The Manly-hearted Woman by oshun

An Ancient Practice

Read An Ancient Practice

One of the strange practices spoken of was that many of their warriors were women, though few of these went abroad to fight in the great battles. This custom was evidently ancient; for their chieftainess Haleth was a renowned Amazon with a picked bodyguard of women. Unfinished Tales, “Druedain.”

“Ammë,” Caranthir said. His soft voice startled her and Nerdanel gasped, turning quickly to look behind her. The sketch had completely absorbed her attention. It was something she had started nearly a month ago and dropped. Now that she had picked it up again, it was difficult to recapture her trail of thought. It no longer made any sense to her at all.

“Oh, my dear boy! I did not hear you. Don’t just stand there. Come in and give me a hug.” She strode half-way across the room before he began to move cautiously toward her.

His hug, however, was wholehearted. He did not release her for an extended moment, whispering into her hair, “Ai, Ammë. Please forgive me. I did mean to visit you again sooner.”

“There, there!” she said, patting him on the back before pushing him back at arm’s length to look into his dark eyes. All of those released from Mandos’ halls had trouble adjusting. Many demanded a great deal of attention and cosseting, like Finrod, whereas others, like her son, were cautious about reuniting with those they had left behind. “So, I guess you did get the message I sent you through your cousin Ingo?”

It did hurt her that he spent a great deal of time with his cousin, but seemed to hold himself aloft from her. But she knew him well enough to know better than to push him.

“Ingo gave me your note late yesterday. He told me you said it was important.” Caranthir smiled shyly, showing his dimples—his beautiful face flushed a self-conscious red. “Of course I was curious, but it was too late to come last night.” Still blushing. He hadn’t changed, although he did have greater control over his errant thoughts than he did in his youth.

“It’s always important to visit your poor, old, lonely mother! Actually, that was an embellishment on his part. But a welcome one if it brought you here sooner. I have something to show you, which you may find of interest.”

He laughed and just then, as though to contradict her, he shot her a quick thought. ‘Not what I’ve heard. They say you are not pining away, but as active and busy as ever.’

She laughed in pure joy at his physical presence and his mild attempt at teasing her, tugging him by the hand out the open door onto the sun-flooded terrace. The afternoon sun shone bright, but a wicker sofa piled with pillows was situated in a shady corner, the gentle breeze wafted the scent of blooming honeysuckle in their direction, rich and nearly delicious enough to taste.

“Are you hungry, darling?”

“No thank you, Ammë. I ate with Ingo at midday, but I brought you a bottle of light white wine that he claims is very good. It’s still chilled. Perhaps we could share it now?” Ah, the poor lad needed a drink to soothe his nerves for a visit with his own mother, even after she had insisted repeatedly that she was ecstatic to have him back and that no unforgiven grievances lay between them.

“I won’t turn down the offer. I’m ready for a break. Make yourself comfortable while I go find some glasses.” She dashed into the house, grateful for the opportunity to find the manuscript she wanted to show him.

The book, bound but without a cover, was an unassuming, small volume. A friend, one of the editors, a scholar of languages of the Edain and variations of Sindarin, had contacted her, having withheld it from publication until he could show it to her. She read it and decided that Caranthir had the right, if not to ask that it never be published, at the very least to request that its publication be delayed indefinitely.

She exited onto the terrace again to find that he had uncorked the bottle with his pocket knife. He had always been a resourceful lad, surprising many who overlooked him as the sulky quiet one among her sons.

“You left me stewing long enough.  I am dying of curiosity!”

“It’s a book, or perhaps better described as a draft copy of an original manuscript. The original is badly worn and weathered. The museum will continue to preserve the original under conditions where it will not deteriorate further. If you decide you want to see it, it can be arranged.”

His eyebrows shot up in astonishment. “What kind of document is it? I am guessing it originated in Middle-earth.”

“That has been confirmed by experts. It is believed to have been transported to Númenór and back to Middle-earth and found its way among other early manuscripts to the curators of the great museum here in Tirion.”

