STRANGE MEETING

Poets love tales of battle, the bloodier the better. They will tell of the heaps of slain, the rivers running red, the glad grim faces of the victorious captains, the feasting and carousing in the evening. They may even spare a line for the weeping of women.

Few poets have ever been in a battle. Fewer still have seen the aftermath of one, and none, probably, has taken part in the clearing up.

While the King and his armies celebrated on the Field of Cormallen, and every poet in Gondor and Rohan tuned his harp and composed his song of victory, on the Pelennor Fields we set about clearing up.

Spring comes early to the lowlands of Gondor, and that spring was one of the earliest anyone could remember. By the end of March it was already beginning to be hot.

A few of the fiefs demanded the return of their fallen captains. Those bodies I caused to be embalmed and returned with honour. For the other lords of Gondor and Rohan we raised great mounds, all together and within sight of the City, and laid them there with as much honour and ceremony as could be managed. Other bodies were gleaned from the stricken fields and borne away by friends or relatives whose love – and whose stomach – was strong enough for the task.

Very many could not be named, or had left none alive to mourn them. These we buried in great pits, with as much haste as decency would allow, and grassed them over. We dug graves for as many horses as we could, for we as much as the Rohirrim count them as comrades in battle rather than slaves or beasts of burden; but some we had to burn. The great mûmakil we had to burn on the spot, for we had no means of moving or burying the mighty carcases, and this was a terrible task.

The Enemy slain we burned in heaps, but separating the men from the orcs and trolls and other foul beasts. By day the stinking smoke blotted out the sun, and by night the hideous flames recalled the worst days of the siege, or so men told me. I do not remember the siege, but the stench of the burnings afterwards I shall never forget. Nor the daytime slinking of stray dogs, nor their night-time howls. Fortunately it was too late in the year, and there were too many men about, for the wolves to come down from the mountains.

I try not to remember the flies.

There were few in the City who shirked the task, and I was glad of it, for I would have hated to use compulsion. Even so, we should never have achieved it without the farming folk of the townlands. As soon as they heard the news of the Enemy's fall, they started to return from the mountain fastnesses where they had sought refuge, to view the ruin of their homes and fields. They wept and cursed amidst the ashes, and then, grumbling, discontented, dour and indomitable, they set their hands to the work of clearance, and after that, of rebuilding.

I blessed my father's foresight in preparing stores for a long siege of the City. The siege itself had been short, but the provisions sufficed to feed the toilers in the fields, though conveying the food to them was in itself a mighty labour.

To all this work I gave as much time as possible amidst the cleaner work of preparing for the King's return, which only I could do. On alternate days, at least, I rode out amongst the workers and did my best to encourage them. They were my people and I was proud of them. Most of them I knew by name, both the people of the City and the farming folk, and I knew their language.

'Bad, is it?'

'Aye, my lord, it's bad.'

'Could be worse.'

'Aye.'

'Things will be better when the King returns.'

'Happen they will, happen they won't.'

'Ah well, carry on.'

So it was that one evening in mid-April I rode, with a few men, down towards the Fords, further than I had been yet, and further than I would have wished to go, for that place will always be dark to me. Here the devastation was worse than any I had seen, and the horses walked fetlock-deep in ash, raising fine choking clouds of it so that we went as through a mist. As we neared the crossings, Anborn, riding beside me, checked his horse abruptly and said, 'Horseman ahead, my lord.'

I halted and peered through the gloom, seeing only a vague shadow. 'You're sure? Is it just the one?'

'I think so. Better draw swords?'

'It can scarcely be an enemy after all that's happened,' said Targon from behind.

'Near Osgiliath anything's possible,' said Anborn. 'I say we draw.'

'And I say we challenge him,' I said sharply. 'If he sets hand to weapon, then so will we. We are five against one, after all.'

So Anborn called on the figure – it was clearer now, as our standing horses ceased to stir up the ash – to halt, and it did, spreading its arms wide as if to show it bore no weapon. It was cloaked and hooded, its face invisible.

'Who's there? Friend or foe of Gondor?'

The answering voice was tinged with amusement.

'Friend.'

One word was enough for me to know that voice, though I had last heard it on the threshold of another world, and in a dream which had escaped my waking mind.

