Faramir Fiction Archive

The Song of the Steward and the King (NC-17)

Written by Raihon

19 March 2006 | 32932 words

Chapter 6 – A New Troth

With some trepidation, Faramir made his way to the guest chamber where he and Éowyn resided while at Minas Tirith. He paused at the basin to wash, then shed his clothes and slipped into bed with his bride.

She did not turn to him, but she said, “it is nearly light. Have you only just come to bed?”

“Only just,” Faramir said, softly kissing the hair on her head.

“Are you very drunk?” She asked bluntly.

Faramir chuckled into her soft and lovely hair. “No, not for several hours have I drunk wine.”

“Good. Then I shall kiss you and not fear your breath.” Éowyn turned to face him and smiled, but then the smile faded. “Faramir, what has detained you? You have not slept yet your eyes are bright. Your face looks not tired, but elated.”

“I am elated, but I am also afraid,” he said pulling her close to him.

Éowyn pulled away. “I would see your face,” she said, sitting up and pulling the covers around her bare torso. “What has elated you, and why are you afraid?”

“My fair Éowyn, it is you I fear, or your reaction to what I must tell you, because something has happened that cannot be undone.” Éowyn’s face showed a growing anger and Faramir hastened to make things clear to her. “I was with the King, Éowyn. The King detained me and is the cause of my elation.”

Éowyn’s anger turned to bemusement. “And what of it? What counsel did he seek or tidings did he bear to cause you such happiness?”

Faramir took a deep breath and also sat up, taking Éowyn’s hand and clasping it between two of his. “I know not how to begin to explain it.”

“Simply report what he said. What is there to explain? Why do you hesitate to tell me? If this encounter was the cause of joy for you, then surely such joy must also be mine to share, as we are husband and wife?”

Faramir looked at her and felt his heart would burst. He caressed her cheek lovingly. “May it be so that you will share in my joy, but that it may not be so checks my speech. Very well, I will do as you ask and report what was said, but I ask you to forbear judging until I have explained my part.”

Éowyn nodded. “I will hold my tongue, for now.”

“My Lord and I spoke of love, a subject which may be especially tender for you, given who was discussing it.” He saw poor Éowyn grow a little pale, but he went on. “Do not doubt that you were on both our minds during this discussion, for you are the gem of my heart and the King holds you in highest regard. Yet it was not of you that we spoke, nor of the Queen,” Faramir hastened to add, guessing his wife’s thoughts, “but of our love. The King asked me how my heart loved him, and I spoke truly when I said I loved him well, but he sought yet another meaning in me, and that meaning did he find, as did I find it in him.”

“And what meaning was that?” Éowyn asked quietly.

“I know not how to explain it other than to tell you that with great tenderness, the King sought to know if I wished to love him…with my flesh.”

Éowyn was breathing rapidly and her face became flushed. “Make haste to explain your part, Faramir, for anon my tongue will be loosed.”

“I will do my best, but please calm yourself,” he pled in vain. “I myself am only now coming to understand my part of this, so perhaps my telling will help us both make sense of how the unthinkable has come to pass.”

“A year ago, when I lay under the veil of death, my mind was poisoned by the darkness. I looked not to die, but when I searched my thoughts, I found nothing to live for. Everyone I loved was lost to me, and my city was falling. It was the end of all that was good, or so said the shadow cast upon me by the servants of the Dark One.” Faramir rubbed the scar where the Southron arrow had pierced him.

“And then I heard a voice, calling my name,” Faramir continued, “and that voice sounded to me like hope itself. Again, the voice called my name, and my heart sprang up, and then again, I heard my name, and I felt a force like a lifeline drawing me out of the darkness. There, in my mind, without seeing, without any of the physical senses, I knew him, and he knew me. Then I felt my hand in his hand, his hand on my forehead. I opened my eyes, and I knew his face, and loved it, and asked for my King’s command.”

Éowyn leapt out of bed and donned her dressing gown. She paced by the foot of the bed and muttered bitterly, “the same hand drew us both back. But unlike you, death was my very purpose. His voice called me back to nothing but pain.”

“Would that I never were to remind you of those darkest of days, my love! But since then, I know you have rediscovered your love for life. I fear my words will wound you anew, but I trust in the light of your spirit, and so I must say that this feeling inside me first stirred by Aragorn’s healing touch has been growing, even as has my love for you.”

