A Copper Band by Himring

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Chapter 1

 

(Names: Curvo=Curufin, Tyelpo=Celebrimbor, Nelyo=Maedhros, Tyelko=Celegorm, Macalaure=Maglor, Carnistir=Caranthir, Nolofinwe=Fingolfin, Findarato=Finrod; Atar=Curufin or Feanor, depending on whether Celebrimbor or Curufin is speaking)

There are a number of competing explanations for Maedhros's Sindarin name. As far as this story is concerned, the name is made up out of the first two syllables of two of Maedhros's Quenya names, Maitimo and Russandol, tacked together and Sindarinized in sound without regard to meaning. That is why Curufin describes the name as 'chopped-up'.

 

 

I

‘Amazing, Curvo’, he murmurs, ‘absolutely amazing. What did you do, tie your right hand behind your back for a day?’

‘I didn’t quite manage a whole day’, I reply a little absentmindedly,  as I try to figure out why he seems less than wholly pleased with the apartments I designed for him.

He turns round and looks at me searchingly. ‘You really did!’

‘You weren’t about to tell me anything much yourself, were you?’

‘I suppose I wasn’t’, he agrees.

Lines of defence, yes.  We discussed geography and fortifications: moats, palisades, stone walls, towers, battlements, gates, drawbridges.  He organized an army of masons, carpenters and smiths, and another army to guard them as they worked and then saw to it that they all got equipped and fed. The ditches were dug and barriers of earth and quarried stone rose at amazing speed. But he was still sleeping on a pallet on the floor. It didn’t seem appropriate for the head of the family. So I offered to see to his private rooms, and he accepted. I got to work. He was hardly around at all in the interval—patrols, negotiations. This is the first time he’s having a proper look at the results.

I’d forged the first left-handed swords and daggers for him in Mithrim. Handedness was an issue that, of course, I was aware of—I produced a passable first effort without even consulting him. The next attempt was tailored precisely to his developing skills.

One-handedness required more thought. Anything in his rooms that my brother could not manage with one hand only, with his left hand, he would need a servant to help him with. I needed to consider each handle, each grip, each fastening and lock. I strapped my right hand to my side one morning when I got out of bed.  Under other circumstances, it might have been an interesting experiment. 

By the early afternoon, my mood was so foul, that Tyelpo said to me:  ‘Atar, I know you’re doing this to help Uncle Nelyo, but I’m out of here and not coming back before tonight. If I hang around, we might end up saying things we’d regret tomorrow, both of us.’

Now my brother is doing his first tour of his new rooms, and it seems he’s spotted the thought and planning that went into it practically right away, but there’s an almost imperceptible frown on his face. Perhaps he feels I was watching him too closely?

‘Truly, Curvo’, he says with a faint smile, ‘you’ve managed to make this castle almost completely Maedhros-proof!’

‘Don’t call yourself by that chopped-up name! It’s bad enough that those Sindar insist on doing it...’

‘Oh, I don’t know, it seems suitable somehow, don’t you think?’

No, I don’t and I’ve already made that clear enough. But he isn’t waiting for an answer. He’s looking at the furnishings again. Then he puts his arm around my shoulder and slowly turns me all the way around, three hundred sixty degrees.

‘You’re still so very angry.’

At first, I’m puzzled; then I see what he means. I guess it’s not the left-handed gadgetry that is worrying him. Without even considering it, I’ve designed these rooms for the dispossessed king of the Noldor.

 

II

 

They said I very much resembled my father. But the one who is swallowed alive cannot really be like the one who is doing the swallowing, however lovingly it is done.

‘Our brother has come home’, said Tyelko to me, as I came in.

There was that familiar slight stress on the word our again.  Our brother, our mother, our grandfather... Not mine, he seemed to be saying—as if because I was Atar’s favourite, I wasn’t going to be allowed a share in anyone else.

I certainly wasn’t allowed a share in Nelyo.  Apparently, when the others were my age, he had basically been around all the time. Now he was often away—at the palace or, sometimes, all over Valinor. When he came home, they pounced on him, each in their own way. Macalaure, for example, would quietly attach himself to him like glue for a day or so. But of course everyone else’s reactions to Nelyo’s arrival would pale before Atar’s. Either there would be a rapturous welcome, followed hard on its heels by thunderous disapproval, or it would be the other way around; Atar’s feelings regarding Nelyo were always mixed nowadays and never anything less than vehement. They rocked the household.

