The Captive by Glorified

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Chapter 4. A Matter of Defamation.

Ella and Maglor settle down into more sociable relations until one morning they wake to a disaster and realise  exactly what prejudices they will have to face given the taboos of the culture around them. A line has been crossed  not only with the world outside but between themselves.   Ella struggles to comprehend and accept the internal struggles that have erupted within her from this event. 

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Chapter 4. A Matter of Defamation.

 

After that things seemed to settle between into a more comfortable mien between us I no longer bridled at his high handedness and he softened his demeanour some what. I would catch him smiling at my silly jokes and he was not so abrupt in his speech towards me.

 

“Why do you make them, out of drift wood he asked as we sat down to a very late come early breakfast, lunch one day”,

He cast a desultory nod to my sculptures outside without looking at me.

“I like the way the elements shape them, and the excitement of finding a shape that just fits”

“But they will not last they will crack and dry out”,

“They are like nature, they are for a time and season”,

“My mother was a sculptor, but she used more durable materials, stone and marble, why do you not use such?”,

I was shocked, caught off guard by this admission, the first time he had ever proffered any information about his family,

Emboldened by this I said, “I use what I find impassions me, what calls to me, each material has its own energy, and the sea offers them to me I feel”,

“Stone, and minerals have their own energy also”, he countered,

“Yes indeed”, I proffered, encouraged by how well the conversation was going.

“Their energy is more static and set, denser, they have lain asleep for millennium until unearthed by a craftsman's hands. But the driftwood I use is for more lyrical immediate subjects and topics, animals, birds, in flight, horses galloping, a deer or stag jumping”,

“My mother sculpted us all and she would have set us all as statues in her garden, if she could”,

“Sculptures can be about remembrance and likeness but also about more ephemeral qualities such as movement and dance I broached”,

“But to combine the qualities of all those elements and energies, light and earth, water and stone into one is” ….. he trailed off,

I knew what he alluded to.

I had never thought of the Nolder as artists till then, craftsmen, artisans, builders yes, but I realised in that moment their supreme craftsmanship had been woven through with a desire to capture and distil the beauty they found in nature.

“And you what is your art Maglor?”,

He looked at me sternly

“My voice or so they say”,

“And will I ever get to hear it?”, I asked and I immediately knew I had over stepped the mark, as he said perfunctorily,

“Maybe”, as he abruptly got up and strode out to the garden to continue his work.

Yet however, I saw this day as a triumph because, this was the first time he had ever divulged any thing of his past to me and I knew its small hidden messages would keep me thinking and mauling it around in my head for many days.

 

 

A few weeks later, A commotion woke me coming from the meadow of hooves thundering and the old donkey braying wildly I got up and hurriedly put on my dressing gown and out door boots before unlatching the door, the archway doors were ajar which was strange as they were always locked at night but it was the site directly in front of me that caught my breath. The raised beds Maglor had worked so hard upon were upended and the soil in them tipped out and the flowers ripped out and flung about every where. But worse there were ugly bright words painted in long scrawls and graphic drawings across the upturned beds; the words were obscene the accompanying images gross and base in nature. I felt my self go hot and cold and started to shake in shock. At that moment Maglor came running through the open archways out of breath, he saw me, and then looked at the upturned beds and then back at me with an alarmed look on his face, and immediately came to my side and, holding my arm and steadying me ushered me into the kitchen sitting me down and making me drinking hot sweet tea.

 

“I am sorry you had to see that he said motioning outside…. those … those words… those drawings……..they are base and vile and untrue. I am sorry too that I have bought this upon you, by me being here, I should leave….”,

I stopped him with a motion of my hand…

“No! it is not your fault…”,

“We both know it is Ella, if I had not been here”,

“It was bound to happen sooner or later I said, but you are here and that’s an end of it.. and you have no where else to go”,

“Is the Mearas alright and the Donkey?”,

“Yes they were warning us that’s all”,

“Well”, I said, “We had better get tidying things up, are you coming?” I asked...he looked at me pensively but followed me out to the garden with me still in my dressing gown out and door boots and we began the long task of picked things up and repairing the damage.

