Work Text:
For the high men of Gondor already looked askance at the Northmen among them; and it was a thing unheard of before that the heir to the crown, or any son of the King, should wed one of lesser and alien race. — Appendix A
Osgiliath, T.A. 1261
The circle of emptiness around Vidumavi is so neat that she can almost imagine a line has been drawn on the floor, a formal border laid down with precision and over which all the other women have agreed they will not tread. The room teems with people — high born ladies, giddy daughters, regal matriarchs, attendants and servants — so tightly packed that most attempts at movement require raised arms, sucked in bellies, quick turns of the hips. And yet there is still this single unfilled space, a perfect ring of enticing relief from the crush of other bodies but occupied by one alone. It is a moat of isolation, crossed only by the unsubtle stares of the curious and the disdainful, and Vidumavi is stranded at its center.
That the existence of the moat is no longer surprising does not make the humiliation of it any less. This is a room where she is meant to hold power and preside in authority, but instead she is hemmed in, exposed like a hare that has been flushed from its burrow and stands paralyzed in the open, surrounded by the trappers and their snares. She is the daughter of Vidugavia, a princess of Rhovanion, leader of the hunt, master of the spear. Some day she will be the queen of Gondor. But at this moment, she is just a lonely, tired woman with no one to talk to and no idea what to do with her hands as she waits for the mercy of the bell that will bring this formal appearance to an end at last.
She can feel the first damp hints of perspiration forming on her brow and neck as she stands, the heat of the small space wrapping its sweaty fingers around her throat, and she knows that whispers will soon follow. Yet another day when the queen-to-be shows herself to be coarse and undignified. Dark, wet swatches appear under the arms of her dress and the curls on her head turn slowly from carefully placed ringlets into a halo of golden chaos. But it cannot be helped, and to think about it, allowing the fiery burn of embarrassment to flood her cheeks, will only make it worse still.
She knows that she will never please these refined, elegant women who keep their careful distance. If she wore the light and airy dresses like those that help to cool them now, they would be scandalized by the sight of the delicate green patterns that wind their way up her bare arms like the fronds of a fern or the inky black horses that gallop just below her collarbone, racing from one shoulder to the other. But the price of avoiding that judgment is to invite a different form, to be cocooned in sweat-soaked fabric in the swelter of her second Gondorian summer, a season that chokes and oppresses like nothing she has ever known. She longs to tear at that fabric, to claw off the heavy silks and the high neck, and to run free again in the riding pants and tunic of her home, hair in a simple braid that serves its function without further expectation of style or grace. But that is not to be, and so she waits those final excruciating minutes bound in the restraints of disappointed expectations.
When the bell sounds at last and the audience is over, the crowd parts ahead of her, clearing an open path to the door. Knees bend and heads bow as she passes, customs of deference in this land that have always made her uncomfortable. She sees little honor in respect that is mandated by law rather than earned through deeds, and she need not have fully mastered the language to know that any respect paid to her is of the most obligatory kind. It is obvious in the knowing smirks of contempt and the exasperated sighs of dismissal that she can feel like a shove in the back as she walks. She can sense it even in the eyes cast downward in shame by the few who know better but lack the courage to show it in a crowd where theirs is not the dominant opinion.
*****
The hallways back to her private rooms are empty, the solitude of her echoing footsteps here a relief rather than a verdict. Freed from further commitments for the rest of the day, she will spend it gratefully with one who is always happy to see her. One whose guileless love and affection know no limitations and make no distinctions for status and standing, only for kindness and care.
All of six years old, she finds him playing alone in his chamber under the watchful eye of both a governess and a guard. Blissfully unaware that others consider his very existence to be an offense to the glory of Gondor, right now her son is confidently commanding its army in miniature, positioning little carved soldiers on a map with care, the tip of his tongue protruding from the side of his mouth in concentration. She watches him silently from the doorway, the products of his bountiful imagination unspooling in expressive gestures and faces as his wooden army sweeps easily across the paper Anduin, before she is at last perceived.
Eldacar, the governess says, look who has come. But he doesn’t look up, for he doesn’t yet recognize that name as his own. It’s not the name that has been whispered gently to him every morning since before he could make memories, or the name that was carried on the Northern winds to call him in from play each evening. It’s not the name he shares with his grandfather, in meaning if not in tongue, or the name that is etched upon his mother’s wrist, a rising sun and a sharpened spear that he likes to trace with his little fingers while she tells him tales of their people. Some day Eldacar will mean something to him, and he will know what it is to bear a name of the House of Isildur. Perhaps he will be proud. But he will never be Eldacar to his mother. Her happy, squirmy, mischievous, loving little boy only has one name that will ever sound natural in her ear or right in her heart.
