The Scouring of the City

Minas Tirith, April 3019 T.A.

[1]

It was Éowyn, of course, who put the idea in his mind, during one of their evenings together, after the day's work was done.

After she had accepted him – and after they had left the entire City in no real doubt as to their intentions – they had established a pattern. Both had work to do: his to restore a City sufficiently to hand over to its rightful owner; hers to make good her promise to learn the craft of healing. So their days were busy – but their evenings were theirs, and theirs alone. Escaping the never-ending stream of petitioners, courtiers, and other assorted hangers-on, he would slip out of the White Tower by a little-known side door, and make his way down to the Houses of Healing. There he would find her – sometimes waiting, sometimes still busy – and then they would go back, arm-in-arm, up to the Steward's House, to eat the daymeal, and then simply to be together.

Sometimes they sat in the garden; sometimes in the library; sometimes they might venture out into the Court of the Fountain to look out across to where their home would be. And all the time they talked. For so long now, year after year, they had both restrained themselves, bitten their tongues, kept silent because speech would only bring more grief. And now… Now they were free.

What did they talk about, now that they had someone to talk to? About how their lives had been before, and how their lives would be now. About the wedding to come, and the house that they would build, and the children they hoped would happen. About Ithilien, and Rohan, and Gondor. And they each listened, because the other was their chief interest. She thought: I am understood. I am heard. He thought, I am listened to. I will not have to do this alone. And they both thought: This – this is the life I have longed to live. They could both see how it would be: the partnership, the trust, the work they would be able to do, together.

Each night he would walk her back to the Houses of Healing. On the step, they would kiss, and part, and each would look forward to the moment of meeting again the following day. But on this particular night, with the Sickle hanging bright overhead, they crossed the Court of the Fountain, she turned to him and said, "But tell me, love – who was your Gríma here?"

[2]

In her defence, the thought had not come completely out of nowhere. She had, since accepting his proposal, been considering all her life before now, the steps that had brought her here, seeking death and finding life. Sloughing off the old skin. And he had been teaching her too about the ways of the City. A new dispensation was coming, yes, but some of the old policies and factions would survive. He knew that not everyone here would receive the Heir of Elendil as readily as he. And when he told her about the palantír… Well. The idea had formed, and once formed had preyed on her mind. But she knew she could trust him in all ways, so she asked.

And had shocked him, seemingly. He was standing stock still, staring at her, pale in the lamplight. "What do you mean, love?"

"I mean, we know how the Enemy worked his will in the White Tower. But what about Saruman? At Meduseld there was Gríma," (she felt him clutch her hand a little tighter), "whispering Saruman's poison into the King's ear. But what about here? How did Saruman work his will here?"

He did not reply. Instead he walked on, slowly, drawing her away from the House. He led her from the main road onto a narrow street where the houses were closed and dark. Some, perhaps, would have families returning soon. Others, she suspected, had stood empty and sad for many a long year. He brought her to an embrasure, and sat, patting the stone beside him. She squeezed in next to him, into the narrow space. He felt cold. She slipped her arm around him.

"What makes you think Minas Tirith was in his sights?" he said. His face was in shadow.

"What makes you think it was not?"

"His task, as I understand it, was to corrupt the Mark. To render it impossible for you to come to our aid—"

"And you believe he obeyed his orders to the letter? That he did not have his own schemes for your city, beyond those which his dark master ordered?" She shook her fair head. "No," she said. "Master Meriadoc told me that his spies were as far afield as their fair land. Why would he not have spies here too, in the fastness of Mundburg? And if he did, what corruptions did his agents here attempt?" As they had corrupted Meduseld.

"Was not the evil wrought upon my father by the palantír enough?"

"For such as Saruman? No," she said, speaking as one that knew. "It would not be enough."

She watched him carefully. She had the distinct impression that she had frightened him, badly. She stroked the back of his hand. She had no wish to hurt him. She would leap in front of anyone who tried to hurt him; put herself between them. As he, no doubt, would be busy doing for her.

"I met Curunír once," he said, at last. "Before the army. I was fifteen. He came to the City to speak to my father and some of the lords. They spent many hours in conclave. A few months later, my father passed a law that all who were found in Ithilien without the leave of the Lord of Gondor were to be slain. No trial, no mercy…"

A law he was bound to execute.

"I regretted that law each time I upheld it," he said, quietly. "I did not regret the one time I broke it."

She leaned her head against him. "It would be someone close to your father," she said. "Who was close to him?"

"Nobody was close to him," he said. "Sauron, it seems, was closest…" He sighed. "My brother, first and foremost. One or two council members, lords of the city. Húrin, of course…"

He had not listed himself. "Húrin," she said. "I've heard this name often – and seen him now and again, from a distance. But who is he, precisely?"

"The Warden of the Keys."

"That means nothing to me, love."

"Commands the city guard. Good at gathering news – and preventing its spread."

Now she understood. "Your father's spymaster."

