The House that Fingon Built by Himring

‘It has turned out beautifully’, says Findarato. ‘I must say that I was a bit worried when you first began working on the plans. It can be a bit difficult, coming back, and I wondered whether you were ready..., whether you might not be spending too much time alone. But getting it built has clearly done you good. You seem more content now, I think? And it is beautiful; you have every reason to be satisfied with the results! Just look at the way the sunlight falls aslant through those windows and across the stairwell...’

He turns to me and looks me in the eye. I can see he has made up his mind to ask.

‘Only, Findekano, I could not help noticing...  All over the house, all the furnishings! The place is so clearly meant for two?’

I gaze unwaveringly back at him, but do not answer. He hesitates; then he asks me straight out:

‘She is not here?’

‘No.’

He waits for me to continue, but I decline to fill the silence. Sunlight falls decoratively across the stairwell. At last, I say:

‘You have not seen all the rooms yet.’

I guess I must have decided to give him his answer after all; otherwise I ought not to have taken him into the study. There is no portrait of you in the house—I need none—but for anyone who knows you, you are outlined against the wall of the study, not in paint, but in the selection of books on the shelves. Findarato recognizes it even more quickly than I expected. He picks out a title, looks puzzled, scans the back of the rest of the volumes and then stands quite motionless on the green carpet, next to the desk that is almost exactly like the one at which you used to put in long hours of work, only this one is made of a kind of wood that does not grow in Middle-Earth...

In his own behaviour, Findarato can be very conventional indeed. In our youth, his courtship of Amarie was a ninety-nine days’ wonder in Tirion, it was such a model of propriety. They followed even the rules all the Noldor had assumed were expressly designed for breaking—Amarie, of course, is a Vanya, so it was not her we were surprised at.  Findarato is a safe confidante for all kinds of outlandish and improper secrets nevertheless, for in him conventionality is constantly being overtaken by his ready sympathy. As he turns to me now, his eyes are full of compassion.

‘They are unlikely to let him out, you know that’, he says gently. There is no especial emphasis on the gender of the pronoun. However little he might have suspected it a moment ago, that is not what is troubling him now.

‘I know’, I tell him. ‘But they might. It is not impossible. They let me out sooner than I had any right to expect, after all. I drew sword at Alqualonde...’

Findarato’s silence tells me that he does not entirely share my definition of ‘soon’, but does not want to contradict me. No matter how much time has passed, it does not invalidate my argument: I am here, despite the Doom.  But our silent disagreement effectively kills our further attempts at conversation and, as Findarato takes his leave of me by the gate, his eyes are still filled with pity. I stand looking after him as he walks down the street, and wonder whether I am as pathetic as Findarato thinks I am.

***

When I first set foot in Tirion again, I was even more at a loss than Findarato recognized, I think.  To be sure, there was a certain nostalgic pleasure in breathing the air of Valinor again, but what was it I was actually supposed to be doing here? I was only one Noldorin king superfluous to requirements in a city that already seemed to contain more ex-rulers than you could shake a sceptre at. Findarato and Turukano must have had this problem in their turn, I supposed, but they seemed to have got over it long before I arrived. Of course, Findarato had Amarie, Turukano had Elenwe, who had returned before him, while I...

It was not that I envied Uncle Arafinwe the crown. He seemed to be supremely competent at his job, as far as I could tell, and, in any case, it had never been in Tirion that I wanted to rule.

‘Here!’, I said, almost defiantly, and jabbed my finger at a blank space on the map that would eventually turn out to be slap in the middle of the cow pastures of Brithombar. ‘That is where I am going to rule!’

I was afraid you would laugh; it was so very unrealistic, a mere daydream. But you smiled at me and made it our next big educational project.  And so, for about a year, we designed Dream City, without ever quite discussing whether it was just a theoretical exercise or something more than that.

We enthusiastically revised the law code, about four or five times. We drew architectural plans and sketched views from the front and the side of every kind of building, starting with the town hall and the court of justice, all the way down to the public conveniences and the cattle troughs.  We modelled the economy of my future kingdom in three different ways, based on different hypotheses about the physical environment that of course eventually turned out to be completely wrong—all of them.

I was just musing that I might have to readjust my ideas about agriculture just a bit, when you regretfully cleared your throat and brought to my attention that after all my kingdom lay in Middle-Earth.

‘What of it?’, I asked.

I hadn’t yet, you pointed out to me rather hesitantly, spent a single thought on defence.

