A Rose By Any Other Name by pandemonium_213

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Chapter 2: Beneath the Kilt

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Chimneys of Hampton Court Palace 

Glorfindel and Elrond...in kilts!  by Robinka.

 

The day of Gilfanon's party on The Occasion of the Blooming of His Most Beloved Rose, Yavanno Tussa (a name that sent Laurefin into fits of laughter every time he said it, which was often), was the hottest yet of the heat wave that blasted the usually temperate Tol Eressëa. When the coppery sun dipped low in the western sky, the sultry air became marginally cooler. The only breeze was that created by the rush of the open carriage, drawn at a good clip by a perfectly matched pair of bay trotters. Tiny bells, woven not only into the black manes of the horses but also into the plaits of the driver, jingled merrily as the vehicle sped along the road to Tavrobel.

Elrond picked at the scratchy fabric of his kilt, which clung limpet-like to his thighs. The wool made his sweaty skin itch abominably, but it would not do to stoop to the indignity of scratching himself. Instead, he fidgeted, unable to find a comfortable position. He spread his legs wide, hoping to catch a whiff of breeze under the sweltering garment. Elrond was sure that the silk shirt he wore beneath his dress jacket would be soaked through by the time they arrived at the House of the Hundred Chimneys.

Even Laurefin was feeling the heat, judging by the rivulets of sweat that trickled down his forehead. Elrond resisted the urge to stare at his friend, who sat facing him on a seat upholstered with wine-red leather, and holding a small beribboned package on his lap.   Elrond looked away quickly.  He still had not recovered from Laurefin's startling appearance.

Laurefin, who lived no more than a half-league distant from Elrond in a manse that he and his wife leased from Findaráto, had arrived to collect him in this tasteful carriage: all dark wood with touches of gilt decoration, but thoroughly modern with its elliptical hinges, drawn by the equally tasteful matched horses. Even the driver, a wiry little fellow named Cailor, was elegant in his green and gold livery and neatly plaited hair. It was certainly a far cry from the magenta contraption and horrific beasts that had taken them deep into the desert. But Laurefin, standing there at the threshold, was far from tasteful, at least to Elrond's eyes. In fact, he was shocking.

His ensemble was outlandish enough: Laurefin had topped the green kilt with a white silk shirt and a trim black velvet jacket nearly identical to the one that gripped Elrond's diaphragm. A froth of white ruffles spilled from the collar of the shirt over the breast of the jacket. Elrond had to admit that Laurefin's garb was no more outrageous than his own, save that his own shirt had more subdued ruffles. Like Laurefin, he also wore cream-colored silk stockings with shiny black leather shoes. An expanse of bare skin was exposed between the tops of the stockings and the hem of the short kilt.

Elrond had stopped tugging at the kilt long before Laurefin arrived, resigned that he had no hope of covering his bare knees. During a particularly vigorous bout of yanking on the kilt, he was certain that Calengal, who served as his valet as well as chief household butler, had stifled a laugh.

"Just a frog in my throat, my lord. Just a…uh, uh, a frog." Calengal had quickly turned away.

Laurefin, upon seeing Elrond's discomfort, had once again reassured him that all the fashionable men of Tirion-on-Túna wore the same or variations thereof. But far more disconcerting than his dress was Laurefin's shorn hair. 

Elrond's first response, which he did not voice, was "Who died?" In Middle-earth, many elven-men cut their hair short when mourning the dead. Instead, he blurted a less awkward, if inelegant, "What have you done with your hair?"

"Left it with the barber," Laurefin had replied, his fingers raking back the gold shock of hair draped over his forehead. "I expect the rascal will sell it to some wig merchant. It's too bloody hot to have that mane trailing down my back so I decided to have it cut.  Most of the Men in the Southlands of Middle-earth wear their hair short. Makes perfect sense to me. It will always grow back."

