Hers

Truly, I did it without thinking, without any thought. It was a simple reaction. I reached forward, grabbed her by her elbow, pulled her to me and kissed her. My other arm snaked around her waist, pulling her closer. She melted into my embrace, into me and when she willingly opened and my tongue touched hers…

If you attempt to kiss her or Béma forbid, put your tongue in her mouth, I will rise from this bed and remove your head from your shoulders. King or no.

I turned her loose, stepping back in horror. Her eyes were most likely as wide as mine.

“Béma! Wudurose, I am so sorry.” I ran my hand nervously through my hair. “I did not mean-”

“Shh.” Her features relaxed and she turned her back, heading back to Gamling’s stallion, who waited with unnatural patience. With her back turned, I warily looked around, hoping, praying to see no one. “Speak not of it and do not apologize.” She mounted up. “Do you not love her at all?”

I hung my head, ashamed. “I love her much. I truly do. I simply have… unresolved regrets.”

“Then mount up, Éomer, and we will resolve them today. Now.” She waited for me to return to my horse. "Many years ago, on a cold, snowy night, you stood in my small home in Aldburg and told me that basking in happy memories was good, but one should not live in the past, but instead create new, good memories.”

“I remember that,” I whispered. I did remember that. She had stayed home during the Yule feast, choosing to eat and celebrate alone, rather than bring her melancholy mood to the festivities. I had looked for her, missed her and had my cook make up a box for her…we made love the first time that night.

“You should take your own advice and not linger in the past.” She interrupted my thoughts. “Tis not healthy." It was quiet for a moment. “Do you kiss your wife like that when you are trying to hush her?”

It was painful to admit and I hung my head. “Yes.”

“You haven't changed a bit!” She waited for me to remount and to come aside. We walked slowly, moving even further from the township. As time went, I became more and more alarmed how far she was from the safety of a village, how alone she was until Gamling moved here. Eventually, she began to talk. She talked of moving, resettling. She spoke of Edric as a young boy, his moods, his playfulness.

“I grieved you, Éomer. The world changed. You said it would and it did and I did not fit in yours when it tilted.” The smell of lingering smoke became stronger, but she continued to speak. “I did not fit in it before it tilted.”

“Wudurose. Our social standings did not matter to me. I loved you.”

“Aye and I loved you.” She looked at me then, bright hazel eyes, shifting to green, a color I remember they turned when she was content, the color they would become when we made love. “I loved you before I wanted to admit I loved you. And yet…” For a moment, her voice drifted. “I knew. We were not meant to be. Even if Théoden did not die, even if Théodred had not died, I was not what you needed to even run your hall in Aldburg.”

“I did not care.”

“I know.” Again she grew quiet and the only sound were our horses, moving down the dirt road and the creak of our saddles. It was a comforting sound. “And in all truth, had Théoden and Théodred lived, more than likely I would have ignored my disquiet and gladly married you, had you asked. However, Théoden and Théodred passed and you are king and nothing will change that. We simply were not meant to be. And I grieved you and loved a dream and a shadow and a ghost for eight long summers. Truly, as bad as it was when Irminric died, to lose you was much worse. Irminric died and would never come back, but you lived on and married and had children and more children. Even out here, so far away, we received news, news of Edoras, news of your glorious marriage, news of your children, and I was left alone to grieve and raise Edric. And I could not speak to anyone of why I was grieving. They assumed I was freshly widowed and I allowed them to believe it.” At this point, she smiled. “And then Gamling began to come, several times a year. Oh, he came at your command – he did tell me that rainy night he banged on my door with money from you and orders from you to use it to purchase this and that – but I realized I looked forward to his visits, looked forward to spending time with him, looked forward to his teaching me to better know my horses, all that you gifted Edric. You,” she chided me humorously, “have made it difficult for Gamling and me to dower our daughter as generously as you have landed Edric.”

I leaned over toward her. “I can take care of that, if you and Gamling will allow me.”

Wudurose looked at me askance. “She is not your responsibility, Éomer.”

“Please. It would be a pleasure.”

“Éomer!” She was back to being exasperated with me, something I found grossly amusing. “I did not say it to garner more from you!” Her eyes were scouring the fields, the scent of smoke now almost over-powering and dark patches showing in the fields. “You have been more than generous! It is our intention to dower her with most of the upper fields that belong to Gamling and leave all of his property to her.”

“I am aware that you are not attempting to fleece me, Wudurose. I suppose I will just have to gift Gamling with more property.”

“ÉOMER!” Her voice was a growl and it made me laugh out loud. She waited until I finished laughing at her distress. “That is not nice!”

“What was not nice was you leaving without a word,” I countered. “You took my son and hid him from me.” I watched as her face fell. “Why did you run?”

“Surely you-”

“Surely I suspect. Surely, I have a gut feeling, surely I have reasoned it out, but surely I want to hear it from you.” I reached over and took her reins. “Why did you run? Why did you hide our son from me?”