I turned to Anborn, saying 'All's well. I know the man.'

Anborn gaped. The next moment he was gaping wider.

'Am I speaking to the Steward of Gondor?' came the voice from the dust.

'You are, if you speak to me.' I paused, commanded myself, and added, 'my Lord.'

'Then I would have some words with you alone.' The tone was not one of request, and the men behind me murmured in surprise, but I silenced them and dismounted, motioning Anborn to take the reins of my horse. As he bent forward he whispered, 'Begging your pardon, my Lord, but are you certain this isn't a trick?'

'Quite certain. But since we are near Osgiliath, after all, you'd better keep a look-out. Stay within bowshot, but not within earshot. You understand?'

'Yes,' reluctantly.

'And Targon, take the other horse.'

So the Steward and the King stood together in the dust and ashes, and talked.

'Is it wise,' I said, 'for the king to ride thus alone and unattended?'

'So you knew me again,' he answered, ignoring the thrust of my question.

'Yes, I knew you, though I had forgotten our first encounter,' I said, and by way of apology, 'A sick mind pays strange tricks.'

'It doesn't matter.'

I peered forward, but his face was still in shadow. He bore no mark of rank and was clad, so far as I could see, as a huntsman. His stance and tone conveyed neither challenge nor invitation. Your move.

'Why did you bring me back?' I said, not knowing, until I heard my own voice, what I would say.

'Two reasons. First, you needed me. Second, I needed you.'

'I'll concede the first with a grateful heart, as for the second, I would have thought I was the last thing you needed.' So much for diplomacy. Here, on the edge of ruin, there seemed no point in either honorifics or evasions. And yet his next words were oblique.

'You know Mithrandir, I think?'

'It would be better to say he knows me.'

'True enough. Well, Mithrandir said to me not two hours since: Win Faramir, and you win Gondor. It is, and was, as simple as that.'

'Was not – is not – Gondor won already?'

'Not as I would have it.'

'I have said I would not oppose you,' I said. 'Gondor is yours, for my part.'

'So, you will not work against me,' he said musingly. 'Will you, then, work with me?'

'What need of a steward when the King has returned?' I answered, realising with relief that I had kept the bitterness out of my voice, and the next moment, with surprise, that I had not felt it.

'As much need as in the days of Pelendur, and more, seeing I shall have two kingdoms on my hands,' he said, and then, with that disquieting tone of amusement, 'It was surely the ruling stewards, rather than the kings, who thought that the two offices excluded one another.' Check.

'You wish me to stay on, then?'

'Win Faramir and you win Gondor, said Mithrandir. I would add to that, Keep Faramir, and you keep Gondor. Did you think I would begin my reign with an act of thunderous ingratitude?'

'I had not thought of it that way. I'm sorry.'

'No matter.' He paused for a moment. 'There may be something else you had not thought of.'

'What's that?'

'If Gondor has survived for me to rule over, it was thanks in part to you.'

'It was thanks to many people, I think,' I answered, the bitterness creeping back, 'but not to me.'

'You held the fords.'

'I lost the fords.'

'You held them for two days,' he said gently. 'Two days for me to reach Pelargir and the Rohirrim to ride. Without those two days we would have come too late.'

I stood there in the ashes and drank his words like clear water. It was not for myself I minded, though it is always good to be thanked. It was for my men. Though not one of them had followed me to Osgiliath unwillingly – I made sure of that – the loss of so many of them, and to an evil death, weighed heavy on me; if I had not bent, in that dreadful hour, to my father's will, they might, it seemed to me, have lived, or at least lived longer, and served the City better, as might I.

I turned my back on the river. The dust had settled and the sun was sinking behind Mindolluin. I realised with something of shock that the great fires had at last burned low, and their remaining smoke was clearing under a steady breeze from the west. At this distance the scars of fire and battle were not visible and the City looked as it always had done, beautiful, unconquered, inviolate.

They did not die in vain. It was not all for nothing. I could look their widows and children in the face.

Somewhere above the ash fields there was a lark singing.

The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, as Ioreth is forever saying, and rightly enough. But there can be greater healing in words, for if his hands restored my life, it was his words that restored the value of it.