I remember the regretful expression on your face, as you began cataloguing what you knew of the dangers of Middle-Earth for me. You were sitting to my left, the table between us covered in sheets of paper of various sizes and, among them, tottering stacks of books—half a research library, not that there was any systematic description of Middle-Earth or Beleriand available in Tirion then. Most of those who had marched from Cuivienen had been only too glad to leave those places behind.

I was so much in awe of your greater experience and your superior knowledge, so grateful to you for encouraging me in what Father would at best have regarded as an absurd whim, at worst as blackest ingratitude. I did not see then that you, too, were young and happy to dream of a freedom for me that you could not quite envisage for yourself even in theory. And I never had spelled out to myself that if I ever ruled any city in Beleriand, the eldest son and heir of Feanor would hardly live next door to me...

‘No, look’, you said to me, ‘you have been misled by all those blank spaces and by the different scale of the map. It is a lot farther across Beleriand, from the Blue Mountains to the Sea, than from Tirion to Alqualonde.’

‘Ah, yes, of course’, I said intelligently—and never felt a premonition how I would one day come to curse that distance, those endless leagues across Anfauglith.

After my return to Tirion, at first I hesitated to ask. My grip on my emotions was shaky still; the sight of a butterfly in the garden could reduce me to sudden tears. Could I even speak your name without revealing what you were to me?  You had kept the secret so religiously, more for my sake than for yours, that it seemed wrong to give it away now.

Besides, I knew the answers could hardly be good. The last I had seen of you was your army retreating across the plain, drawing your share of Morgoth’s troops after you—not enough, sadly, to give any of my own people a chance to fight free and survive, but still easily enough to cut you all to pieces. Had you lived, that day? And if you had—what then? What would be left to you—for had we not staked everything on one throw?

I did not expect the answers to be as bad as they were, although the fact that none of the family broached the matter of their own accord was a warning in itself. When I finally dared to break the ominous silence and ask our uncle outright about your fate, it turned out that my fears of betraying myself by my reactions had been unfounded. It was Arafinwe who hemmed and hawed and in the end spoke haltingly, averting his eyes from my face.

My apparent calm clearly unnerved him even more. I wondered at it myself and decided that this shattering news must surely begin to hurt at some point, but it seemed that that point was not yet. Meanwhile, I took care to thank him politely for telling me.

Afterwards, the silence about you in family circles became deafening; it descended like a very thick blanket. Our relatives were relieved that it was not they who had had to inform me and tactfully avoided the subject. That was no help at all. I found I had stopped weeping at the sight of butterflies.

It fell to a comparative stranger to explain things to me, a woman who had never set foot outside Tirion. I met her at a ball I had not wished to attend. Turukano had wanted me to come and I had failed to come up with a plausible reason not to go. The woman was the niece of a friend of mine or his aunt or his granddaughter—it was very embarrassing but I could not remember which—and to try and compensate for my confusion I asked her to dance and, when the set was over, procured a plate of hors d’oeuvres and a glass of white wine for her.

She turned out to be the kind of woman whose idea of conversation is to tell you everything she knows about you, in the most benevolent manner possible. Before she had half emptied her plate, she was telling me that, yes, it was a great pity about Nelyafinwe Maitimo, wasn’t it, but he was a Feanorion after all, probably couldn’t help it, poor thing, all of a piece throughout; there had just been something not quite right about that family from the start—creepy she’d always thought them, beginning with that unwomanly behaviour of Miriel’s—unreliable, inherently violent, quite incapable of true loyalty—of course I couldn’t have been expected to see through him, impressionable and idealistic as I was—so brave,  so noble! Fingon the Valiant!—far too innocent to plumb the depths of a Feanorian heart and realize that of course he would desert me at the earliest opportunity once again…

Her unrelenting flow of well-meaning chatter had lulled me into inattention, so that it took me a while to process what she was saying. When I finally grasped what she was driving at, I opened my mouth to give her a piece of my mind, when, suddenly, finally it struck me, there in that over-crowded ball room. That you would have agreed with her. That in fact you had. That any of the glaring inaccuracies in her account would have struck you as minor and completely irrelevant, for you had always regarded mitigating circumstances as something that only applied to others. Where you yourself were concerned, intentions had never counted, only outcomes. I wanted to stretch out my hand and pull you out of there, away from all that, but I was on the wrong side of the Sea and a couple of thousand years too late.