“Now you are torturing me with suspense.” He chuckled nervously. “I must assume it contains history of events in which our family featured in Middle-earth.”

“Actually, it is a firsthand account of events in which you played a prominent role. Apparently it was mis-categorized and separated from other manuscripts which held records of the First Age. It is doubly unique in that it tells of events concerning important details of the lives and history one of the lesser known groups of the Edain who dwelt in Beleriand before the Great War.”

“If it concerns me, then you must be speaking of the Haladin. They were a reclusive folk which none of my brothers had much contact with, but who dwelt in lands which were under my control.”

He reached for the book which she still held. But she tucked it under her arm. She did not believe he would wrestle her for it, as Celegorm might have done as a child. The thought made her smile. “I would feel more comfortable giving it to you to read, if I could ask you a few questions first.”

“I have heard from Ingo and others that the Haladin of Beleriand were completely wiped out, or at least disappeared as a separate people. It hurts me to think of it, they were a valiant people, but, as you know, I have suffered many losses of those dear to me, and still retain my senses. Even Namo has declared me sufficiently fit for society.”

“So, they were dear to you?”

“One might say I had a highly personal involvement in their welfare and was unable to do as much to help them as I had wished.”

“Do you recall a woman by the name of Haleth who became one of the Chieftains of the Haladin?”

His face colored and his eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I will never forget her. She was magnificent!”

“Well . . . Aren’t you going to tell me about her?”

“Do you insist?” he said, unabashedly sniffing away the incipient tears while giving her the same shy teasing smile she had loved so much when he was small.

“I do indeed! I actually had a dream about you and a woman of the Edain.”

“Ai, Ammë! I thought you did not believe in dreams of prescience.”

She shushed him, wagging her head in a gesture of mock scolding.  “. . . and then within a week, I received this book.” She held it up and he reached for it, but she snatched it out of his reach. “I’ll trade you her book for your version of the story.”

“It’s a book about Haleth?”

“One could say that. It is much more actually. It’s a diary. You are mentioned.” The note of amusement in her voice made her feel a slight sense of guilt. What mother worth her salt teases her notoriously awkward and self-conscious child?

He laughed softly, surprised. “Shame on you!” He let his mouth hang open in an expression of false outrage. It was a look more like one might have seen on Celegorm’s face than that of Caranthir. “You always drove a hard bargain, Ammë.” There was a shrewdness about her son, which she had rarely seen, but had heard discussed. He had gained a measure of self-control. She still saw her angry little boy, so quick to lose control and equally quick to regret, but she also saw how he had matured.

“Oh, good!” She topped off his wine glass. “If we finish this bottle I have another of a similar variety that could follow this one well.”

“All right then.” He sighed as though he was stoically presenting himself for torture. “She was the leader of a group of women warriors. There were unlike any women I had met before.”

“Ah, interesting. My mother told me stories about the great trek to the sea, how the women of the Eldar were armed as well as the men. Your grandfather Finwë also told me how Indis had been strong with a sword, as well as being swift of foot and a formidable archer.”

“He told us those same stories as well. But they were different—these women warriors of the Haladin. They set themselves apart from all other women.  They did not learn the use of weapons in self-defense, or to serve them as a last resort method of protecting the injured or their children, or in only in a case of separation from the whole. The ones their people called the Manly-Hearted Women were a group at a distance in roles and training from both the women and the men.

“Haleth was leader of those women. Her father Haldad was the closest thing to a leader of all the Haladin. He had two children, twins, Haleth and her brother Haldar. Her brother was his right-hand. And Haleth led the women’s defense force. The women warriors trained in all of the martial arts and abided by none of the customs and restrictions which encumbered most women among the early Edain. They prided themselves on their tracking ability, stealth of movement, accuracy with bow and sword, and upon their stamina and strength. And they largely ruled themselves, uncontrolled by any man. Their purpose was to defend their people. So, the ones I met had been very close and loyal to Haldad.” His voice and his expressive eyes showed his admiration for these strong women.