Her jaw flapped several times. I did not think she was at a loss for words, simply felt she was trying to find them. “Because I feared what you would do. Because I feared you would take him from me. Because I feared your queen. What woman wants her husband’s bastard-“

“He is not that!” I cut her off with a chop of my hand. “He is just as much my son as Elfwine or any of my other children are. Never call him that.”

“To you,” she continued softly, “he is not. And for that, I am grateful. But to the world, he is. He is, Éomer. How would your queen feel if she knew that the very product of a love affair you had before her, lived beneath her nose? What would you have done?” It was quiet as she searched me, as I searched my mind. “I feared you would ask me to be your mistress and I knew I was too weak to say no. I knew if I stayed, you would be rent in two, your wife and queen would hate me. I fear her, Éomer. I fear her wrath. Still. Eventually, you would have to choose or you would hate us both.” With this pronouncement, her eyes welled up in tears. “People would know who he was, who he belonged to. They would… say things. Hurtful things, hateful things. I could deal with them talking about me, which they did before you married. But I would hurt someone if they said those things to my son or about him.”

I put my hand over hers. “I would not allow-”

“They would still say them, Éomer. Under their breath, in the quiet of their homes, in my ear, in Edric’s ear.” Her voice was softer now, almost a whisper. “Anything we gained, they would say came from you. Every bite of food, every bit of land, every seed was not ours, but whore-money. I would not have him grow up like that. I needed to protect him.” Her hand was now engulfed in both of mine and she stared, focused on my signet. “Esolhætt is bad. Imagine him ten-fold, a hundred-fold. His cousin, before he died from a horse that kicked him, was worse.

“Edric grew up with friends, real friends, who liked him because he was Edric, not because he was the king’s son. Tondhere took him under his wing, because he was a young boy in need of guidance, in need of an occupation, one who loved the heat of the smithy, not because he was the king’s son. I ran, to hide him and to protect him from spite. I wanted him to have a normal childhood.” She swallowed painfully and pulled her hand from mine and then covered it with her own. “I did not run to spite you. I ran to protect us and give us a chance. To give us a new start and you one as well.”

For many minutes, we stared at each other, years of questions, pain falling away. Finally, we began our journey.

“Tell me of my son.”

Wudurose whistled between her teeth. “Nineteen summers, Éomer. That is a lot of talking.”

“I will listen.”

There was a smile about her face, one I recognized. “Surely Gamling has told you much.”

“Surely Gamling has told me little and I had to pester him to retrieve what limited amount he told me.” The scent of lingering smoke was in the air and we both began to move faster.

“He bragged on Edric that much?”

I burst out laughing. Gamling was the most reticent, close-lipped Rider I knew. That he would say anything about either of his children...

The thought once sprung, was immediately clamped, much like a bear trap. It certainly resonated within me as such. It was a painful realization. Gamling certainly had much more to do with the raising of my son, much like Tondhere, than I did. I simply ensured in a roundabout way, that Edric was provided for. I had nothing to do with his raising.

And it bothered me. No. It angered me. Truth be, I understood Wudurose's concerns and if Esolhætt's attitude were any indication, her concerns were justified and true. But by the same side of the coin, Tondhere apparently suspected and now that I had arrived, in my own folly, I opened the Riddermark to the possible knowledge that I had sired a child, one that had been hidden from me for some years and then when I discovered his existence, I paid his upkeep in land and horses.

The possibility of wild, false incorrect rampant running rumors was inconceivably hysterical. If we were not careful, they would have my son reduced to a anti-social dwarf, who I chained to a smithy to eek out horseshoes day in and day out, or that his mother was a dwarf with a beard to rival mine, or worse a slobbering hunchback, and that I had paid a soldier in my cavalry to marry her and keep the seed of my loins away from everyone's sight.

And that I had had nothing to do with his raising.

So it hit me all at once that I had a son and I had little hand to do with him, save to monetarily provide and support and that others could and rightfully should claim him as their own.

“You are thinking deep, Éomer.” Wudurose pulled close to my stallion, her knee rubbing mine. “What plagues you?”

“It plagues me I ask a simple question and doing so makes me realize what an inept father I have been.”

“I believe we have discussed this.”

“I believe you have told me what it was, how it was, and how it came to be. It does not mean I agree, should have agreed. It does not change the fact that you are a willful wench!”

“Willful.” She moved back to her side of the widely beaten path. “My greatest fear was you would come, take him from me. My greatest fear was your Queen would call me out, call me a whore, call me-”

“Your fear was unfounded!”

“I didn't know that!”

“Because you ran!”

“What would you have done?” Wudurose's voice strangely enough was not raised. “Put yourself in my shoes? Pregnant, deeply in love with the father of your baby and he was marrying someone else?” She was staring straight ahead and I could see her swallowing. “And knowing that you had no place in his life. Even in your deepest dreams.”

“I would have left.” I swallowed hard as well. The smell of smoke was becoming stronger and I put my heels to my horse, picking up speed. “You are right. I would have left. Wudurose, the smell-”

“Yes. The smoke.” She had been keeping up, but like the breeze, she took off ahead of me, Gamling's horse's tail flying. We came over the rise, where I could see Wudurose and Gamling's spread.