Éowyn stopped her pacing and stood stock still, facing away from Faramir. He paused to see if she would speak, but she did not.

“This powerful connection has been pulling me to him, and perhaps it is this same force that also draws him to me. At first I feared this force for some spell at work on me, but now I know it is born of the moment we met in our minds. And it is a good thing, I feel, a thing that will make us stronger, for it comes of a lofty passion between men like of mind and kindred of spirit. When he revealed his love to me, so strong was my response that I gave in to passion and our lips met. But when I broke off our kiss, he bade me seek your council and his suggestion was well taken, for I would not ease this pain with the balm of falsehood.” Faramir paused, staring at his wife’s narrow back, the battle between hope and fear raging inside him. “I bid thee, speak, my love.”

Éowyn’s voice sounded small, as if carried to Faramir’s ears from Rohan by the winds of the White Mountains. “We are not yet married a season. Has the blossom of our love faded so soon?”

Faramir then went to her. Her eyes were cold and he dared not touch her, but he stood naked before her, chilled and trembling. “Our love is but in its infancy. I wish to nurture it and bless it with long life.”

“Then why seek another? You speak as if some mighty and magical thing has happened, but is this not just a weakness of the flesh on your part? Or perhaps this is on me, not my weakness but my strength, which you take for hardness of heart? Believe you not that I love you?” Her voice was more demanding than pleading.

Faramir’s pity for her stabbed in his chest, and he struggled with the words to make her understand. “There is nothing you lack that I need, and there is nothing missing in me because of you. I sought this not, yet it was a welcome gift. Much as the arrival of a child does not weaken the love of its parents, but rather makes them more of who they were destined to be, so does this love of Aragorn feel to me now. Would that you did not feel lessened by it, or fear that it strikes a blow at our love. I would never risk your faith in such a battle. So tell me now – if I must renounce the love of Aragorn to preserve your happiness, I will do it without hesitation.”

Éowyn appeared thoughtful now and guided Faramir back to bed. “You will get a chill. Lie under the covers,” she commanded, but she stood above him, looking at him in a manner he could not discern.

“Such unpleasant choices you present me with, and yet you look at me with the hope of a child,” she said scornfully, but her eyes were shining with something Faramir could not fathom. “Whence this faith that I will not choose to set you free from the ties that bind us? Do I seem to you a woman of infinite patience and understanding?”

“That I know you not to be,” Faramir confessed, “yet faith I have.”

“Indeed, you are playing to my faults! I am a woman of great passions, and my restraint has been sorely tested in a past not yet beyond remembering. I will not again live as a bird in a cage! I will not serve a cause another has chosen for me!”

Faramir slowly nodded, feeling a deep longing to soothe his wife, yet knowing she would not receive it well. “You must choose your own path. I have always known it would be thus.”

Éowyn’s emotions seemed to have run their course for the moment. Long Faramir held her gaze and many thoughts he saw pass behind her eyes.

When she spoke again, she said, “you are ardent and unrepentant. Ardently you love the King, and rejoice at his affection for you. Though some might count this unnatural, you have my sympathy because the attraction exerted by that man is something I well understand with my own heart,” she paused, taking up a different thought, “though my poor heart be pierced again, seemingly unintended – yet, for the second time! — by the King. If, for the sake of Arwen, he forsook me, how is it that he does not also forsake you? This question is cruel and it troubles me. Know you the answer?”

“Nay, I do not. We did not speak of it,” said Faramir.

“As for your lack of repentance, do you perceive that you broke no troth in offering yourself to another? Do you excuse yourself from your vows because his is a man? Because he is King?”

“It was my troth to you that drove me from his arms and back to your bed to confess all that I said, did and felt. If that is not enough, you should punish me as you see fit, for I do hold our vows sacred.”

Éowyn’s voice rose. “Do you mean to assuage my jealousy by saying that your vows stayed at least the lust of your hands, if not of your heart? That is cold comfort indeed. What sense is there in these words you play with so coyly? You shall not turn my mind from its own course with your novel reasoning about the nature of love.” She looked at him steadily, her mind clearly at work untangling itself from what she thought Faramir wanted of her. Faramir feared her harsh judgment was about to be pronounced, but then her chin rose, and her head turned to the first ray of sun coming through the window.