Although Laurefin's hair had been clipped close to the sides of his head, the barber had left it longer on top. The forelock bounced jauntily with every sway of the carriage. Maybe short hair isn't such a bad idea, Elrond thought as his own thick fall of hair stuck to the back of his neck.

Elrond's knee twinged when the carriage hit a bump. He massaged the sinews, and the discomfort evaporated, but he continued rubbing his hand over the almost healed area just to be sure. He looked at both his knees. The skin exposed by the kilt was very pale, which made the coarse dark hair on his legs stand out even more.

"Shouldn't we have shaved our legs?" Elrond had asked earlier, wondering about the etiquette of wearing short kilts and wincing at the thought of scraping a straight-edged razor, if he could even find one outside of the barber's shop, across his knees.

"Why? Are we Vanyar?" his companion sneered. "Are we not Noldorin men who should be proud of our leg hair?" The fuzz on Laurefin's knees was less obtrusive, being lighter in color, and appeared as spun gold in the sunlight. Leave it to Laurefin to have good leg hair.

Woods and meadows, villages and farms, all flew past Laurefin, Elrond and their hairy knees as the carriage sped along the road, relatively smooth, save for the occasional pothole. However, when they approached the town of Tavrobel, their progress slowed to a snail's pace. Other carriages and coaches, bearing passengers destined for Gilfanon's party, clogged the main street of the town. Their own carriage lurched along, stopping and then pulling forward a foot or three, halting, then lurching forward again to make maddeningly slow progress. Drivers, egged on by their passengers' impatience and their own, jangled the large silver or brass bells hanging by their seats and shouted. Sweat streamed down Elrond's back. Laurefin drummed his fingers on the leather seat.

At last, the carriage jerked forward and continued to move. As they inched out of the town, Elrond saw the reason for the jam: a disabled vehicle was pulled off to the side of the road. The horses had been unhitched and grazed unperturbed on the strip of green grass between the road and the tended woods beyond while the driver and another man, possibly a wainwright, worked on the broken axle of the carriage. The passengers were nowhere to be seen. Elrond guessed that another group of guests on the way to the party had accommodated them.

"Stars save us from gawkers!" Laurefin declared as he craned his neck to look at the disabled carriage.

They reached the long stone bridge of many arches that spanned the confluence of the Gruir and Afros rivers. The carriage wheels rumbled and the horses' shod hooves clip-clopped with sharp retorts upon the stone pavers. Elrond leaned against the side of the carriage to look ahead.

Peeking above the tops of the trees ahead were a few red chimneys of their destination, but these disappeared when the road dove through a cutting in a hill; moss-covered stones reinforced the black soil on either side. The air was blessedly cool and damp with a pleasant earthy scent. The road rose gradually and emerged to become flat, running through an allée formed by tall elms whose graceful branches arched overhead. Elrond breathed in the green scent of the leaves and exhaled, feeling refreshed. Even the kilt was less scratchy.

The carriage emerged from the allée into the soft light of early evening. Before them lay Gilfanon's estate: wide trimmed lawns of green grass were artfully dotted here and there with copses of trees and beyond loomed the great manor house, its red bricks burnished by the last light of the day. Gardens could be seen as well – some tended to achieve a studied wildness, others designed with precise geometries. Several white deer — five does and a stag — grazed in a nearby meadow.

"How does Gilfanon keep the bloody things out of his gardens?" Laurefin said, squinting suspiciously at the deer. He turned and glanced at Elrond's hand resting on the leather of the seat. "You know, Elrond, after that bauble on your finger was rendered impotent, the truce with Rivendell's deer was broken. They started raiding the kitchen gardens almost as soon as you left for the Havens."

"Surely the dogs would have kept them off."

"The dogs? No, they were all asleep in the stables or the house. We spoiled them terribly. Mélamírë thought it unfair to the dogs or any of the servants to keep watch all night on the gardens, and she had a soft heart toward the deer because the children liked them so much, at least until the beasts attacked her tomatoes. Then she declared war and came up with a solution."

"Which was?"