 

Later that day after many hours of long work we had the beds up righted again and were able to save most of the bedding plants, We scrubbed the vile words off the planters and stood back to survey everything.

“What if they come again?”,

“I have rigged up an alarm to my rooms if they come through the gateway I will be alerted”,

I looked at the arrangement of pulleys that now stretched across the walls.

I nodded, and said “Drink?”, he nodded back and in a short while we sat exhausted in kitchen gulping beer from a cask I had bought a while back from the village,

I sighed, and stretched.

“Let me”, he said and got up and came around behind me and moved my hair carefully over my shoulder then placed his hands on my neck, I jumped involuntarily at his touch

“Sorry, do you mind?”, he asked,

“No”, I said.

His long fingers worked at the tired knots and muscled in my neck and shoulders. He drew down my shirt exposing my back a little and continued kneading me for several minutes.

The feel of his fingers on my bare skin felt so relaxing and when he drew his thumps down between the centre of my shoulder blades in long kneading strokes I could not help but let out a gasp of relief.

“Stay there”, he said and went out and came back shortly with a small vial, the aroma was lavender and he gently now eased it over my neck and shoulders and down under my shoulder blades around my ribcage. I had dropped my shirt lower now clutching the front to my chest for modesty's sake but allowing him freer access to my back. His hands swooped expertly over my back rubbing and easing the oil into my skin and part of me was starting to get lost in the euphoric feel of the skin to skin contact. He stopped suddenly, lost in my reverie I shook myself to my senses,

“I will take some bread and cheese to my rooms tonight”,

“Oh, Oh yes”, I said broken from the heady, state I had drifted into,

He could see my exhaustion and I nodded thankful for his perception and kindness.…

“Sleep in tomorrow!”, he said.

 

Sleep however would not come, although I was so tired I and tossed and turned and my mind kept repeating over and over again the events of the day. In some ways although I had not expected such an attack it did not come as a complete surprise. Most in Elvish society would not accept an unmarried female living with a male so flagrantly who was not her husband or close kin. I knew in taking Maglor in it would have ramifications. I did not realise how that simply through association I would be entangled in the censure he had experienced every day since he had returned to Aman. I had wittingly tried to stay away from urban areas a towns cities and villages. That’s why I had taken the small farmstead by the sea when I was offered it by Elrond. Polite society was not for me, staid cloistered mindsets were an anathema to me. I who had known the freedom of long summers out in the gulf of Lune, and up to the Hithaeglir in the winter now had to face I was probably the subject of everyone’s tittle tattle from here to Tirion and then to Aqualonde and back again. Polite society be dammed with its ridiculous regulations and brutal dismissal of anyone who attempted to gainsay them I thought furiously.

 

I thought of Maglor, he had taken it all in his stride, he seemed unperturbed except for his remorse towards me. It was almost as if he’d excepted this as his lot and due. But for me for some reason the words and images that had been written in the garden had especially stung and embarrassed me in front of Maglor. I felt heat inflaming my face again; ‘Whore’ ‘concubine’, ‘murdering bastard’, were some of the less unsavoury expletives scrawled on the upturned beds. The animalistic imagery of the sexual act left nothing to the imagination. The very descriptive giant phallus was especially embarrassing. I had tried to keep my eyes fixed downwards as Maglor had scrubbed it off but he caught me looking at it and for some reason I blushed like a guileless maiden. The ironic expression on his face told me at least he found it vaguely amusing. Why had I felt so embarrassed in front of Maglor? I suppose because those images directly alluded to myself and him. I lay in the darkness, remembering the recent touch of his hands, his fingers on my skin and I was ashamed to admit it even to myself but those images stung and inflamed my imagination and body in an entirely new and different way.