Whatever all the fuss was about—and mostly I didn’t even know and wasn’t told—I was on Atar’s side, of course. I had never really been offered any other side to be on. I tended to view Nelyo with rather a distant sort of regret.

This time was no different. That evening there was shouting to be heard from Atar’s study. The atmosphere over supper was strained, Nelyo looking distinctly subdued.

In the morning I got up early; Telperion was fading and Laurelin only just beginning to blossom. Nobody else was around, and the house was quiet and peaceful. I wandered out into the garden and decided to climb the apple tree. I found an apple that was almost ripe and a comfortable bough and sat with my back against the trunk, meditatively chewing.

There were stirrings in the house. Nelyo emerged from the back door, his hair still tousled. He leaned against the kitchen wall and blinked thoughtfully. Then, it seemed, he spotted me. Slowly he made his way across to the tree and stood beneath my bough. I looked at him and went on chewing.

He tentatively smiled at me and began: ‘Ah, Curvo...’

‘Nelyo!’, yelled Tyelko from somewhere in the house.

‘Curvo!’, shouted Atar from another room.

Nelyo winced and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to tidy it.

And that was basically how it went.  We acquired a long history of conversations that had not taken place. They practically all ended before they had properly begun because somebody wanted something from Nelyo. For a long time I didn’t even notice that he had also practically always been the one who tried to initiate them.

When I finally did realize, I thought about it for a while. Then I picked the very best of the jewels I had made in my lessons with Atar in the forge. I managed to find Nelyo on his own, for once, and showed it to him.

‘Why, Curvo, that’s brilliant! You’ve already outdone by far anything that I could do at that age!’

Ouch. But his praise was knowledgeable, Nelyo’s grasp of the theory considerably surpassing his practical skills, and seemed sincere.

‘You can have it, if you like’, I said casually.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, I’ve made lots more like it.’

‘Why, thank you, Curvo!’

But he gave it away almost immediately. I was there when it happened. It was at some kind of party or gathering, a lord that Nelyo seemed to think important.

‘Did you know how talented my youngest brother is? Look, this is one of the jewels he made.’

Admiring noises from the lord.

‘You can have it. Yes, certainly you can. He’s made others like it, and he can easily make more.’

Atar, who was within earshot, looked at me quizzically.

At that moment, I was furious, although I said nothing. But almost right away I started getting commissions, a little like Atar himself, if on a very much smaller scale. I calmed down considerably after that. So, a while later, I made up my mind to try again. This time, I didn’t choose something I’d already made. By then, I was working more independently and didn’t spend all hours in the forge directly under Atar’s eye.

It turned out to be even more difficult to get Nelyo by himself this time.  When I finally managed, I held the copper circlet out to him with the words:  ‘Don’t give this away. It’s specially designed for your hair.’

He gave me a quick look, opened his mouth and shut it again. He studied the circlet. Then he reached up and untied his hair.

‘There is no mirror in this room’, he said. ‘Will you put it on for me?’

I carefully set it in place and stepped back. I had used no jewels or any other extraneous ornaments, but the circlet was as intricate as I could make it, its filigree almost as fine as his hair and woven from several shades of copper alloy. It looked exactly how I had imagined it would look.

‘It looks just right’, I said with pride.

Nelyo, who had been watching me carefully, smiled. 

From then on, he wore it almost every day; in fact, he wore it always, unless Atar had given him something to wear for a major feast day or he was engaged in an activity that might have damaged it. I hadn’t counted on his doing that. Almost it felt as if he had turned the tables on me again. I had meant to make him obliged to me for the gift, but now it was as if I was obliged to him for wearing it. But this time it didn’t matter—this time I had gained what I really wanted, a stake in him. However many conversations we failed to have—and we regularly continued to fail to have them—I would look at him across the table, across the room, and he would be wearing the copper circlet I’d made for him. My brother, mine, not just Macalaure’s and Tyelko’s and Carnistir’s.

 

III

 

Dark sombre drapes on which Feanorian stars stand out, picked out in precious materials, glittering. Now I’m considering it, I must admit they’re rather in-your-face, but...

‘They call us the Dispossessed now, had you heard?’

‘Not very tactful of them, is it?’ He massages his left temple with the tips of his fingers. ‘And do you think, like them, that the Crown is a possession, Curvo?’

‘It’s yours. It should be yours!’

‘Our grandfather found a way for the Noldor to survive. He kept them together on the march from Cuivienen. That is what made him king.’

