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The beginning of the wish came at midnight.
Eowyn was up and where she usually was. That is, where she wasn’t meant to be. She was taking advantage of the relative quiet of the House of Healing at night to stretch her legs and wander at will, without the Warden nipping at her heels, fretting at her to get back into bed. Even with the relative freedom of the gardens allowed to her, and Faramir and Merry’s welcome company to stave off boredom, Eowyn fancied that she could still feel the walls closing in on her once more.
She was healing, the realm was saved, and there would have to be a quiet after the storm. There would have to be a tomorrow, and while many rejoiced, Eowyn could only fear. For her tomorrow threatened to be so much like her yesterday. She had dreamed so long and hard of riding to battle that she gave little thought of what would happen afterwards, unless it be in how her deeds would be remembered in the legends and songs. She had done her deeds, she had her legend, and the bards had taken up their lutes and pens to sing of her glory, but whereas the Lady of the Shield Arm may live forever in a ballad of triumph, victorious under a rising sun, the White Lady of Rohan would have to live under the rule of her brother.
Before the shadows had fully swallowed her heart, Eowyn had faintly hoped that if she could prove herself, prove her skill, the cage would be opened and her menfolk would cease to shut her in like a prized songbird. But as her brother’s return beckoned, she could not sway the dread that she would forever be her brother’s sister first, and her own being second.
Once more she would be a staff, a tool, to be used and leant on by the men so they could follow their own noses and do their great deeds.
Eowyn got out of bed and wandered at night despite knowing she shouldn’t. Eowyn got out of bed and wandered at night because she knew she shouldn’t. It was relief, freedom, a reminder that she had broken the rules before and she could do so again. She had donned another’s armour, took on a false name, smuggled Merry into battle with her. She slew an oliphant and orcs, she beheaded a fell beast and with her fellow fugitive, brought about the Witch King’s doom.
She could, she would, be up after bedtime.
She heard voices, a cry, and footsteps.
‘Fetch the Warden, or Iroeth, or someone. The wound must be sewn together, and the blood is coming at such a pace, I cannot step away.’
A young lad, barely twelve, dashed past Eowyn, not giving her a second glance in his search for a healer.
Eowyn entered the common area, where a young healer whose name she did not know was bent over a man, grey faced and writing, her hands pressed firmly against a wound to his thigh. Eowyn winced. The blood was coming out faster than the healer could hold it in. the bandages beneath her hands were already sodden.
‘May I be of assistance?’ Eowyn said.
The healer looked up. ‘My lady, you are still wounded.’
‘My arms are healed enough to hold a dressing in place while you prepare to sew the wound,’ Eowyn said. Or just about, hopefully. They would have to do.
The healer, to her credit, didn’t hesitate.
‘There are sterile dressings in the cabinet behind you,’ the healer said. Eowyn was no stranger to battle wounds and prepared the dressing as quickly as her own wounds allowed, and hurried to the healer’s side. They locked eyes, and in a swift motion the healer removed her own dressing, and Eowyn swooped in with the fresh one.
Ioreth and the Warden had been on the other side of the houses, dealing with a fierce fever that had broken out among some wounded soldiers. By the time they had arrived, Eowyn and the healer were finishing up the poor man’s dressing, and pouring medicine down his threat.
Eowyn barely noticed their presence, her eyes fixed on the healer, and when questioned about the wound, her words came out briskly and bluntly.
She made no apologies for being out of bed after hours.
Once the patient was no longer in mortal danger and had been transferred to the care of others, Eowyn and the healer were relieved for the night.
Eowyn was sent back to bed. She obeyed, but her mind and her nerves awake and buzzing and she thought for sure she wouldn’t sleep.
In truth, she barely had time to wash the blood off her and change before sleep knocked into her like a stone wall.