Such terrible times, she was saying comfortably, how awful it must have been for me…

Of course she was right, in a way. That had been a cold, raw moment when I had seen your troops beginning to retreat and knew we had failed, had simultaneously lost our throw and the whole game. I would not see you again; we would not get another chance to sit down, to compare notes on what had gone wrong, to consider how to do better next time. I would not even learn whether that flicker of red that I had briefly been able to make out near your banner was really you… 

We had known that leaders of armies hardly ever get the opportunity to die together, even in defeat—not unless they are even less competent in their duties than we turned out to be. After that one half-joking conversation, we had not mentioned the subject again. I had no time to think about it then either; I had no more time to think about you at all. I had my people to think of, those of them who were still alive; they had stood by me until now and must not falter for lack of leadership in this final hour. And there were orcs, far too many, to keep me busy and trolls and balrogs—and, in the end, of course, Gothmog. When next I had a moment to remember you, I reached out for you, blindly, but was no longer sure I even had a hand…

It was all so long ago, she was saying, and surely I was happy finally to be back in Tirion where I belonged…

I looked at her, in her sumptuous ball gown trimmed with lace, spearing a piece of puff-pastry with a dessert fork as she spoke. Cheery dance music tinkled in the background.  She had never known you—or if she had, she had forgotten completely who you were. I could not even begin to tell her…

All I managed to say, in a brittle voice, was that I imagined you would hardly have enjoyed fleeing all the way to Mount Dolmed. That little piece of geography was lost on her, of course. She told her friends, I heard later on, that poor Prince Findekano was taking his cousin’s betrayal very hard.

***

When I began to venture out more often and further beyond our immediate circle, I discovered that she was not alone in her opinions and that it was by no means only those who had not set foot in Middle-Earth who shared them. I never needed to ask anyone for their opinions about you; it was my appearance on the scene itself that triggered their memories and set them talking about the First Age. These people were less careful of the sensibilities of Poor Prince Findekano—or less well informed—and so I heard much about their views on those long-past events.

We had all of us, I learned, been brave and steadfast and unshakeable in our determination throughout—except, of course, for the Feanorians. We had been loyal and true to each other, in all and every circumstance—except for the Feanorians.  We had been heroes, every single one of us—except for the Feanorians! (We would have won, they oh-so-carefully never said, if it had not been for the Feanorians.) It occurred to me after a while that, thousands of years later, my long-memoried people were still smarting a little at having had to be rescued by a host made up largely of Vanyar…

***

Unchanging Valinor! As I wandered through the corridors of the palace in Tirion, there was no trace to show you had ever lived there. Space being always at a premium, the rooms that you had occupied had been cleared out and given to another already when you left for Formenos.  Since then, the palace had been rebuilt bit by bit over the years, as the need arose, and if any of the mementoes our fond grandfather had kept of his eldest grandson’s childhood were still gathering dust in some forgotten attic, I never found it.

Formenos, I was told, had been razed to the ground by the order of the Valar. Every trace of the Dark Foe’s attack had been eliminated—together with any reminder that the Valarin defence of the Undying Lands might have been less than perfect and impenetrable at any time. Now, not one stone remained upon another of Feanor’s place of exile, and it would have proved vain to sift scattered masonry for the belongings of his eldest son. I had not gone to Formenos while it was still occupied, feeling both hurt by your defection and unsure of my welcome; later, I had regretted that I had not taken a chance on it. There seemed to be no point in going now.

The Feanorian homestead on the outskirts of Tirion was deserted; it seemed nobody had wanted to live in such an ill-fated place. A neighbouring farm had absorbed the grounds; what had once been Nerdanel’s vegetable patch was now a corner of a large field. The walls were tottering under the weight of the brambles and vines that grew all over them and were slowly pulling them down. The roof had clearly fallen in a long time ago. I saw one of the farmer’s goats clamber across and dislodge a few more tiles as it went and heard the falling tiles shatter inside on the kitchen floor at the bottom of that large gaping hole. At some point, somebody had bricked up the door to Feanaro’s forge, as if something dangerous might escape from there.

Only the lane that wound gently through stands of trees dotted about the landscape, leading by degrees from the homestead to the main road to Tirion, seemed unchanged. It was true that maybe it had sunk a little with the passing of feet over the years, and it was just then, as I slowly walked back along it towards the city, baking under a sun hotter than Laurelin’s light had ever become even at noon…

‘Maitimo, Maitimo, wait! Wait for me! Makalaure!’

I was running as hard as I could, partly because I wanted to catch up with you as soon as possible, but mostly because I was still afraid that there might be somebody on my trail, sent to fetch me back to Tirion before I could even reach you.