“Did these women marry?” she asked.

“Some of them did. The majority did not. Haleth told me that some among them sought a life companion within the women of their own ranks. And those who did marry found men who were willing to accept that such a wife held higher status within the tribe than they did. I was told that, despite that, they had no difficulty finding a mate. On the other hand, a man who managed to pledge his troth with a Manly-Hearted Woman was held in high esteem.”

“Might seem like a contradiction,” she offered, wanting to hear his reasoning more than that she actually believed it could be unlikely. After all, Fëanor had been quite smitten with her eminence as an artisan and her inclination toward skills and interests that separated her from most women. It had not bothered him at all that he was a far better cook and she a poor housekeeper. Had he been born among the Haladin he might have sought a Manly-Hearted Woman for himself, although such a relationship would have been no more peaceful than their own had been.

“Oh! But it wasn’t a contradiction. I became quite vain about the fact that Haleth sought out my company.” He flushed bright red and stuck out his lower lip in a pout. Here was a man who had had his heart broken and recovered, but nursed the loss close to his heart as something too precious to forget.

That confirmed what Nerdanel had surmised when she read the diary of Haleth. She knew her son and she also recognized Haleth’s own ambivalence about Caranthir in the missing pieces of the story to be found in her diary. Faced with a similar choice to that of Nerdanel, unlike her, Haleth had chosen to turn her back upon the one man who might have tempted her.

Nerdanel had speculated that his Manly-Hearted Woman had chosen to break his heart at the beginning of a possible relationship rather than draw either of them away from their previously chosen duties and responsibilities. An attractive young woman could not have rested easily with the vision of growing old before a handsome, seemingly ageless man. How bitter she must have felt at the idea of losing her own youth while watching him remain young and fit. How could such a woman, who viewed herself as a stalwart warrior, face losing her hard-won strength, while her valorous lover fought on at the peak of his prowess?

Once Caranthir had established the pace of his narrative and convinced himself that his mother truly did wish to hear his entire story with any digressions or additions he might think would be significant, he took on a tone of self-confidence not unlike that of his eldest brother when publicly presenting an analysis of an historical event before an enraptured audience during the Golden Age of Valinor. This was a side of Caranthir his mother had not seen before. The most artless of her sons, the one who had preferred mathematics to letters and silence to speaking, told a compelling story.

She had heard that all of her sons ruled strategic realms in the north of Beleriand, where they held back Morgoth for nearly five hundred years of the sun. Caranthir had been the hardest for her to imagine. But he described his own realm in Beleriand in great detail.

He then related how the people of Haldad had begun to move into a far-flung, virtually unsettled corner of his kingdom—Thargelion, east of the river Gelion. Caranthir knew the Haladin by reputation; he’d heard that they were clannish to a fault and preferred to live separated from their brethren of the other two Houses of the Edain. They kept to themselves and he, for one, could understand that well enough. He was an anti-social sort himself. Not only did they wish to remain independent as a people, but they did not build large settlements or even substantial villages. They were not a nomadic people. They built clusters of a few homesteads, even then some distance apart, near to good hunting, where they cultivated small plots of land and raised a few goats for milk and cheese. If they sensed danger or got wind of other settlements encroaching upon their much-valued isolation they would move on.

At that point in his account, they had finished the second bottle of wine and Caranthir reached for a third. He had been drinking faster than she was and the sun had sunk low behind the trees. She knew he was reaching a climatic point, but the flush on his cheeks indicated that if she did not feed him soon he would never finish it.

“We have to eat! You must be hungry now. I know I am starving. Bring the bottle with you and we will see if our dinner is ready.”

“Someone is making us dinner?” His eyes popped. Poor lad. She should have checked earlier.

“Indeed there is! I have a cook and housekeeper who comes in twice a week. You surely remember that I’m a terrible cook.”

“I wouldn’t say terrible. I know you did not like to cook.”

