdanel presses her fingers to her lips, in nightly prayer.
The week ends. She washes the twins’ curls, combs them straight, and tilts the infamous bowl over their heads in turn. The youngest boys always have the least patience, so they are tended to first, for washing or grooming. When she reaches Maglor, he whines, and she relents, turning to Maitimo.
But her eldest shrugs, twisting a red-goldy lock around his craftsman’s forefinger. “Maglor and I can manage, Mamai.”
She looks at them: wrists and ankles bared and in need of a seamstress’s hand. She has a heap of mending. A pair of Feanor’s trousers can be cut down for Maedhros. Maglor can inherit his brother’s clothes.
It all goes very slowly, what with the endless storm. And then: the thunder takes shape as a face plucked from the past.
She says who are you, as if she does not know.
It’s no trouble, my love, you needn’t—I wouldn’t have let him hurt you, I promise, Maitimo, you’re only a child. Only a child.
“Will you always be with me?” she whispers, scornfully, at the moon and the cloud-clear air.
And then, because she is alone, she weeps.
.
“Your boys were so very young,” Indis says carefully, “When they came here.”
“Yes,” Nerdanel agrees. “Too young.” Then, because she deserves this punishment—“Will you tell me about them? Please?”