The Old Maid's Tale by Elleth

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Chapter 1

Warnings: Contains an instance of violence, a brief, non-graphic discussion of rape, and internalized homophobia.

 

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Nénumë came to court an old maid in a blue gown and an apron stitched with the yellow water-lilies of her name. There was a pool like that in the palace gardens, and Nénumë’s face might as well have been one of the edged rocks along its sides, too-high cheekbones and too-small eyes, and her sun-bronzed skin standing out among the cultivated pallor of the courtiers.

I was not immediately taken with her. Indeed I was tempted to call her a tight-laced prude and not particularly intelligent: she hid the open bodice that had been court fashion for time out of mind with an opaque veil after the manner of the Faithful. Not even my grandmother Indilquettë - Inzilbêth - had done so, rather choosing to adapt and work her influence in secret instead. Times had become more troubled since. And although he was absent, likely brooding over some false sorcery to prolong his life with the Zigûr, enough of King’s Men were present to report every detail of the woman standing in the center of the hall before the throne, and my lower chair beside it.

Nénumë endured the muster stoically, thin-lipped, and with her mother clucking behind her despite Nénumë’s already grey-shot hair. Only her hands clutched her travelling bag so hard her fingernails had broken the fine leather and torn the embroidery.

She certainly left an impression, but it was hardly favourable.

I think I sighed then. Amandil’s wife had been the one to recommend her, and Ránë was a fine judge of character, pleading in repeat missives that Nénumë be admitted to court, on account of her integrity and quick wit, as well as the political affiliation that would make her an asset not only to me, but to the Faithful in Rómenna. That moment, I confess I doubted her words - paper was patient, after all, and Nénumë stood to benefit most of all from the arrangement. Becoming my handmaiden - the Zigûr would say pet, Pharazôn would say spy, they both meant the same - would give her relative freedom while she remained with me, and perhaps attract suitors that she had so far failed to entice. I could not, uncharitable though that thought was, blame those hypothetical men that moment.

“Well then,” I think I said with false cheer in my voice, feeling the first rising of pity. “We will have you. Let us see you settle in.”

Nénumë’s mother began to weep; Nénumë herself followed me - with me much younger, and standing to her shoulder, if as high, it felt like a parade of fools. Her soft leather boots swallowed the sound of her steps; she made no other sound than the quiet swish of her train over the marble. I remember turning around for her several times to make certain she was indeed following me. The palace was a warren, and it would take time for her to learn to navigate it.

* * *

I soon learned that Nénumë’s voice, unlike her exterior, was pleasant. Low, mellow and measured, it reminded me of the sound of waves along the shore heard from a distance, a sound that I adored and missed, sitting all-but-captive in the center of the Isle.

A few days after her arrival, I had begged my leave from the dinner table and bade her to keep me company. Sunset had passed, and blue shadows crept in from the east, although the sky still was light and starless. Nénumë was standing at the edge of the upper terrace near my quarters, her fingers stretched out toward the branches of Nimloth that grew in the central courtyard below. It had quickly become her favourite place, short days though she had been with me. Indubitably Nimloth was a marvel to her, and I could not blame her wanting to touch the silver leaves. It was summer, after bloom, and the fruit on it was tiny and hard still, but it almost seemed like the branches stretched toward her as an offering.

I picked up my sewing again - a quaint habit I had begun to pass times of forced idleness and because relating to my namesake would vex Pharazôn, her being an elf, although my fingers hardly matched her reputed talent - and our thread of conversation.

“I must warn you, however, that you have entered into a game of chance that may prove bewildering at times. Take caution, even when you think you know where to step.”

Nénumë frowned at me. I had given her pieces of advice similar to this when I had the chance, pointing out names of lords, ministers, servants and courtiers to watch out for and exercise caution around, two of them previously my own handmaidens until I had the chance to maneuver a few baubles out of Pharazôn’s coffers into their possessions and a conviction of theft saw to their dishonored leave-taking. I would have to look to hiring more women to maintain etiquette, and perhaps have some trusted friends in the nest of vipers that Armenelos had become before my husband saw to setting more of his lackeys at my heels.

Nénumë presented a different problem.

“Nor be too open about your affiliations. Your dress proclaims them for you as loudly as you would do by shouting it in their faces, and while you no doubt think it of a sign of your integrity, trust me that that is better-served in other ways. Not that it matters now; it is already common knowledge, but some mellowing might suit you.”

To my astonishment, Nénumë laughed softly, the first time I saw her do so. It did not transform her face, but opened it at least. Her lips, too, were lovely, far fuller than her pinched mouth suggested. She left the edge of the platform and walked to the bench I occupied, sitting beside me.

“I am not quite the fool I was bidden to play, lady,” she said. “Let them behold me as Faithful, dour, unthreatening, an old lioness without bite rather than someone more neutral they will continually question and observe.”

