Cushions

Within a couple of hours after the long train of wagons arrived at Cormallen Éomer had finished yet another meeting with Aragorn, and their senior officers, and witnessed the joy of the hobbits’ reunion.

He had asked Merry about Éowyn and been reassured that she was recovering. He had wondered why she had not come with Merry but, as the only other females he had seen were healers or some who seemed to be, to put it politely, camp followers, he assumed his sister had not been given the opportunity.

Éothain was organising the distribution of stores amongst their men and Éomer felt he could take up Imrahil’s offer of a hot meal. There would be hot food amongst his own men, of course, but one of Imrahil’s foot soldiers was a member of the Dol Amroth kitchen staff in ordinary circumstances and this showed in the food served to Imrahil and his officers!

As Éomer approached the circle of large tents around the Dol Amroth banner he was surprised to hear a laughing feminine voice in the tent shared by the princes Erchirion and Amrothos – surely they were not entertaining one (or more!) of the camp followers so early in the evening, and so publicly?

Then, just as he decided it might be better to quietly leave, he found Imrahil at his elbow urging him towards the table where food was already in evidence.

‘Either,’ he thought, ‘Imrahil doesn’t realise there is a woman, or more than one, in his sons’ tent or he is able to maintain a dignified silence better than any other man I have met!’

……………….

Éomer was glad that he did not still have his pre-puberty tendency to blush for, if he had, then his friends from Dol Amroth might have realised all too easily the number of times he felt embarrassed during the next hour.

Firstly came that moment when he thought the younger friends might be found with a woman in their tent by their father. Then he had felt almost as embarrassed when Prince Imrahil had smiled in that direction benignly before commenting that he hoped they would soon be finished and ready to eat.

When the two sons in question arrived to eat, with a smiling, dark haired, young woman walking between them, Éomer was at first embarrassed that they had brought a camp-follower to share the meal, and then that he had mistaken the young woman’s status as she was clearly better dressed than an army prostitute would be.

‘Maybe,’ he thought, ‘she is one of the healers that came with the wagons and they are acquainted with her.’

As the oldest of the three princes approached, and the young woman ran to him and threw herself against his chest, Éomer then decided she must be Elphir’s wife about whom he had heard much during those evenings around the fire.

‘How odd,’ he thought, ‘I thought she was in Dol Amroth with their small son. It must have been something of a major undertaking for her to get here.’

When Imrahil then introduced the young woman as his daughter Éomer was embarrassed to think that he had not realised that there was an elder princess as well as the young child about whom he had heard so much. After that, as he registered that this was Princess Lothíriel, his confusion would most certainly have embarrassed him if he had not been so surprised that he actually said nothing more than ‘Hello.’

The whole group stood, talking together, as they waited for Imrahil’s servants to set out the food. Éomer’s emotions were still running a gamut; for a start, the princess was not, perhaps, a classically pretty young woman but she was certainly pleasant on the eye, and had a ready smile that reached her own eyes. She looked vaguely familiar, he thought, but decided this was because she was quite clearly her brothers’ sister.

He was still embarrassed by his misunderstanding of her identity, as the conversation went first to her own health (much improved, it seemed, although he could gain no clue as to what had been wrong with her), and then to the health of her cousin Faramir, and it became clear that she had spent time in the Houses of Healing.

“May I ask if you have news of my sister?” he ventured, worried that Éowyn had not also come to Cormallen, if it had been possible for Lothíriel to do so.

The reply, “She is well recovered from her malady, your majesty,” embarrassed him further. In part because he was still unused to the form of address – his own men’s ‘Éomer King’ no longer sounded odd as it did, at least, start with his given name – but ‘majesty’…

Mainly, though, the embarrassment came from the conversation that followed his immediate response of, “Then surely room could have been found for her also to accompany the wagons, if there was room for you to come to see your brothers?”

When Lothíriel looked embarrassed by this Éomer felt both slightly guilty and also annoyed, as he had obviously been correct, and a princess of Gondor could be accommodated whereas one of the Riddermark could not.

Except that Lothíriel answered, “Of course room could have been found. I am sure my cousin, the Steward, would have arranged a wagon for her personal use had she wished to come. But she chose to remain in Minas Tirith.”