‘My lady, as much as I commend you for you help last night, you really must no over exert yourself,’ the Warden told Eowyn the next day, chiding her in such a gentle fashion that she felt as though she was seven again, being scolded for wrestling her brother in her best gown. (She won, she always won.) ‘You are still recovering from your own injuries, and Lord Aragorn and King Eomer were both firm that you were to rest and be treated with care. The work of a healer is a grim, bloody business, and it lays wreckage to the hardiest of souls. For those who are already delicate in body and thought, it can spell grave disaster in deed.’
‘I see the kindness meant in your words,’ Eowyn said, ‘but treat me as one delicate and I will be sure to be so. Talk to me as though I am glass and I may well start to believe it. I am not one to be idle Sir, and I must have occupation, for the sake of my reason.’
’That well may be, my lady,’ the Warden said, looking on her with gentle eyes. ‘But you have suffered great harm and you are precious to many. Your brother looks to have you welcome him home, hale and hearty. And you are now his heir, the sister of the King of Rohan. Your hand is a fair gift, and will bring Rohan much strength and support. Already, words of your deeds and beauty have reached the ears of many, and I have it that there are some who look to ask your brother to take you for a wife.’
A wife. A wife. Asking her brother to take her for a wife.
Eowyn left the warden, but didn’t return to her rest, as he had so begged. She turned to he who had been more support than she had thought to look for in a man who would deny her glorious death. Eowyn would beg for his aid, call in his arms and have him do battle with her. And if Lord Faramir wasn’t enough, she would bring in Merry as well.
‘Lord Faramir,’ Eowyn said. ‘I must be trained as a healer. Now. I must be taught everything that there is to be taught about it. Before my brother returns, if possible.’
Faramir smiled. He had heard of Eowyn’s deeds the night before from young Master Meriadoc, who already seemed to know everything that was going on in the city. The Hobbit had suggested they celebrate Eowyn’s handiness with a pint of beer, or perhaps a top tea prepared by one of Merry’s friends in the kitchens.
(How Merry had befriended the kitchen workers, Faramir didn’t ask. It was a Hobbit’s business in life to be well fed, and as with all great quests, he needed his allies.)
Faramir agreed to Merry’s suggestion, even though he knew by now that halfling needed little cause to celebrate, if celebration meant food, drink and pipeweed, which for a Hobbit, it always did. Eowyn, Faramir suspected, had seen little celebration for herself over her years.
Her rank might have been honoured, her beauty prized, but celebration for herself, for her deeds, for her quick thinking, her prowess and her versatility, her steady hand and her strong nerve, no,they had received little credit. And they were for sure her truest beauty, her person’s greatest honour.
Faramir had already begun making moves to correct that. For one, he had Master Meriadoc describe in great detail everything he knew about the lady’s part in the war, starting in Rohan, and following on to the Witch King’s defeat at her hands. Merry had been obliging, for if a Hobbit wasn’t using his mouth for eating, drinking or smoking, it was for talking.
Faramir sometimes had to gently steer Merry away from tangents on pipeweed, pies and his many relations;
(“Yes, the lady had a right fearsome look in her eyes, rather like the one my mother had when she thought Father had forgotten to buy her a gift for his birthday. Of course he did buy her a gift, a right beautiful pipe all engraved in flowers and bugs, orchids and beetles, for her name, Esmerelda, and he had it carved from the wood of a tree we had to fell that summer, for it had grown sick. Mother was much aggrieved when that came down, for they had sat under it for many years. It was their courting tree. She wept when he gave it to her, but she had already been crying because she thought she had been overlooked. Father had bought gifts for everyone else, including her sister’s husband’s wife, Aunt Marigold, who she hated like a cat hates a broom, ever since Auntie Marigold stole away Mother’s best bedsheets. Of course, she only took them because mother had sneaked some frogs into her bed, so she felt her sheets were ruined and Mother owed her a replacement. Oh yes, Mother can be quite the trickster. Pippin and I learned everything at her knee. I remember one time- What? The Battle of Pelennor Fields, of course. Now, where was I? Oh yes, the Lady Eowyn, or Dernhelm as I knew her then, had a right fearsome look in her eye. She looked at her foe as though she was going to devour it, rather the same way Pippin does whenever he sees one of Granny Took’s sausage rolls. Oh those sausage rolls, I tell you, they are legendary in the Shire. Wars have broken out amongst my family for the honour of being the heir to Granny Took’s secret recipe for them-”);
-but amongst these rambles, he had been able to glean the information he needed. The image of Eowyn in his mind’s eyes, fierce, proud, deadly and so, so brave, made him all at once want to drop to her feet, kiss her hands, kiss her cheek, and hoist her onto his shoulders.