Vinitharya. It’s barely more than a murmur, but it brings his head up with a joyful snap even as the governess frowns her disapproval. In an instant, he is on his feet, arms wrapped around his mother’s legs and a rush of giddy news pouring forth from his lips — one of his teeth has gone wiggly, he has grown a whole inch since the last time his height was marked, black cats have been prowling around in the courtyard outside his window. If she closes her eyes, the rolling cadence of her homeland in his high, clear voice sounds like the clamor of her brother’s children piled around the golden glow of the hearth on a winter’s night, and the memory both stings and soothes. She knows she should correct him, steer him to the Sindarin or Westron that he speaks with almost equal ease, but she decides to allow herself this one small comfort, for today at least.
She dismisses the governess, though not the guard, and takes her little boy for a walk along the river, hoping a breeze from the water will bring a reprieve from the stifling heat. Scampering ahead of her, stopping often to point at a diving spoonbill or to wave at the sailors aboard the high-masted ships at anchor, he looks much like any other child of Osgiliath. Straight dark hair that already runs to his shoulders, light grey eyes, a lithe, tall frame even at his young age. This pleases her, despite Valacar’s wishes to see more of his wife’s features in the face of their son. There is safety in familiarity, she tells him. It is a lesson she has learned in a way that Valacar never can. She feels it in her bones any time the guards end up a few paces too far behind and the streets become unexpectedly full of jostling, unsmiling strangers, a faceless crowd where her flaxen head is knowable at the quickest of glances.
But even his familiarity will not protect Vinitharya forever. He is marked as different, no matter the color of his hair or whether he, too, proves to be beardless like his father. Already he is called the eider princeling — after the ducks that come to Cair Andros and sneak their eggs into the nests of other birds, mimicking their appearance in an attempt to pass off their young as belonging to the flock — and those who wish him ill will make it their business to know exactly who he is, what he looks like and how to reach him. The very idea wrenches something deep inside her chest, the twisting of a knife that has been buried there since the first time she was forced to admit that her son had been born with enemies and that she couldn’t hope to shield him forever. All she can hope, as he clambers happily along in front of her, is that he will be ready when the moment inevitably comes.
She keeps to the riverside quays where a few flowering trees grow, their branches dripping pink petals into the lazy current, and she drinks in the rare sight of the leaves and the bark and the blossoms, anything with color, softness, irregularity. It is a rare place in the city that gives a hint of home, the loveliness of the natural world as wrought by the gods. Elsewhere Osgiliath is a work entirely of Man’s design, tall walls of cold white stone reaching far overhead and rigid lines of neat black paving squares marching off into the distance underfoot. There is a stark formality that covers the city like armor, hard and unyielding. She longs instead for the rich golds of Rhovanion’s vales, the sun-dappled greens of its forests, the gentle ripple of grasses that bend and flow in the wind just as a cloud of starlings wheels back and forth across the sky. She longs for a place where she can breathe again, free of the capital’s thick, grey air that is too often choked with dirty haze that drifts from nearby Mordor.
Valacar has tried and tried again to meet this need for her, promising the fragrant orchards of Lossarnach, the rocky riverbeds of Lebennin, the wooded valleys of Lamedon, but the time is never right. Things are still too tense in the south, their advisors say. The opposition will break like a fever, but until then you must be patient. He labors long into the night, consulting maps, writing letters, seeking support, calling on old friendships. But though he is a prince, with money and soldiers and law on his side, the minds of others are beyond his power. He cannot pry open those that are determined to remain shut. And so days become weeks, weeks become months, the fever still burns, and here she remains, encased in the city’s refuge of stone walls and looking to a few individual trees for the comfort of nature.
Just off the path ahead of her, a group of young mothers sit with infants in their laps, bread and fruit and bottles of rich red wine spread out around them. They laugh and smile at one another’s children, reaching with affectionate familiarity to squeeze a tiny foot or smooth a downy wisp of hair. Vinitharya’s gaze locks on to this little group, fascinated as he’s always been with babies, but she steers him aside, making a wide loop to stay well clear of eyes and ears and mouths that she does not know or trust. He obeys without complaint for now, but some day he will stop first to ask questions, to probe reasoning, to wonder why his mother’s instinct is always for distance and solitude.