She reached out and patted him on cheek. “You never were so sweet as a boy. She’s very discreet, but also very observant. I’m sure she noticed that you were here and prepared enough for two. Probably something better than what she would serve me on my own.”

She took him straight into the kitchen and introduced him. “Alca, this is my fourth son Carnistir. We are starving and hoped that you might be cooking!”

He greeted the woman courteously, although he stammered and flushed--so much for his turn as a king in Beleriand curing his lifelong social clumsiness. They retired to the dining room to find the table already set and no sooner had they settled than Alca swooped in and placed a bowl of fragrant soup before each of them.

“It’s only chicken soup, but I tried to tart it up a little with some saffron and spring onions. I remember you telling me a while back, lady, that this son was allergic to shellfish. I’ve put shrimp in the cooler for you tomorrow.” Although, Alca was an efficient worker and a marvelous cook, she did love to chatter. But her remark about the shellfish brought a wide smile to Caranthir’s face.

“Thank you so very much for remembering. Ammë is lucky to have someone like you looking after her.” So, he was not so clumsy after all when someone else’s feelings were involved.

“Why thank you, my lord.” She bounced back into the kitchen well pleased.

“The soup is very good, Ammë. I did not have to worry as much about shellfish in Middle-earth. I spent most my time there far inland and without the amount of trade that Valinor supported in the old days. You would not believe the distances! We were considered to be fairly close together by the standards of the Sindar, but the continent is vast. In the end, I saw only a most limited part of it.” He paused to enjoy his soup and she kept quiet to let him eat. “May we finish our dinner before I start again? The next part is not exactly dinner table conversation.” His brow wrinkled in a thoughtful frown.

“I am riveted by your story, but the last thing I want to do is rush you.” She could not resist reaching out to touch his hand resting on the table. How she had longed to touch her sons again. She could only hope to see another one or two in the not too distant future. “I wonder if you could sleep over tonight.”

“I was hoping you would ask. I told Ingo I would not be back tonight and then I realized that I can’t go back. He’s courting Amarië. She will not stay over if I am in the house. I must find another place to live soon.”

“You surely know that you are always welcome here! For as long as you like.”

“But you have your life, Ammë. You have earned your peace. You do not need a slightly unhinged son to look after. And it is time that I started to build a life for myself.”  

“Don’t be silly! But we can talk about it later. But tell me about Ingo and Amarië. He’s courting her? I thought she had been waiting for him all this time.”

“Perhaps. But he wants her to get to know him again. He wants her to be able to choose the person he is now. We have all changed so much, Ammë.”

Alca arrived with lamb chops and pureed potatoes swimming with butter. Perhaps she had also mentioned that this son was a strictly meat and potatoes boy. They ate in companionable silence. The hearty feast would do a lot to offset the over consumption of wine, assuming it did not put him to sleep.

After they finished the main course, she asked Alca for a pot of strong, black tea. Alca, of course, reminded them she had made cream cakes. She was rightfully proud of those. Caranthir graciously agreed to try the cream cakes.

“I don’t know if you are trying to put me to sleep with the cream cakes, or sober me up with the tea. First, you served sparkling water with dinner and then offer me black tea.”

“We drank a lot this afternoon. But after the tea, I have some brandy you can try. Only if you want to continue. . .”

“I want my book!”

“Then let’s go into the parlor and have the tea and cakes there.”

They made themselves comfortable—Caranthir in an enormous over-stuffed chair, long legs stretched out before him, and Nerdanel, with her shoes kicked off and her legs curled under her, on a small settee across from him. He looked long into his mother’s eyes, cleared his throat, and launched back into his story, precisely where he had stopped before dinner.

“I’d known for quite some time that a number of the Haladin had settled in the south of my territory. Sightings of Orcs in the area were reported back to me. We also learned that Haldad had taken command of the defense of his people. He built a wooden stockade between the angle of the rivers Gelion and Ascar. This was so unlike any previous custom of the Haladin that we knew their situation must have grown dire indeed. Then scouts arrived and reported hordes of Orcs were pouring into the area and the Haladin, valiant and determined though they might be, were no match for that sort of onslaught.”