“I have my own reasoning,” she said, more calmly, “and perhaps we are well matched, for I am sure that others would consider it novel, indeed. You will owe me a penalty for this breach of fidelity, but first I would know: what are my rights in your Kingdom as a wronged woman?” she asked.

“You may divorce me, as you well know.”

She shook her head, still gazing out the window. “Nay, ‘twould be distasteful to me to have you removed from my bed, for you are fairer than the other men high-born enough to take your place.”

Faramir barely suppressed a laugh. He could now see that Éowyn’s reason had indeed dictated her own approach to this matter, though he could not yet discern what that approach would be. “Then you may release me from my old troth and ask me for a new one so that we may start anew.”

Éowyn nodded, trying not to smile. “Yes, that option suits me well.” She turned to face Faramir again. “Clearly this situation requires a new pledge that takes into account the…unusual situation you find yourself in.”

The thought that Éowyn might actually tolerate this “unusual situation” made Faramir break out in a sweat, so he threw off the blanket to cool himself. Éowyn stared at his naked form with a calculated desire in her eyes. “I am curious to hear, Faramir, what would you pledge to me of your own free will, had you no fear of wounding, or losing, my heart?”

Faramir felt the thrill of his wife’s will challenging him, her mind proving again its agility. He would not stand before her as a groom takes unto him his bride, but rather kneel before her and pledge himself to her as a servant to his lord. He rose to retrieve his sword and placed its tip on the ground before him. Clasping its hilt, he knelt before her and said, “here do I swear loyalty and love to you, Éowyn, daughter of Éomund. I hold to all that I have pledged to you in the past: to share all that is mine with you and no other,” here he took a deep breath, “unless you will it to be so.”

Éowyn bit down on her lip thoughtfully, then exclaimed, “what unusual pledges do the men of Gondor make! I accept your pledge and now I must also renew my pledge to you.” Éowyn then knelt on the floor, grasping the sword hilt around Faramir’s hands and staring him straight in the eyes. “I, Éowyn, daughter of Eomund, swear love and loyalty to you, my husband, and promise to hold to all that I have pledged to you in the past: to share all that is mine with you and no other, unless you will it to be so.”

Faramir felt a flash of fear pass quickly up his spine.

Éowyn stood and smirked down at him, pleased at having made sport of him. “There. Now we have come to an understanding.” Then Faramir wondered: was it sport she was making, or was her pledge in earnest?

Faramir threw down the sword and pulled Éowyn down on the bed with him, but she pushed him away. “Yes, this morning you are full of desire, since you forbore sharing yourself with the other now in question. However, I will have you know my will in this matter. In the future, I will not have you come to my bed, your manhood spent on another! You have known others before me…”

“You know that not!” Faramir interjected.

Éowyn cast him a look that asked if he thought her a fool. “…while I have known no other man but you. I am a new bride and my hunger is renewed each time I lay eyes on the fine form of my husband. Am I, just coming into the flower of my womanhood, to be left wilting in a window box while my gardener showers another with his love?”

Éowyn’s wit delighted Faramir and gradually her eyes, which had been casting upon him a light of stern reprimand, began to hint at a smile.

“You must be capable of slaking my thirst as well as that of the King,” Éowyn stated finally. “Should my fertile rows lay fallow, you will find me petitioning you for the lease of these lands to a more capable gardener. Legolas has greener thumbs and a fairer face than even you, my love,” she reminded him.

This confirmed for Faramir that though she was jesting now, her pledge had been earnest.

“Now,” said Éowyn, “I believe you still owe me a penalty for your wayward heart and wanton behavior, but I will ask that it be paid in installments. The few tales of love between men I have heard seemed to me folly, at best, but you and the King are not the likes of men who play at foolishness, so I would know more fully the nature of what passes between you.”

“What would you have me tell, my love? I will withhold nothing.”

Éowyn released her gown to the floor and slid under the covers, hovering close to Faramir, smiling into his eyes with girlish glee. “Read you not my intentions, husband? You may start your penance today by telling me what it was like to kiss the King!”

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