Her voice and posture shifted, only a little, but to astounding effect - she seemed a decade older, the web of wrinkles in the corners of her eyes deepened, and she was again the woman from the throne hall. “Lady, it’s so good of you to have me, poor thing that I am. Already my father died before he could see me safely delivered into a husband’s arms, and now?”

I could not help it, I laughed aloud at the whining, pitiful inflection of her words, and she smiled back at me. “Are you, then?”

“One of the Faithful?”

“Looking for a husband. You will understand that my stance toward them would make Erendis and Ancalime look mild-mannered and kindly, if I were given leave to utter to mine what I think of him, and I confess it is refreshing to meet someone who has not fawned over my perceived luck to be married to Pharazôn the Handsome.”

“Handsome perhaps, but wicked, and therefore not worthy of fawning. Few men are, I think,” Nénumë said, sobering again. I had heard said, from some mouths, that Pharazôn had endeavoured to win my love at first, and he had treated me as gently as might be expected of a man like him then. That she did not seem to believe this heartened me.

Nénumë continued on, a little doggedly, “I am only looking for one insofar that I am the oldest in my generation of my family, and my mother still harbours a vague hope for me, dynastic more than anything else, before my fruitful days end - my younger sisters both already have grown children of their own, and they stand to inherit as it is now; unfortunately none of them are adherents of the Faith as much as I am.”

“Then why did you not found a family of your own?”

Nénumë tugged on the shawl she wore that day, uneasily. “I never desired to be any man’s wife, plainly put. Love I wished for, but no… more than the emotion, very little of the… actions that should follow that impulse.” She withdrew a little, shifting to the edge of the bench, and knotted her hands in her lap. “I said too much, lady, forgive me.”

I dropped my sewing and laid a hand on her wrist, staying her. My heart clenched painfully in my chest, thinking of my own wedding night - my first and only time, barely long enough to satisfy ritual, and I near unresponsive with poppy so that I barely recalled the worst of it, but I could not help feeling a flare of pity and protectiveness nonetheless.

“No one will force you into marriage here. I could not do so without hating myself and making false the submission I suffered.”

Her lips were trembling, and she grasped my hand to press a kiss to it.

* * *

Pearls suited her.

Nénumë sat, clutching a cloth wrap full of ice against her face and barely dared to lift her eyes to the mirror before here. Around her right eye-socket a bruise was beginning to form; fresh, bright purple and red. My hands still shook, but Nénumë’s hair had a lovely wave to it, and I carded through the dark, silver-shot strands to twine the string of pearls along until she was decked out like a woman who had won accolades at some game.

In a way she had, although I wished that it would not have been necessary.

Pharazôn had taken notice of her - of course he had, and if not him then the Zigûr. It mattered little, they were becoming one more and more. Of course they would see her as a threat: my new handmaiden of a few months now, who barely left my side out of my quarters (if for anything then to spend her time in contemplation on the terrace near Nimloth, or even in the tree’s courtyard when the guards let her in) and who was the prime reason that I carried myself straighter, met eyes more openly, refused to scurry like a mouse through the palace I had been born in.

Almost in opposition, the Zigûr had been urging Pharazôn much, recently, growing ever more confident the firmer his hold became. Pharazôn had even signed contracts with builders in Armenelos, although as to what purpose the building on the hill would serve I still remained in the dark.

And now the past noon meal served only to throw an an additional shadow on my mind. Indeed I feared that it would only become worse from here on, that this incident had only been the first.

The conversation accompanying the noon meal had been amicable enough at the beginning, broken only when Nénumë left the table to wait on me. Amandil and his family had been the subject, Amandil’s recent dismissal from the Council of the Sceptre interwoven with questions about life in Rómenna, with carefully woven barbs that Nénumë had avoided with equal care, until Pharazôn had lost patience when she cleared the table - whatever information he had been after, she had not given him what he had wanted to hear.

Then he intercepted her way around the table and struck her full in the face. The plates clattered from her hand and left her standing in a pile of broken crockery, while Pharazôn strode from the room, and the Zigûr lingered, smiling like a snake, to follow his master more slowly.

We retreated only when they had gone. I had never been so glad for the privacy of my own chambers that Pharazôn had yet to cross the threshold of. It was safe - for now - but I would not blame Nénumë if she no longer felt so.

“If you would like to return home,” I said over the lump in my throat, “then you are free to take your leave.” It was then that she lifted her eyes, the whole and the bloodshot one, and looked on my face in the mirror. I was the picture of devastation, to my shame much more than she was - but I already knew that she was a consummate actress, and did not quite trust her composure.

Nénumë shook her head slowly, never taking the ice pack off her face. “No, lady,” she said. “I still have a purpose here, higher even than my love for you.”

* * *

With the turn from autumn to winter Nimloth’s fruits had swelled and ripened to their fullest, and Nénumë became anxious. She had been a letter-writer from the first, writing to her mother and sisters and Ráne, but as time slipped by she became more industrious and secretive.