“That sounds horrible. They must have suffered terrible losses.”

“That they did. By the time I got the word of the worsening situation, I was already on the move in that direction. I sent for reinforcements and supplies. When I arrived on the seventh day of a full-out siege of their barricade, their losses had been heavy. The Orcs seemed to have endless supply of foot soldiers, with ever more streaming in. We joined Haleth’s forces of warrior women and finally drove them back. Our reinforcements arrived not long after that and we conducted a massive sweep to slaughter any remaining stragglers." He sighed heavily. “Meanwhile, that was how I met Haleth.”

“She must have been overwhelmed with gratitude to see you.”

“Perhaps she was. I’m fairly certain she was,” he muttered, smiling mordantly. “What she said to me was memorable.”

“And that was?” Nerdanel prompted.

Then he chuckled. “She said, ‘You’re late.’ Turned out they had lost most of their men and older boys. She lost her father and her twin brother. She had a stockade filled with women and young children, many of them near starving, along with a few wounded warriors. I told her that we had some provisions on us and healers among us, but explained that we had wagon-loads of supplies on the way.” He shook his head and laughed again. “Then she begrudgingly invited me into her badly damaged fortress.”

“And that was how she won your heart?”

“I had expected no more, no less. We knew of their fierce independence, their determination not to be beholden to anyone. But they could not refuse our initial help. You should have seen her as I did that day.”

“How did you see her that day, your valiant warrior woman?”

“She wasn’t very big. Not nearly as tall as you. The Haladin are known for being somewhat slight of stature. She was long-legged for her size, small-breasted, and dark. She had a mass of curly dark hair and flashing black eyes. At first glance, I would have taken her for a boy, were it not for her formidable air of command.” He was unable to speak of her without smiling at his memory. “Once she had cleaned the blood and muck off her face, one could see she was quite lovely. I’ve known few sharper of tongue and wit. You have guessed already how I responded. I think I fell in love with her that first day.”

“I can see that by looking at your face now.”

“She was prickly and defensive, stubborn and hard as nails with me. But she did soften somewhat when our supplies finally arrived. Our entire force worked like mules for days. We helped them bury their dead. We healed those who could be healed. Our surgeons were busy for days. No small contingent of my soldiers helped grieving widows—hardly more than girls themselves—look after their traumatized children. We kept our cooks busy. None of them had eaten well in a long while.”

“If I had been her, I would have been falling over myself with gratitude.”

“But she was not you. Her life had been a hard one and their customs were their bulwark against a harsher world than one can imagine if one has not experienced it. They believed their best defense against that world was to bend the knee to no one, to be indebted to none.”

“And yet, I’ve already read her book. I believe she cared deeply for you.”

“Perhaps. I’d like to think she did. But never a day passed over the next two months when she did not say, ‘We’re grateful for your help, Elf-lord. You can leave us now.’ But I am stubborn too.”

“As your mother, I am well aware of that! And what did you offer her?”

“I offered her land where her people might settle, much safer and more fertile land, within easier reach of our protection, with no conditions.”

“And she turned that down?”

“Most eloquently. They were not only afraid of bowing to a lord, and, I swear, I told her over and over that I did not want that of her or her people, but they wanted no guidance or interference of any sort.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that if I cared anything for her and if my protestations of having the interests of her people in my heart were true, not to argue anymore. Her exact words were, ‘My mind is now set, Caranthir, to leave the shadow of the mountains, and go west, whither others of our kin have gone.’”

“And that was your last conversation?”

“She came to my tent later that night and we made love.”

“That was the first time?”

“No, Ammë, that was the last of many. But I do not regret anything. Now may I have the book?”

“Yes, my sweet, darling boy, you may have it, with one last bit of motherly advice. It is better to love unwisely than never to have loved.”

 

THE END