Work Text:
February 8, 1853
Another disappointing sojourn to Washington. Thrice in two months. All I have learned is that our capital is a city of deaf ears and unfriendly hearts.
Earwen tells me that I need not go so often. That I must take my time. If she is urging caution rather than forthright action, I should heed her.
I should heed her, anyway. When has she steered me wrong?
Yet a man must not always let others lead him, even when he has the most estimable wife in the world. I know that now, as I never did before. N ot in forty years and more did I learn such a lesson. After all, I let my brothers and my children leave without me.
Who knows if the rest are dead, along with Feanor? Certainly I do not. Cannot. I forfeited knowledge along with action—forfeited my golden son and daughter along with action. I said I would remain, and considered that to be wisdom.
Now I leave my mother and Nerdanel, and Earwen most faithful, with assurances that I shall do something for them. Action is a hard thing, I find: I return empty-handed.
It has been like this: as soon as I mention the name Melkor Bauglir to anyone of authority, the conversation is over. These men who serve as senators or scholars or upper-echelon constabulary (I mean the military) do not dare acknowledge what a blemish he is on the East, I suppose, since they have sent him to rule the West.
Oh, bitter, bitter lessons, that have grief as a teacher! I am angry, and afraid.
February 20, 1853
Finrod’s birthday has passed. I was in a worse stupor on that day—otherwise leaving it unmarked—than I have been since the news of Feanor’s death. It was as if my son, twenty-four years old now, reached out his hand to me through the miles and months between us, and asked me to give an account of myself.
Nay, Finrod. It is not I who must speak, but you. Tell me what course you would take, beloved boy—tell me all that you learned long ago in childhood, when you were my brave light burning in darkness. I was sitting helplessly outside your door, prattling like the boy I felt I still was.
March 16, 1853
The name Tulkas was spoken to me today—Alexander Tulkas, prominent leader at West Point and known for the training he oversaw in the last war. I did not know, in truth, what a military man could do for me, until it was suggested that he might have different opinions on the subject of Bauglir than everybody else I’d seen. Thank God for loose-tongued clerks!
One cannot hope for another such talker, though. I do not know how I shall learn more, or how to approach the man himself, but this news is something.
I cannot be too good for a something.
April 16, 1853
A month has passed, and no luck with this Commander Tulkas. He is at West Point still, but I do not know how to reach him. Not for want of asking.
I found my sister in low spirits today, on account of another birthday—this one, Maedhros’. He is twenty-five years old, if he lives. I find that it comforts Nerdanel to sit beside me in Mother’s tearoom, not drinking tea, always, but resting her head against my shoulder. If she can be reminded of my brother in even this small respect, I consider it a great honor, a debt repaid to my kind father.
Oh, how much we have lost.
June 12, 1853
Months of begging by post and card, but the man might as well be in a lockbox. So I thought, at any rate, but today: a reply. I am to call on him at West Point, where he spends most of his time, though we are (thankfully) not at war.
June 13
Commander Tulkas is a formidable man—Father would have liked him, or stormed at him. He is decidedly German, not a drop of Irish blood in him. I appreciate the forthrightness, but he had little to say to me. He only cautioned me against poking my nose about where the railroad was concerned. I assured him that my visits to Washington had been investigative only, concerning family matters, but he saw past my dissembling at once.
“You think this Melkor Bauglir a villain,” he said—not a question.
“I have much I wish to know,” I answered. What can you tell me?
“I can tell you that I arrested him ten years ago,” he said, and smiled—sourly, I thought. “I was with the police, then, in between my military duties.”
“You fought in the Mexican War,” I said, for I knew that much and wished to pay my respects to the man’s experience, if not to that history.
“I did not fight,” he said. “My fighting days are over.”
I told him that I was sorry for prying, but I needed to know everything he recalled about Bauglir —his criminality, in particular.
Tulkas looked at me out of the hardest eyes I have ever seen—they might have been blue, but were faded to a very light grey. No storm in them—not like Feanor’s. These were ice.
“It will do you no more good to know everything, than to know nothing,” he said.
Then it was over. I forgot my manners, nearly, pleading—but he was immovable.
I return defeated.
Defeated, again.
July 4, 1853
Tulkas is not the only bird in the bush. That is what Finrod would say.
Get up, Father. Try again. If laziness isn’t a virtue, don’t cultivate it.
When I close my eyes, I can almost see his face. But to write down the words he would speak, I must have my eyes, my mind, my heart open.
Grief has been a harsh teacher, but I will not take despair as my lesson.