It pleased him to hear Lady Eowyn wish to train as a healer. He could see the role suiting her well, feeding her need for action, putting her to wits to the challenge. Wounds would close up like flowers in the cold in the face of her iron will, and infection and sickness would flee from her in terror and dread.
‘Of course, my lady,’ he told her. ‘I think it is a splendid idea, and I would do much to support you in this venture, although I’m not sure what support I have to offer, except that of friendship.’
‘The Warden doesn’t wish me training right away,’ Eowyn said. ‘He says I still need to rest.’
‘Ah,’ Faramir said. ‘And we all do live in awe of the Warden. Still, he is perhaps not wrong. Training in the healing arts is taxing, and he probably fears that you would only delay your recovery. We all must be patient and let time do its work.’
‘But I do not have time,’ Eowyn said. ‘I must be trained before my brother comes to fetch me.’
‘My lady, he will be coming to the city in a matter of weeks. I believe it takes a healer a touch longer than that to learn all there is to know of the craft.’
Eowyn huffed in annoyance. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I just need to know enough in order to fake it.’
‘Why the urgency?’
The Warden’s well meant but injurious words had perhaps been at attempt at hinting a little of what he had seen in the gardens, between Eowyn and Faramir, but for Eowyn, they were only a confirmation of what she feared greater than all.
Eowyn dragged her hands across her face.
‘People want to marry me,’ she said.
‘I see,’ Faramir said solemnly. ‘A great tragedy indeed.’
Eowyn cuffed him around the head. ‘You don’t understand. My brother is king now, and my hand, my being, is a treasure to be bartered with. He is coming for and he is bringing a dozen, ten dozen, a hundred dozen suitors at his back. You speak of healing, and I was brought to this place to heal, but it will all be for nothing if I am returned to the place that dealt me the worst blows.’
Faramir frowned. ‘Rohan?’
Eowyn shook her head. ‘The cage.’
Faramir slipped his hand into Eowyn’s. ‘And why think you that learning to heal would spare you such a fate?’
‘It’s a trade, isn’t it?’ Eowyn said. ‘One I may take with me anywhere in the world. Once you have a trade to barter, you are your own to rule. My hands would earn my livelihood and defend it. And as a role, it would be my own. Not an adjunct of my husband’s. I would not just be “this man’s sister, that man’s wife and his sons’ mother.” I would be my own person.’
Faramir looked at her and thought how he would like to twist the ears of anyone who had ever made her feel less than such a thing. ‘You already are, my lady.’ He wanted to kiss her cheek. ‘Wraithslayer.’
Eowyn gave him a grim smile. ‘Aye, and my brother would have me cease to be so. He loves me, and would choose a man he thinks would protect me. But such protection, such love doesn’t please me. I would be protected from hardship and horrors, orcs and blood and terror, so much as anyone can be. I would be shut in where it is safe and sweet and foul, and left to face the demons that cannot be fought with swords. I would be protected right out of life.’
Faramir’s heart hurt. ‘I hope your brother would not do you such a wrong.’