She had not spoken again to me of her purpose (and I did not ask, knowing that whatever it was, it would bring no harm to me), but when she was not writing she spent much of her time on the terrace even when lightning was crashing on the hills. Six workmen on the temple - the building that Pharazôn and the Zigûr plotted - had been killed by lightning strikes to that date, but Manwe’s displeasure seemed not to trouble her. She stood outside in the driving rain until it had plastered her hair to her scalp and made her shawl all but translucent in the way it clung to her breasts, while she was staring intently at the white tree, ghostly and leafless through the severe weather.

It was her who commanded my attention, more than the tree.

I made myself look away. Nénumë had made clear that she did not desire any such contact, much less any such contact with women. Although we had never spoken of it, I had come to think of myself as the ever-aberrant one. A few women like me graced the pages of history books, and there was some sparse gossip in town, but for the Queen of Númenor to admit to such feelings was unthinkable. It was bad enough to the public eye that I remained childless.

Ultimately, it was of no matter, either. The thought of sharing my bed with anybody, no matter how loved and trusted, was enough to bathe me in cold sweat.

She came inside soon after, gratefully taking the warm towel I had set near the fire for her, and then came to stand before me with an odd look on her face. I had had a vision earlier that day that I no longer recalled, only that it had been something of little consequence, and that my sudden collapse had scared Nénumë, in a strange way. No wonder; it was the first time she had witnessed this phenomenon, and I had not thought to warn her. After I had recovered my wits, we had spoken for a time of the women of the First Age, our foremothers blessed with foresight, and I confessed that I had been having such fits since my adolescence, but something that I had said in the course of our conversation made her start, casual though it had been.

Imagine if one of the Wise Women had such a vision picking fruit in the forest. She would be lucky to make it home intact.

She wore the same look on her face now, and eventually said, “Perhaps you ought to rest now, lady.” From her inflection it was not a suggestion at all, but rather a kindly order, or if not that then a piece of advice that I would do well to heed, even if I did not know the reason.

Despite the darkness on the hills and the fires kindling in Armenelos under the shadow of the Meneltarma, it was no later than mid-eve; somewhere behind the clouds the sun would still be making her way down the western sky.

“I am better, truly. You do not need to fret over me, rather I fear you shall catch your death if you continue cavorting outside in the rain because of the tree,” I replied with a laugh.

“Cavorting?” she replied, momentarily distracted from the objective at hand. “I do not cavort, I contemplate, especially now that the monster wants her felled.”

I did not ask whom she was referring to; she used the name for both the Zigûr and for Pharazôn. For once my husband still resisted him, although for how much longer was uncertain.

“You are drenched either way,” I replied, and gave in to some reckless impulse. “I will go to bed if you will come with me.” It was a tipping point. I realized that, despite my earlier misgivings, I would heap any amount of shame onto me, any disgrace and even the revelation of my aberrancy, if that meant I could protect her.

“Lady, I -” Nénumë bit her lip, her eyes darted to the windows overlooking the terrace. “... as you command. At least then both of us will be accounted for tonight. But please, do not ask me!” she added hastily.

I hummed. “I am not. I ask nothing of you, nor will I ask what will happen tonight. I already know too much, I suspect, if they come to interrogate us.” With a sigh I sank into bed, not bothering with ablutions or to change from my comfortable leisure garments. The bed was wide, too wide for myself only, so that I tended to occupy a small spot in the middle, sleeping, as Nénumë claimed, like a blossom in its bud, insisting it was an apt image even when I teased her poetic aspirations.

“Most of all I would know you with me so that you are safe,” I said to her.

“Oh lady, if only you knew how much of this is for your sake, for love of you - for the line of the righteous Kings must endure…” Her muttering dimmed as she wandered away from me, to the small adjacent chamber where she commonly slept.

Having exchanged her wet clothes for a nightgown she eventually slid into bed after me, and lay stiffly with her fingers clutching at the blanket. I turned around to her, let my hair brush her arm, and she yielded with a soft noise, rolling to her side so she lay facing me in the pillows. We could - perhaps ought - to have kissed then, although the thought, the impulse, astonished me. Our faces were very close; I could smell the wine from the evening meal on her breath and see the tremor of her eyelashes as she tried not to blink. I wanted to kiss her, even leaned forward, but remembered myself before I gave in, and merely rested my forehead against hers, closing my eyes.

Had I known what was to happen that night, sleep would have been long in coming, but being, then, blissfully unaware, I slept with Nénumë’s hard body like a shield against me.

When the shouts of guards, the light of torches and the noise of running feet echoing through the courtyard below the terrace woke me, she was still with me, sleeping (or pretending to) with a hand curled loosely into my hair.

While - so she told me later, after our interrogations were done and gone, and both of us stayed miraculously unscathed - Isildur had slipped in and out of the palace with a fruit of Nimloth on the ways she had described in secret in her letters, and was discovered but by ill chance - I took comfort in her presence, curled my fingers around hers, and returned to sleep.

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Chapter End Notes

Some of the descriptions, the palace and court fashion in particular, are somewhat loosely based on Minoan Crete.