"Let's just say it was something like the Girdle of Melyanna. Just at a smaller scale. You don't want to know the details, trust me."

"Perhaps I do." Elrond's curiosity was piqued: the notion of a small scale Girdle of Melian around the kitchen gardens of Rivendell amused him, and he suspected it had amused the Istyanis, too.

Laurefin arched a chestnut-brown brow. "Mélamírë had the entire household drinking vats of tea, which, as you might expect, resulted in a copious flow of urine. We had to, uh . . . collect our piss in silver buckets over the course of two days."

"Urine as deer repellant then? That's not so unusual," said Elrond. "The hobbits used their own urine for such purpose around their gardens. Samwise Gamgee could positively wax poetic on the subject."

"True enough, but Mélamírë did something else to the urine. Enhanced the effect, she said. Don't ask me exactly she did. Something to do with the deep arts. When I pressed her about it, all she would say is that it was a trick she had learned from her father.  She called it the 'Scent of Thû.'  That's all I needed to know at that point. It worked though. Beautifully. The deer kept their distance, and the vegetables and fruits flourished. Makes one wonder how exactly Melyanna achieved her barrier, eh?"

Elrond felt his eyes widen. That his wonderful gardens had been attacked by deer and then guarded by a spell having its origins in the arts of the Abhorred troubled him in no small way. Equally unsettling was the intimation that his great-great grandmother, a full-blooded Fay, might have used ensorcelled piss to create an invisible barrier around Doriath.  Then he sighed. That was hardly the first time that Rivendell had enjoyed a benefit from the deep arts, no matter the origin.

The grin on Laurefin's face was wicked. "Well, you did ask."

"Yes, I did. Your wife is most peculiar."

"That she is.  I miss her." Laurefin's grin had disappeared, but in a moment, he brightened. "Ah! Here we are!"

The carriage turned into the wide arc of a drive before the House of the Hundred Chimneys. The mansion of red brick almost glowed, as if it had captured the day's light and only reluctantly released it as dusk descended. Golden light shone from the glass panes of the tall windows. High above, the many chimneys that gave the house its name turned crimson as the last rays of the setting sun struck them. 

The chimneys never failed to draw Elrond's eye. They were such fanciful works of art: all made of red brick embellished with patterns of curlicues, honeycombs, spirals or geometric zigzags. No two were alike. Fantastical limestone statues of creatures — part-dragon, part-dog and part-fish — formed the spouts of the gutters.  More prosaic creatures that looked like stylized foxes, wildcats and stoats crept through entwined with leaves, vines and flowers on the stone friezes that decorated the walls of the structure. It was a spectacular home, worthy of being called a palace, although its owner always demurred at such a term for his "humble home," as he named it.

Again, their progress slowed when the carriages ahead of them stopped to deposit their passengers at the wide court before the main entrance. Liveried footmen assisted the ladies and men down from their vehicles. The women were all clad in the fashion now favored among the gentlefolk of Tol Eressëa: fitted gowns with plunging necklines that revealed cleavages from delicate to bountiful and made from fine fabrics of subtle hues, that of evening sky, of twilight woods, a dawn in the springtime or sea foam on a summer's day. The ladies' jewels twinkled like living stars around their necks, on fair wrists and in their hair.

The men on the other hand — every one of them wore a kilt. Elrond wondered if Gilfanon had made this a condition of attending the party. Most of the men wore black jackets, but some had donned tight embroidered vests over white shirts with voluminous sleeves. The kilts provided a wild kaleidoscope of colors: red, blue, gold, green, orange and even violet, all crisscrossed with stripes to form plaid patterns. All had high hemlines, revealing many hairy Noldorin knees and their less hairy Sindarin equivalents. Some men, like Elrond, seemed uncomfortable. Others, like Laurefin, appeared to revel in the daring dress. Still others did not seem to care one way or another.