The trilling laughter of the other women fades behind her, sending a pang through her heart even as she strides purposefully away. It is the sound of afternoons gossiping with her brother’s wife as they cleaned the boar from that day’s hunt or mornings chatting with her aunts and cousins while braiding each other’s hair. Valacar is precious to her, but he cannot replace the companionship of other women, the easy comfort and intuitive understanding of someone else who has lived life as she has, shared her experiences, known her roles. The loss of that companionship is like the loss of a limb, a critical part of her that is now gone but whose absence she feels through the phantom pains that constantly remind her that it used to be there.
*****
She had tried, on first arrival, to find those relationships again. She had met every eye with confidence, greeted every new face with warmth. Reserve was not in her nature, and she was quick to offer friendship to all those who seemed clever or interesting. But those offers were rarely reciprocated, if they were tolerated at all, and even the few who seemed willing to engage with her usually held back, reluctant to entangle themselves in the controversy around her or fearful of the air of danger that followed in that controversy’s wake.
She wasn’t raised to easily accept defeat, and she changed her approach many times, hoping to find the one that might unlock the acceptance of her adopted people. She stopped embracing new acquaintances, having learned that the Gondorians frowned on casual touch from strangers. She no longer invited women to join her daily ride after discovering most of them had never even sat in a saddle and had no inclination to do so. She dulled the parts of herself that stood out the most — the parts that she liked best — and tried instead to mold herself in their image. She took up their pastimes, doted on their children, followed their manners, struggled through their stories and opinions in a language that was still foreign to her. But in exchange, she got thin smiles, rushed visits, whispered asides in long, formal words she didn’t yet understand. She always took note of those words to ask Valacar about them later, writing them down carefully in her hesitant, beginner’s script. He would look at her list — opportunist, unsophisticated, usurper — and grimace, crumpling the paper in his fist and pulling her into his arms with a fierceness that told her all she needed to know.
Eventually, she stopped trying. A heart can only offer itself so many times before the ache of isolation becomes preferable to the sting of rejection. She withdrew, no longer looking for friendship and no longer surprised when it was withheld. When Valacar’s cousin avoided her eye in the feast hall, she avoided his, too. When the ladies of court cut off their lighthearted banter the moment she stepped into the room, she swallowed whatever greeting or kind word she might have offered. She nearly mastered the art of outward indifference, learning to take every feeling and thought off her face and replace them instead with studied neutrality, until the image she presented bore so little resemblance to her true self that she could at least find comfort in the idea that her enemies didn’t even know who they hated.
Still, even with enough experience to have accepted her situation, she has never been able to truly understand it. She cannot make sense of why others flee from her approach, scattering like deer in the forest that have caught an unsettling scent on the wind. Is her father not Gondor’s ally, fighting side by side in common cause against its enemies? How are her people good enough to protect Gondor, to suffer for it, to die in its name, but not to live in honor within it? If Gondor’s future king has chosen her to be his queen, how can that mean so little to those who are bound in allegiance to that king?
She has heard the answers, Valacar’s stammering attempts to explain his countrymen, and at first she laughed, so absurd did they sound. Mixed blood, lesser Men, waning heritage. The idea that favor and worthiness cannot be earned by action and intention but are instead given for the achievement of having been born in the right land and to the right ancestor. But it took only one look at Valacar’s doleful eyes, his reddened cheeks, to see that it was no jest. She cannot win their trust because she is not meant to have it. To admit that she is good enough is to admit that they have equals. They will do whatever they must to cling to their old beliefs, he says. They will knock you down just so that they can complain that you are on your knees. Do not look for sense or logic in their thoughts, for there is none. It is some consolation to know that he is right, but being right does not feel less lonely.
She can see that it pains Valacar both to watch his wife and son be shunned and to accept that his own people, even his own family, are responsible for it. He can remember clearly enough the enthusiastic embrace he received back in Rhovanion and the unrestrained joy of their wedding day. All of Bagmē Blōma joined in the celebration, and they had laughed and smiled til their faces ached. They danced and toasted and sang in a wide open field lit by a hundred burning lanterns and carpeted by a thousand fragrant wildflowers, and when it turned cold in the small hours, they bundled themselves in furs and sang and toasted all the louder. Valacar spent half the night wrapped in the arms of one drunk Northman or another, all pounding fists against his back and booming out oaths of unending friendship, and when he returned their oaths in the tongue of the North, heavily accented but clear, the echoing cheers might have shaken the moon from its perch.
Talking of that night now always brings a smile to his face, but it’s a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. She can read the thought that he holds inside, the searing shame of the contrast to the lives they lead in his homeland, among those who made and raised him. She has no remedy for the pain this causes, the weight of which she can see on his creased brow and clenched jaw and in the way he plods slowly back and forth across the room at night when he thinks she is sleeping. And so his stolen joy becomes yet one more grievance that she would lay at the feet of Gondor.