There was something in her voice, an undercurrent perhaps, which earned her a slightly puzzled glance from her father; Éomer wished he knew what that was about. And he still couldn’t understand why Éowyn would chose to remain in the cold stone of Mundburg when she could have been here, in the open air, with him.

A member of Imrahil’s company announced that the meal was ready and Éomer was distracted from his puzzled speculation by Imrahil asking Lothíriel if she would be able to sit at table.

‘What a very strange question,’ Éomer thought, even as the princess reassured her father that she would be quite all right on one of the canvas campaign chairs.

Conversation around the table turned to people that Éomer didn’t know and he applied himself to the meal. Fresh food had come on the wagons in large quantities; no matter how mad the old Steward seemed to have been, at the last, he had clearly been very well able to organise his lands to keep the city well stocked in readiness for a siege. Éomer feared that the apathy that had struck his uncle, under the invidious influence of Saruman’s tool Wormtongue, had prevented such provision being made at home. He sank deeper into his own thoughts.

Éomer was only stirred from his reverie by Prince Imrahil suggesting that they go and sit by the fire whilst the table was cleared, and again asking the princess if she would be able to sit easily. She shuffled a little in her seat and then gestured towards another female, a little older and dressed in plain grey, who Éomer had not noticed before; clearly her maid.

The maid went to the tent where he had heard Lothíriel’s laughter earlier and Éomer realised that Erchirion and Amrothos had clearly been moved out of their tent to make room for their sister. Obviously they had taken their usurpation in good part for they were making jokes about it as the party relocated.

Only when the maid returned carrying two thick cushions and put them down for the princess to sit on did it finally occur to Éomer, with a sense of shock, just why his friends’ sister, described as always wanting to be one of the boys, looked familiar. When he had thought, back in those dark days in the Houses of Healing, that he had seen the personification of the tale of the Princess and the Pea, he had actually been right about the ‘princess’, even if he had no way of knowing whether her pile of cushions had protected her from a pea.

Éomer spent the rest of the evening, and much of a sleepless night, trying to unravel the puzzle of how the person in the luxuriously embroidered silk dress, sitting on her pile of cushions with her feet on an ornate footstool, could be the same tomboy sister described by the younger princes of Dol Amroth, or even the sensibly dressed young woman who chose to come to Cormallen and sleep in a tent when his own sister had chosen not to.

……………….

The king of Rohan was rather stern, Lothíriel thought. He had frowned at his plate more than once over the meal although, she decided, it was probable this was not actually at the standard of the food, for it had been very tasty. Perhaps he had not approved of the lightness of the conversation, or of her own presence; although he seemed surprised, even angry, that his own sister had not come out to the great camp. Particularly when he thought his country had been slighted.

Father had asked her more about that.

“She said she’d spent enough time sleeping under canvas, or without even that, to want to come,” Lothíriel had answered.

“Strange…” her father had mused, “for I had the impression that she was certainly no delicate flower, and that she and Éomer were very close, being orphaned as children. I would have thought she would have come to support him.”

“Perhaps,” said Lothíriel, thinking of that stern face, “she thought he would be very angry with her, if she rode to war when he thought her safe at home.”

“Perhaps.” A pause. “But I sensed something more when you answered Éomer’s question.” He paused again. Then he tilted his head slightly and waited.

Lothíriel gave in. “My cousin is spending a lot of time with Princess Éowyn…”

“That’s very kind of him,” her father answered, “but I’m not sure that would have prevented her travelling with you. Unless… you were also friendly to her, I hope?”

“Oh yes, Father, I invited her to stay in our house, once the healers said she could, but she preferred to stay in the Houses, probably because…” she faltered. Father could always wheedle information out of her; it was unfair, really.

“Because?”

“Because the Steward’s offices are closer to the Healing Houses than they are to our house.”

“Ah. I see. Well, I will say nothing of that to Éomer for it may come to naught; it is their business, not mine. Although it would be a very acceptable connection…”

And, with that, Lothíriel felt her own last hope of being wed to Faramir slip quietly away.

……………….