‘He already did,’ Eowyn said quietly. ‘He, and my uncle; though it pains me to say, now he is gone and I will never see his dear face again, and all those who loved me best. It is not my enemies who have done me the greatest hurt, but my own family. They loved me, aye, but not as one of them. I was a staff, to be leant on, a tool to be used, a treasure to be cherished. They did not do me the justice of having dreams of my own, skills of my own, a will of my own, except that which they would curtail and correct until I was moulded into what they would have me be.’
Faramir risked taking her hand. She did not take it away. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘your gallantry, your valour, would bring about a change. Your brother cannot deny your courage, your will and the right of it now.’
‘Perhaps,’ Eowyn said. ‘Or perhaps the dread of seeing me sick and lost will be enough to make the cage ever stronger. I cannot pin my hopes for the future on Eomer showing me a grace he has never shown me before. I must have an independence. I must have a trade.’
‘And it is to be healing?’ Faramir said. ‘A trade is labour, my lady, which you are not unused to, I trust. And to be stuck with labour that brings you little joy is a cage in itself. Does healing have its own charms for you, other than the coin it may earn you, and the freedom you hope to buy with it.’
‘Yes,’ Eowyn said. ‘It is a noble cause, it does much good. It will be with me wherever I go, and be called on in times of war and peace. And It reminded me a little of battle.’
Faramir frowned. ‘Is that a good thing.’
Eowyn struggled for the words. ‘Battle was not pleasant,’ she said. ‘It was hideous. Terrible and terrifying. I cannot think yet that grief and fear and the tragedy of a million lost chances for life have faded from the air above the fields of Pelennor. I was scared.’ She laughed. ‘I was scared. I didn’t want to die.’
‘Of course not,’ Faramir said.
‘No, you don’t understand. I didn’t want to die. For the first time in years, my life was a precious thing to me. I told that long I have felt not to be quite so human as the rest. A staff, a treasure, a tool. Never quite so real as the men of my blood. Always playing the part they decided for me. And in battle, under a borrowed name, I felt I knew myself. I was Dernhelm and yet I was Eowyn, and I was alive . When they brought me here, I asked permission to ride and die at the Black Gate so that I may feel that way again, and be cut down before I ever had to return to what I was before. A living dead girl.’
‘The rush of battle,’ Faramir said, running his thumb over Eowyn’s knuckles, ‘tis a powerful thing indeed. I never took joy in battle. Still I dread the thought of it. That dread is my cage. But I can see, for one who has suffered what you have, that this rush would be something to be longed for. Surely, we are never more reminded of our humanity, of the blood and parts that sustain us, of the soul that makes us, when they are movements away from being divided.’
‘It’s that rush,’ Eowyn said. ‘That’s what I need. I am not so mad, nor so selfish, to wish the world constantly at war just so that I can feel alive. But ask any healer, their work is yet another battlefield. There is strife, there is struggle. There is blood and victories and losses. Everything is tested. One’s nerve, one’s mind, one’s body. And when the healer; Mirrian I found her name was, and I worked together, when we found our rhythm, it was as though we worked as one. I found a little of that fellow feeling I long envied my brother having with his eord. I would have my own brothers at arms.’
‘If there is any blessing in battle,’ Faramir said, ‘it is in the kinship that is forged in its fires.’
‘I know it,’ Eowyn said. ‘Merry is the first true friend I ever had. At least, since the days of my early childhood. None know me so well as him. Except, perhaps you. But then, you tried to know me, in a way no one else ever has.’
‘Knowing you, my lady, Maiden of the Shield Arm,’ he said, ‘is my greatest joy and honour.’
Eowyn managed to keep her cheeks from burning too fiercely.
‘Will you do this for me then?’ she said. ‘Would you help me break down the walls of my cage, and do battle with me as friends in arms should? I fear the Warden will be hesitant, but together we may sway him.’
‘I certainly will, lady,’ he said. ‘If this is what you truly want.’