*****
Vinitharya pulls her hand as they walk, towing her along toward the bridge that leads to the Dome of Stars, his favorite place in the city. He could lay for hours on the hard granite floor, gazing up at the celestial splendor that spills across the brightly decorated ceiling. He rarely sees the beauty of the night sky above Osgiliath, where so much is drowned out by the glow of the watch-fires, but the delicately gilded gold and silver mosaics of the Dome feed his curiosity and his imagination. He delights in pointing out the shapes his father has taught him — Soronúmë the eagle, Menelmacar the swordsman, Wilwarin the butterfly — and sometimes she shows him a few of the Northmen’s star shapes as well. Even more, he loves to pick out new creatures and figures, neither of Gondor nor Rhovanion but of his own special making. She likes these best, the whimsical inventions of a young and unburdened mind, unafraid to follow its fanciful impulses even here in one of Gondor’s most sacred places.
The keeper at the door nods wordlessly as they enter, well used to their regular appearances. Any other mother with an eager child would be turned aside, left to find their own inspirations elsewhere, but the loremasters and scribes who work at the Dome always give way for her. She knows this is not a favor of affection. They may have been ordered by Valacar to accommodate his wife, or, perhaps, her guards have smoothed the way, finding their jobs easier when she and her son spend time in quiet, controlled spaces.
It is only two months, after all, since a plot was exposed by a careless comment uttered in the wrong place, and the conspirators escaped to Pelargir, where they promptly vanished into the city’s anonymous sprawl of dockyards, markets and close, crowded homes. Without a guilty party in hand, the risk of violence still follows wherever they go, a nameless threat whose hot, humid breath is always on the back of her neck, and it is joined by the probing eyes of those tasked with holding that threat at bay. Valacar has asked the guards for subtlety, to be a tether and not a chain, and yet they are always there, lurking shadows in the margins of her vision, bearing down on her every move. Vinitharya believes them to be friends, the only constant presences in his life beyond his family and the governess. He greets them all by name, smiling and earnest and excited to see them each day, and she is too grateful for his confusion to correct it. He has many years ahead to live with the knowledge that others want him dead; she will not be the one to put that idea in his mind for the first time.
She joins him now on the floor, forgoing propriety to enjoy the coolness of the stone against her back, and looks up at the canopy of gem-studded stars overhead. While Vinitharya retells the story of the Valacirca, she allows her thoughts to wander to the stories of her own youth, sung in her mother’s warm, honeyed voice around a hearth or bonfire on special nights. Her favorites had always been the tales of the Great Hunter, a towering presence who galloped the land with his golden hooved steed, his ringing horn and his baying hounds to drive the evils of the world from the forests and plains and make them safe for their people. Some of that banished evil took up hiding in the minds of Men instead, her mother would warn. When you see selfishness or cruelty or spite in others, that is the evidence that the Hunter’s work is not yet done. But he will come for them in time.
A pleasant hour drifts by, spent in memories and myths and imaginings, until they are roused by the sounding of a distant bell announcing the hour and the changing of a shift for the historians and archivists at work in the Dome’s libraries. It is time for her and Vinitharya to leave as well, for he has lessons yet to do today, reading and writing that he will master because she will never let it be said that her son lacked the aptitude for Gondor’s books and scrolls. She gathers him up, herds him back out into the blinding sun, and has him spell short, simple words for her as they retrace their steps home again.
When they arrive back at the royal house, Valacar is waiting at the door to the tutor’s room. He has ink on his cuffs, and when he takes her hand she can feel the roughness of calluses, evidence that his servants are kept largely idle. This is a habit he developed in Rhovanion, where even the richest of men grooms his own horse, repairs his own weapons, cleans and dresses his own game. Paying another person to attend to the menial tasks of life carries no currency for the Northmen, proving neither skill nor humility, and she has never reconciled herself to the Gondorians’ tendency to give the most esteem to those who can afford to do the least. That Valacar no longer shares this tendency is yet one more way in which he now resembles her people more than his own, and she is proud. He is someone who writes his own letters and polishes his own sword, someone who sees value in all kinds of labor. Some day he will be a king that does not hold himself above the work of a scribe or a groom, and she knows that Gondor will be the better for it, even if Gondor does not know this.