His voice came to me as from a long way off. 'So I receive Gondor from you not once, but twice. Is that not worth some reward, apart from the stewardship, which is yours by right?'

'Reward?' I frowned; the word savoured too much of hire and salary. 'You know I want no reward.'

'Recognition, then. Or a further imposition, if you will have it so. Or a surety for the contentment of the people, who will surely settle for nothing less on your behalf. I had thought of offering you Ithilien as a princedom equal to Dol Amroth, if the arrangement is to your liking. If not, name your own …recognition.' Now the amusement had deepened almost into – gentle – mockery.

This was not water but strong wine. Ithilien, the fairest of all the lands of Gondor, whose loss had ached in me since I first ventured there as a scout, when I was scarcely more than a child. Ithilien, whose neglect and abuse by the Enemy had pained and grieved me every time I set foot there, hating our inability to do more than hide and track and hunt our enemies there, but never heal.

No need to sell my sword or offer my services as a secretary or go to Beor cap in hand as a ploughman. Something to offer to a proud woman, a daughter of kings…

No.

I remembered the sudden invasion of fear and anxiety into Bergil's cheerful, childish face. I heard his voice: A king would be a stranger, he wouldn't understand.

'You are generous, lord,' I said, 'but I would ask another reward, if I merit it.'

'What other reward?' He sounded surprised, as he had a right to, having read me so well.

'A life.'

'A life?'

'There's a soldier in your army who, if the law must have its way, is under sentence of death for disobedience to orders,' I said. 'I owe as much gratitude to that soldier, for saving my own life, as I do to you. Say what you wish me to set against his life, and I will give it.'

'Aha.' He quoted the law, word perfect: 'Any soldier who disobeys an order from lord or captain, or offers insolence or disrespect to lord or captain, or without the leave of lord or captain abandons his post or turns aside from the task assigned to him, shall suffer death.'

'Not only that, but…'

'Any person who shall enter the Hallows without leave of the King, the Steward or the persons set by them in authority over the Hallows shall suffer imprisonment at the King's pleasure, and any person who shall offer any violence to any thing or person in the Hallows, or cause blood to be shed there, shall suffer death. Need I go on? You mean Beregond.'

'Yes, I mean Beregond.' I swallowed my surprise at his knowledge of our law; there were many with the host who could have advised him, after all. Yet it was somehow strange. 'By giving you Gondor I placed his life in your hands- '

'Where it is safe enough,' he interrupted. 'What do you take me for? A monster?' I turned towards him; he had cast back his hood, and seeing his face clearly at last, the lost memory was restored, and I knew once again that this was the king. And his smile matched the amusement in his voice.

'From what I hear, you know well enough yourself when it is wise to bend a law, or an order, for the greater good. You can take Beregond with you to Ithilien, and if he proves insubordinate again, you can deal with him as you think fit.'

I smiled back. 'Very well.'

'Well. my other offer still stands.' He added, with a perfect imitation of a Lossarnach farmer on market day, 'How do you say, lad? Is it a bargain?'

I answered him in kind. 'Aye, we'll clap hands on that.' And we did.

'By the way,' he said as we walked back to my men holding the horses, 'the hobbits have been asking about you.'

'The hobbits?'

'Halflings.'

'Ah, Frodo and Master Samwise, to whom we owe everything. I trust they are well?'

'Very well, though you will find Frodo much changed; it's only to be expected. He says he has a story he is anxious to tell you. Sam is as happy as a bee in clover, but already longing for home. He's worried about what the Sackville-Bagginses will have been doing to his bit of garden.'

I laughed. 'Truly this is a new world to me. What are these Sackville-Bagginses?'

'Disagreeable neighbours, I think. I hope you will soon get the chance to renew acquaintance with Sam so that he can explain for himself.'

'So do I, indeed. But now, by your leave, I must return to the City. I have much to do to prepare your coronation, and I must have speech with a certain lady.'

'Then I will not detain you.' I would have knelt to him, there in the ashes, but he checked me and we embraced instead.

'You will be welcome,' he said as we parted, 'on the Field of Cormallen.'

'I'll come if I can,' I promised. 'I want to see what the disagreeable neighbours have done to my bit of garden.'