You heard me just as you were about to disappear around a bend where the lane dipped down among a grove of willows. You stopped and turned and waved. I laid on another burst of speed and dashed towards you, pell-mell. Grinning, you held out a welcoming hand. I gripped it tightly, but found that I could not make myself stop in time, and stumbled on past you, whirling you around like a top. You laughed and, managing to seize my other arm, quickly spun me around once more, so that Makalaure had to dodge hastily out of our path.

‘Findekano!’, he exclaimed. ‘So, Uncle decided to let you come after all!’

He was doing his very best to sound pleased and welcoming, but I could tell that I had interrupted an important conversation that Makalaure considered unsuitable for my tender ears.  Although you two spent so much of your lives together, a privilege I envied Makalaure, I knew that in the household of Feanaro the chances of having a truly private conversation in which you could be sure of not being interrupted at some critical moment were few and far between.

‘Girls,’ I thought, with all the wisdom of one who knows nothing whatever about the subject.

If I had been told then that the pure and shining joy I felt at being allowed to spend a couple of days with you and your family was not entirely unrelated to that subject, I would never have believed it. And you, although you were already more troubled than I was, had no inkling of it either. We were Noldor; we prided ourselves on our independent thinking and had no idea, then, how rule-abiding we were at heart in many of our ways. It was not until we reached Middle-Earth that we realized how much of what we believed to be natural law was a set of conventions laid down by our grandfathers or even by our fathers. By then, of course, we were also fighting for our lives, and the discovery was terrifying as often as it was liberating...

…but also—in that one case, from that moment on when you took me in your arms and the gentle pressure of your lips seemed to slice through me like a very sharp knife—as inevitable as breathing, as irreversible as the first rising of the Sun.

I found I did not, after all, wish to dream myself back into the innocence of childhood, as if all that had happened since then, hopelessly entangled as it had been with guilt and pain, had only been an aberration. Only, in Beleriand it seemed memory could find no foothold at all. During lonely evenings in Barad Eithel, I had been able to rest my mind on the thought of you in Himring, sitting at your desk and writing, talking to Makalaure, inspecting the guards on the walls, thinking of me— thinking of me, as I was thinking of you… I had not been there and seen it, of course, but I had been left in no doubt: the only ones who held court in Barad Eithel these days were shoals of fish, and of the great fortress of Himring, all that remained was above sea level was a bit of bare rock.  Whenever I tried to remember the way we were, the way we had been, the way back seemed to be barred by fire and deep water.

In any case, it was not the past I mourned so much as the future we had never quite had. There had simply been far, far too few occasions when I had had a chance to ask you those mundane questions: what you were going to have for breakfast, how your day had gone—all the humdrum details of a life together. Beside that profound lack and loneliness, the nagging, persistent ache which kept me awake in bed at night was merely a sad little counterpoint, maddening as it was.

If I had been a Vanya, I might have prayed for a year or two, fasting on a rock. If I had been a Teler, I might have composed an epic in twenty-four cantos or gone on a long solitary voyage down the coast. I was a Noldo, however, so I felt impelled to build something.

At first, of course, it was to be a towering monument, a public statement. I would correct the false perception of you among our people, for surely if anybody deserved to be called a hero of the war against Morgoth, you did, too! Whatever errors you had made in the beginning, however you had despaired in the end—how could all those years in between, all that tireless effort and courage in adversity simply have been forgotten?

In a spirit of staunch defiance, I began to design a huge memorial, Numenorean style. If the Noldor were blind to the truth, I would make them see it! But as I bent over the drawing-board, it was as if you stepped up behind me and leaned over my shoulder, as if you took one look at my sketch of a giant-size statue of Nelyafinwe Maitimo, the great warrior of sad and noble mien, in full paraphernalia—having no great talent as a sculptor myself, I had based it on an illustration of Isildur’s statue at the Argonath—and as if you said just a single word: No.

That complete rejection of my scheme, so firmly delivered, carried with it such a strong sense of your presence that involuntarily I craned my head backward as if you were truly there and reachable by physical means. Longing clogged my throat. Tears started in my eyes. I nodded, as if you could see me, ripped the sheet off the drawing board and discarded it, to start afresh.

My next idea was to make the building an act of restitution, for there was, after all, no denying that many people had suffered, had indeed suffered greatly, both as a consequence of your mistakes and through the crimes you had allowed yourself to be driven to commit. The Nelyafinwe Hospital? The Maitimo Foundation for Neglected Children? Even in Valinor, by no means as unnecessary as one might imagine.