‘It truly is,’ Eowyn said. ‘I will be serving and doing good, but in a manner of my choosing. I will be following my own inclinations, my own judgement. When I rode out as Dernhelm, I rode out to fight and serve my people, and to do my duty as a warrior. But in riding out, I was also doing my duty to myself, for the first time. I would do so again.’
Faramir outstretched his arm. ‘In that case, my Lady Wraithslayer,’ he said, ‘let us to war.’
The Warden and Ioreth both were hesitant.
‘Healing is a noble art, and the Lady Eowyn does us credit in her desire to study at our side,’ the Warden said, ‘but she is a patient yet, and must have time to heal.’
‘Master Warden,’ Faramir said with a courtly smile. ‘You know that the mind and soul must needs be healthy as well as our stomach and limbs. The Lady Eowyn is not one for idleness, and as one who has shared her malady, I know that it is our wounds to the soul, not out bodies, that have caused us the most suffering.’
The Warden had to admit that was true. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Lord Aragorn feared most for your recovery and the lady’s because of it. The Hobbit he feared little for, and rightly so. He had forgotten the worst of his ills by supper.’
‘Food is Master Merry’s great consolation,’ Eowyn said, ‘as it seems to be for most of his people. But for me, it is purpose. And hope that my tomorrows may be brighter than my yesterdays. I cannot heal anymore than I have until I have such hope and such a purpose.’
The Warden seemed grudgingly swayed, especially as this request had been brought to him by the Lord Faramir and the Maiden of the Shield Arm together. Success in a joint venture could only help in bringing about the end that he wished of for those two.
Ioreth had her own doubts, and did not fail in using seventy words to list each one, when twelve would have sufficed.
‘After all,’ she said at last, ‘healing is hard, bloody work. If you were to study with us, my lady, you will be no ministering maiden. You did well the night past, but that is only the tip of it. You will not simply be gently mopping brows and tenderly spooning down broth. You will be called on to set bones, sew muscle, flesh and skin together. You will have children at death’s door brought to your table, and you will be charged to save their lives’ by a hair’s breadth. And fail or succeed, you will simply have to mop yourself up afterwards and move onto the next patient with a steady hand. You will end the days covered in sweat and blood and pus and all else that your patients will relieve themselves of in their sufferings. You will catch sick in your bare hands, and reach into your patients’ festering wounds to clean out the poison and dig out that which has struck them and splintered. Are you up for it, my lady? For our burden is great and our hours busy, and we do not have time to waste training anyone who will not be able to follow through.’
Merry laughed and choked on his pie when Faramir and Eowyn recounted lady’s objections. Eowyn whacked him on the back to free him of the offending mouthful, before putting a glass of ale in his hands.
‘My thanks,’ he said, once he had watered himself down. ‘And what did you say, my lady, when Mistress Ioreth put forward her doubts?'
‘I said, with heavy heart, “In truth, I’m not sure, Mistress Ioreth. For when I defeated the Witch King Angmar by gently mopping his brow, and tenderly spooning broth down his fell beast, I feared I had reached the limit of my capabilities”.’
Faramir joined with Merry’s laughter, for he had been unable to laugh when he first heard Eowyn’s response, doing his best to put on a stewardly mein to avoid offending the other lady.
‘And how did she take that?’ Merry said.
‘To he credit, she laughed, said that answered her question, and asked me how I did manage to slay that Witch King.’
‘And you said?’
‘I’m afraid I’m not so loquacious as our worthy healer,’ Eowyn said. ‘I told her my friend Merry stabbed him in the legs, so I was able to stab him in the face.’
Faramir chucked again, and poured the Witch Kingslayers another serving of ale each. ‘A simple solution,’ he said. ‘But then, the simple solutions do so often work the best. I toast you both, Master Meridaco of the Shire, and Lady Eowyn of the Shield Arm, Wraith Slayers. Here's to your great deeds of the past, and those which you will no doubt commit in the future.’
With all hope,’ Eowyn said, tapping his and Merry’s tankards with her own. ‘With all hope.’