I think of Finwe as I saw him in his palace in Tirion, surrounded by pomp and circumstance, all the nobles vying for his favour and attention. Nelyo sees my expression and changes tack.

‘Nolofinwe finds it far easier to listen to me, now I am his subject, not his king.’

‘You are saying that that is why you abdicated? So you could handle Nolofinwe better?’, I ask sceptically.

‘Nolofinwe doesn’t need handling. Now we’re not breathing down each others’ necks and stepping on each others’ toes anymore, all I need to do is refrain from irritating him so much that he forgets that he himself wants to do exactly what I want him to do, anyway. Our interests don’t conflict. Given our recent history, not irritating him isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, but it hardly requires intricate plotting, just a bit of courtesy. ‘

‘A bit of courtesy? As in serious distortion of the facts? I remember quite how tactful you got when you tried to convince everyone that Thingol’s message was  anything other than offensive and damaging!’

‘It was both offensive and damaging, of course, but we could hardly afford to get offended. Given the gossip that used to go on in Tirion, it was a serious mistake to imagine that such a large crowd of angry people could keep Alqualonde a secret for long.  We ought to have primed Findarato to get in first with the story and put the best possible face on it, before the affair blew up on us, but I suppose we were all too busy pretending it hadn’t happened. Too late now!  But since our best hope of smoothing things over a little with Thingol is, once again, Findarato, blaming him and his brothers was about the worst reaction Carnistir could have come up with, even if hadn’t been inadvisable otherwise. Even so, I’m not at all sure time and Findarato will be enough, with Thingol.  But I haven’t had any better ideas.’

I shrug. ‘Marry his daughter?’

He laughs. He sounds so reasonable, so rational. I’ve heard this line of argument from him before, but now,  without Tyelko shouting and Carnistir scowling in the background, he’s almost beginning to convince me—not that he is right, for I still disagree with him entirely—but I’m almost beginning to believe him that he didn’t give up the Crown because Thangorodrim had broken his spirit or in an exaggerated fit of remorse, but because he always had perceived the kingship as something that might have to be given up if circumstances required it and so, when he thought the circumstances did require it, he went and did it. Maybe that truly is the kind of person he always was. I remember how he made me set the copper circlet on his head, how he managed to turn what was basically a bribe, even if it was an elaborate one, into something more complex and binding. But I wanted to connect, to be bound. Surely Nolofinwe didn’t? And even if he did, where does that leave the rest of us? And where does it leave Atar, who would have firmly declined to be rational or reasonable in this matter at all?

I regard the hangings again. ‘I could have the two largest of them taken down’, I offer. ‘We could put something lighter, airier up instead.’

‘Thank you, Curvo. I can see they’re excellent workmanship, of course... We could put them in one of the larger halls. It would make them look less...obtrusive, if they had more space around them.’

I turn and put my hand out towards the temple he was rubbing earlier, not quite touching his skin.

‘You lost the circlet I made for you.’

‘I’m afraid I did...’  Apologizing for that, something he really couldn’t help, when he hasn’t apologized for anything else.

‘That’s not what I meant. If I make you another one just like it, will you wear it?’

‘Not another one just like it, Curvo, please. That one was just right for Nelyafinwe, but it would not be right for Maedhros. Make me one for Maedhros, and I promise to wear it!’

He smiles at me confidently. I open my mouth to protest, but he’s framed it like a challenge and I can’t resist a challenge. Already ideas are beginning to form in my brain...

 

IV

 

‘So how did Uncle Nelyo like his new rooms?’, Tyelpo asks.

‘He was pleased with them. We did decide to exchange a couple of the hangings...’

I stop and frown, recalling more vividly those hours I spent with my right hand strapped to my side.

That vile feeling of helplessness...  ‘Oh, I don’t know, it seems suitable somehow, don’t you think?’, he said of his Sindarin name.  It makes me wonder what else he is concealing.

Chapter End Notes

 

The interpretation here of what Maedhros said at the council scene when the Noldor received Thingol's message is admittedly rather slanted. It assumes that the idea was to calm down the Noldor rather than to provoke the Sindar.  

Maedhros's circlet is more usually associated with Mahtan, but actually there is nothing here that says Mahtan hadn't made one for Maedhros previously, perhaps when he was a boy.

Oh, and in case anyone reads this who hasn't read "Cabbages", perhaps they might want to be informed that Maedhros (or rather my rather AU version of him) is quite prone to 'exaggerated fits of remorse' (or at any rate remorse), he just avoids indulging in them around Curufin.

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