This time, it was as if you spoke to me and said: Findekano, what can you be thinking of? You are a grandchild of Finwe! If you are aware of people in Tirion who are in need of medical help, if you are aware of neglected children, go and do something about it! Help them! What have I—or my name—got to do with it?

You have to do with everything I do!, I protested, silently.

Upon this, I perceived nothing of denial, merely felt my sense of your presence receding again, no matter how hard I tried to hold on to it. And so at last I understood that it was I myself who was your living monument and your memorial, I myself on whom all the restitution depended that you could still make, and that what I needed to build was a house for myself where I could become what I was now, a home where I could live with my memories of you.

***

Unlike my attempts at designing monumental statues and hospital wings, I found myself actually enjoying it. It might be futile to be harrying masons to make the lintels high enough so that you could walk underneath without ducking, but it gave me a chance to remember exactly how tall you were and to imagine you walking through those doors. Each decision and choice made with you in mind—from the location of the house all the way down to the colour and material of the curtains—served to remind me of your tastes and preferences, your habits and your looks, for I realized I knew things about you such as in which corner you would like to sit, what kind of chair you would consider comfortable, and I picked colours that you would like or that would go well with a particular shade of red…

And even after the house was furnished, I went shopping for you. I discovered in myself a desire to shower you with small gifts that, for one reason or other, I had never been able to indulge to my heart’s content. Now I shamelessly browsed the stalls of booksellers for hours on end, looking for books you would want to read. I spent whole days in the workshops of various crafts, hunting small bits and pieces: the perfect pen, the perfect comb, the perfect tea pot.

I did not buy the hair clasp. It was made of copper filigree and it, too, was perfect in its way. The face of the young coppersmith fell when she realized that Prince Findekano did not mean to buy it after all.

‘I am sorry, Mistress’, I said. ‘If I bought it, it would only lie hid, sitting in a drawer. Your piece is too good to deserve such a fate.’

She clearly was puzzled by this and not entirely convinced.

‘You see’, I explained, ‘it reminds me of a piece a cousin of mine once made for his brother.’

I feared she might be offended by this explanation, as implying that her work was not entirely original. Instead, her face was a study in realization.

‘You mean the copper circlet that Prince Curufinwe made for Nelyafinwe Maitimo!’

Clearly, she was thrilled. I could see that she was already planning to let it be known to everyone that Prince Findekano had compared her work to that of Feanaro’s most skilful son. Whatever reputation the Feanorians had acquired otherwise, obviously they still made for good advertising. You would have been pleased, I thought; her handling of her craft deserved praise.

I started back home; a slightly hollow feeling in my chest told me I was done shopping. My task was accomplished. How I would have loved to be able to open that clasp and gently push it into your hair and fasten it, then hold the mirror so that you could admire the effect and smile your thanks.

***

Now, as I stand at the gate of my house, our house, watching Findarato walking away from me down the street, you are everywhere. As long as I keep my back turned, you are sitting in that arbour in the front garden, reading one of the books I bought for you, for I chose a bench that would be long enough for your legs and planted a vine so that it would shade your face as you read. When I enter a room, it is always as if you have only just left. My love, I do think I have succeeded in re-colonizing Valinor for both of us.

I am going to Tol Eressea tomorrow. As mourning gradually eased its grip on me, I realized that Arafinwe has a more difficult job ruling the Noldor than I understood at first. Our people, after thousands of years, are still a nation divided by memory. There are those who never left Tirion in the first place, those who only set foot in Beleriand during the War of Wrath and witnessed its destruction, those who left and returned after the drowning of Beleriand, weighed down by their long defeat, and those who did not return from the shores of Middle-Earth until much, much later. There are also those who, one by one, return from the Halls of Mandos. If, for a while, it looked to me as if I was the only one feeling alienated, it was partly because the alienated are much less likely to frequent the palace of Tirion. I have no desire to rule, but I think that, maybe, Arafinwe can use my assistance in mediating among all these factions. I will have to go and see—keeping an eye out for those who need medical help and any neglected children on the way, for I am, after all, a grandchild of Finwe.

Meanwhile this house will be here waiting for my return, remembering you for me when I forget. For I will need to forget you just a little, my love, in order to live and go on doing what you would want me to do. For a long, long time, it will be only me, reading those books I bought, sitting at that desk and using that perfect pen, drinking tea out of that perfect tea-pot. A long, long wait, my heart—until one day, maybe, I can take you by the hand and lead you across the threshold, turn to you and say, as you regard me in silent wonder:

‘Look! Do you see? I built it for you.’