He ruffles his free hand through the hair of his grinning son while raising her fingertips to touch them lightly to his temple, the side of his throat, and the center of his chest, the places where the pulsing of his veins and the beating of his heart are felt. This, too, is something he learned in Rhovanion, a silent greeting of lovers. My blood runs for you. She had taught him the greeting herself, a year after he had arrived in Bagmē Blōma and her father had left her in charge of the foreign prince’s welfare. With only a dozen words in common between them, their early conversations had been mostly shy smiles and awkward pantomimes, elbows caught to stop a misunderstanding and laughter when one happened nonetheless. He had needed her for everything then, a lifeline to teach him the language, the customs, how to ride in the Rhovanion style or to feed himself from the forest even in the dead of winter, but he proved an apt student, unafraid to make mistakes in front of her and quick to try again when he did. In time, he was able to make his way without her, but even then he still sought to be always at her side, no longer from need but from want instead. And when he finally knew enough to be able to speak the full desire of his heart in language that she recognized, she gave him the gesture to say it with no words at all.
He is beaming now, a look of easy joy that she hasn’t seen in his eyes since the Pelargir plot came to light. I have brought you a surprise, he says. It is waiting just around that corner. He is always bringing surprises — exotic flowers to catch her fancy or imported mead when she has had enough of Gondorian wine — and his delight in revealing them is just as pleasing to her as the gifts themselves. Somehow now his smile manages to widen even further, and she leans forward into his embrace, about to ask what new indulgence he has acquired this time. But her next breath, full of the scent of pine resin, tanned leather and fresh hay that wafts up from his clothes, answers the question before it can pass her lips. It is a smell that she would recognize in her sleep, on the other side of the world, at the bottom of the ocean. He winks and waves her on, around the corner and straight into the waiting arms of her brother.
It has been over a year now since she last saw Vidusunus, though it somehow feels like both much more and no time at all. Tall and broad, he picks her up with ease, spinning them both in little circles as they laugh, before setting her down for a proper greeting, the press of his forehead to hers. But even as she is still awash in elated surprise, he has gone suddenly rigid, startled into paralysis by the dullness of her eyes, the stoop of her shoulders, the starkness of the ribs in her back where his hands rest. There is a moment’s hesitation and then his grip tightens again, a low, urgent whisper in her ear even though they are alone and his words are in the language of the North. Do they treat you well here, sister?
She has never lied to Vidusunus or even kept a truth from him. They have shared a womb, a childhood, a coming of age, the griefs and joys and mundanities of life. He was the first one she told about Valacar, the first to say he had seen it all along, the first to wish her all of love’s happiness, the first to notice the small swell that would become Vinitharya. Before she left for Gondor, the ten minutes between their births was the longest they had ever been meaningfully separated. He has always seemed to know her thoughts, often before she knows them herself. But she cannot answer him truthfully now, for she knows his thoughts as well.
Fast to fellowship, he is just as fast to anger. If he knew the truth, he would rage, and he would spare no target that he judged guilty in his own eyes. Commoners, nobles, the king himself, it would matter little to him who he insulted or what protocol he transgressed. He would curse and threaten and strike, if need be, and in the process he would become the very image of the Northmen, coarse and warlike, that has been laden around her neck since she first set foot in this land. For love of his sister and pride for his people, he would do the unthinkable and break an oath that had been made. He would not rest until she agreed to return to Rhovanion, with or without Valacar, and live without further thought of Gondor or Gondorians. And this she cannot allow.
She has not given up so much for the love of her husband and the birthright of her son just to slink home in defeat to the glee of her enemies. They have tried to crush her, in body and spirit, but they have forgotten that not everything can be destroyed by pressure. She is no stone in the dusty quarries of Min-Rimmon. She is the glittering snow that blankets Bagmē Blōma each year, only packing stronger and tighter the more it is trod upon until, muddied and flattened, it outlasts the winter itself, lingering far into the warmth of spring. She has not suffered so long only to yield now. She will be Gondor’s queen, a Northman on their throne, and Northmen never yield.
She looks directly into her brother’s eyes, mossy green flecked with gold and brown, and it is like looking into her own. For a moment, her resolve wavers, the leaden weight of lying to her twin nearly buckling her knees. He may be her last chance, the final outstretched hand that can pull her from the bottom of the avalanche and back into the open air, freed from the suffocating loneliness and fear and resentment. But it is not her fate, nor Vinitharya’s, to find rescue in retreat. It is their fate to stay, to fight, to claim and hold their rightful place even at the cost of contentment, ease or safety. She will not be bullied into relinquishing what is theirs.
She carefully disentangles herself from the grasp of Vidusunus, stepping back to stand again on her own, and a lane of empty space opens between them.
Yes, brother, she says, willing the tremble out of her voice. I am very well, thank you.