"Also my uncle by marriage – to my father's sister. Who was close to my father? He would know, if anyone would." He shrugged, shaking off their conversation, and stood. He offered his hand, and she let him pull her up. "I'll talk to him tomorrow."

[3]

At the door to the Houses, they embraced. She held him in her arms, fierce and loving. "I am sorry if what I said has disturbed you."

He noticed she did not take it back, however. And since she was, out of the two of them, the one who knew best how the wizard had worked, he must believe her. Why would he doubt her? She was the most truthful person that he knew. He said, "I am disturbed, yes. As I should be. But I have heard you. I am listening."

They kissed goodnight, and he left her to her rest. He walked home slowly under the stars, thinking. Inside, the house was quiet, and he went straight up the stairs to bed.

He had hitherto resisted attempts to move him into the master bedroom. There was enough about his day-to-day life that was raw: taking his father's seat at tables, answering to the title, odd reminders here and there – a pen, some notes scratched in that meticulous hand, the absence of his heavy tread about the place. The room had been cleared (his father had left little personal trace, which saddened him, as if everything had, over the years, been pared down to nothing), and aired, but for now it could stand empty. The thought of lying alone in that bed… No. There was no need to punish himself for being alive. Instead, each night, he went back to his own quiet rooms at the back of the house, familiar and safe.

He was, in general, sleeping well these days. She too said that the terrors had more or less passed, only the odd scare every so often. Piece by piece the horrors were receding, relics of a passing age. Tonight, however, he was restless. He recalled now in detail that meeting with Curunír: one of the more frightening episodes of his life, when he had understood for the first time that he and his father differed in profound ways, and that this might one day bring them into conflict. And so it had been, more and more over the years, until that last bitter exchange.

There were differences in kind, he thought, between the malice of Sauron and the poison of Curunír. The first brought about despair, an annihilation of self and spirit, the destruction of the will to resist, whereupon one acquiesced in one's own extinction. Curunír, so he understood, corroded one's scruples, one's sense of what was true and right, set brother against brother, nephew against uncle, friend against friend. Mistrust became rife, such that men and women could not find comfort in each other, those necessary ties of love and fellowship that were, in the end, the best and only defence against darkness. Had it been so here? And if so, who had wrought such an evil? Who was our Gríma?

How lonely she had been, he thought, suddenly. Everyone who might come to her aid, picked off, one by one: uncle unmanned, cousin killed, brother in chains, that snake slithering every closer. He was by no means a violent man, but he knew that if ever he came face to face with Gríma, he would be hard pressed to stop himself. Her brother must feel the same way. But she had survived; of course, she had survived. How much he loved that fierce and fearless spirit that had driven her south, bringing her to him, so he could love her and stand beside her…

Who was our Gríma…?

At some point in all this contemplation, he fell asleep, and he dreamed, vividly. In the dream, he was talking to his father. Denethor was obscured, as if sitting to one side, but his presence was unmistakeable, that heavy brooding figure that had always loomed large over everything. They were holding one of those conversations that happens in dream, where the logic of the exchanges is elusive, and desperation takes hold that one can never make oneself understood. He had often felt this way, talking to his father. Partway through, he took charge and told himself: This is not happening. This cannot and will not happen.

The spell was broken. He woke up. Outside, it was faintly dawn. He would not sleep more, so he rose and dressed, and went to work, coming to his desk, as ever, some time before everyone else. When at last others began to arrive, Húrin came too, as he always did, to speak to the Lord of Gondor.

He reported on some trouble from the night before, an altercation on the second level. Some men from the Vale the worse for drink, making too free with some city women. Some thefts on the third level; there had been a spate of looting directly after the victory, and they were keen not to see this take root again. Húrin had heard a few whispers of complaint about the slowness of the repairs of the water supplies further round the third – that task could be shifted up the rota. And they spent a little time discussing the arrangements for the coronation – where the dangers might lie, if any, and when and how to retrieve the crown. Here his mind began to wander.

"Are you well, sir?" said Húrin, at last. "You seem tired."

"I am tired today," he admitted. "So much to do. But I am well."

"I know this must be difficult."

Did he mean the whole of it, or simply the matter of the crown? It lay, after all, upon the tomb of the last king, Eärnur, where he rested in the Silent Street. If the Steward were to retrieve it, he must go that way.

"I would suggest that I go and fetch the thing," said Húrin. "But I know you'll refuse."

"Yes." He sat for a while, and then said, quietly, "I still wonder, about Father's last days and hours. I know all that happened, the bare events, but I wish I understood better what brought him so low—"

"What is there to understand?" Húrin's voice was harsh. "He was a man besieged. He could see no way through the darkness. If you only knew how you looked, when they brought you home…" He collected himself. "You mustn't torment yourself with this," he said. "Please, sir. It cannot be changed. Put it behind you. They were terrible times. Done now. Better times ahead."

And that was it – subject closed. There was a delegation from Harad wishing to speak to him, and the morning's correspondence from Cormallen. Who was our Gríma? he thought, sifting through his papers. Is he still amongst us?

[TBC...]