The carriage ahead of them listed to one side when one of the passengers descended. The portly man teetered on the step. Two footmen held his hands as he stepped down, and the entire carriage lurched when the stout fellow disembarked. He stumbled but was righted by a footman on either side of him. He brushed off the footmen.

"Here now! I'm fine, perfectly fine," the flush-faced lord said, his speech a little slurred.

"It would seem Lord Cemenolor has started the celebration early," Laurefin said under his breath to Elrond. "Good old Cemenolor! Just as fat as Salgant and at least three times as droll."

"But not craven," Elrond half-whispered.

"Yes, there is that."

The pink-cheeked and red-nosed Lord Cemenolor turned and saw Laurefin and Elrond. "Hullo, Laurefin!" he cried jovially as he careened toward the high arched entryway, the two footmen hovering, unsure of what they should do. "Good to see you. And is that Lord Elrond lured out of his lair up in the hills? Here for a little fun, are you?" and the plump man walked right into one of the potted laurel bushes that decorated the entry court.

Several things happened at once, or in some order perhaps, but Elrond was only able to recall the peripheral details such as the tipped pot that spilled dirt onto the paving stones and the flustered footmen. What he did recall vividly was Lord Cemenolor tripping and winding up on his back, his feet in the air like an ungainly turtle, and the revelation of what was beneath his kilt or rather, what was not beneath his kilt.  Elrond was not sure which was more ghastly: the utter lack of renowned elvish grace, something that not a few denizens of the Blessed Lands blithely disregarded, or Lord Cemenolor's exposed privates, pink and waggling about for all to see. The ladies nearby averted their eyes, but some giggled behind graceful hands and fans raised to cover their naughty mirth.

"He does not wear smallclothes!" Elrond hissed in horror.

"What?" Laurefin glanced at the struggling and sputtering Cemenolor, who was being helped to his feet. "Of course, he doesn't. I don't have any on either! Why? Do you?"

"Stars' mercy! Yes, I do, Laurefin! How can you bear to . . .to, well, not wear anything beneath this blasted thing?" He pinched a pleat between his fingers and flipped the fabric for emphasis.

Laurefin answered, unfazed: "I find it freeing. Much cooler, too."

Elrond and Laurefin stepped down unassisted from the carriage and with considerably more grace than Lord Cemenolor, who now weaved his way through the open doors. Laurefin flipped a culusta to Cailor, who caught it with the swipe of his hand. "Enjoy yourself at The Tank," he said, referring to The Tankard of Tulkas, a tavern popular amongst the working men of Tavrobel and the surrounding countryside. "We'll see you tomorrow then."

"Very good, m'lord," Cailor replied, touching his forehead with his knuckles. He then gripped the reins and snapped them sharply. "Gee up, lads!"  Off the horses trotted, allowing the next carriage to come forward.

"Tomorrow?" Elrond could not stop himself from glaring at Laurefin. "I thought you said the party was for the evening only."

"Well, yes, the evening.  The night.  Both.  You know how Gilfanon's parties go."

"Yes. Yes, I do," Elrond said. He faced his friend and gripped his arm. "No limpë, Laurefin. You must promise. Do not let Gilfanon ply us with limpë."

"Right. No limpë. Now come, Elrond. Pull that rod out of your hind end, and let's have some fun."

 

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Chapter End Notes

 

Salgant appears in "The Fall of Gondolin,"  History of Middle-earth, vol II, Book of Lost Tales 2:

Behind them came the host of the Harp, and this was a battalion of brave warriors; but their leader Salgant was a craven, and he fawned upon Meglin. They were dight with tassels of silver and tassels of gold, and a harp of silver shone in their blazonry upon a field of black; but Salgant bore one of gold, and he alone rode into battle of all the sons of the Gondothlim, and he was heavy and squat.

So, yes, there's precedent for Elves who are not lithe and graceful.

Culusta/kulusta (Qenya): Gold coin.

Limpë (Quenya): wine, drink of the Valar, cf. the early "Qenya" gloss "drink of the fairies" (Book of Lost Tales 1, p. 258)