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surprise, his guest Éowyn, the sister of the King of the Mark of Rohan, had discovered that
she shared the prince s weird status. She had asked for her sword back without a second
thought, adding jokingly that she didn t feel quite dressed without it, and got a joke in
response: A pretty girl looks even prettier underdressed. Éowyn frowned in irritation:
even by her uninhibited taste this compliment by a lieutenant of the White Company (forty
men tasked by Aragorn to their protection) bordered on a faux pas. She made a note for
herself to be on more official terms with this bunch from now on, and requested a meeting
with the company s commander, Captain Beregond.
After all, every joke has its limits: they are not in Minas Tirith any more, walking these
woods unarmed, while there may still be goblins about, is simply unsafe. Oh, Her
Highness has nothing to fear in this respect; the goblins are her bodyguards problem.
Does the Captain mean to say that those four thugs are going to accompany her everywhere?
Yes, certainly, and this is by direct order of His Majesty; although they can be replaced, if
Her Highness dislikes these four. By the way, Aragorn is neither her sovereign nor
guardian, and if this is how it s going to be, she s coming back to Minas Tirith right away&
actually, to Edoras, not Minas Tirith! Unfortunately, this would be impossible without a
written order from His Majesty. So& not to put too fine a face on it, is she a prisoner?
Why, Your Highness! Prisoners stay under lock and key, whereas you can ride anywhere
you want. Even to Minas Morgul, if you wish, but only with bodyguards and unarmed.
Strangely, only now did Éowyn realize that Faramir s lack of a sword could be due to
earthly reasons rather than the prince s poetic disposition.
By process of elimination it would seem that Beregond was the real master of Ithilien, but
one only had to see him move charily through the corridors of the fort, avoiding eye contact
with his prisoner, to understand that this was rank nonsense. The captain was a ruined man,
73
The Last Ring-bearer
because he knew that he had guarded Denethor s chambers on that tragic day and that he
was the one who announced the King s suicide to the public that is, he knew, but he could
not remember a thing. His memory of that nightmarish day sported a large charred hole, in
which Mithrandir s whitish shadow flitted sometimes; the knight seemed to have had a hand
in those events, but Beregond could not figure it out. It is hard to say what prevented the
captain from taking his own life; perhaps he realized that by doing so he would have
accepted the guilt for the crime, to the delight of the real murderers. In Minas Tirith a wall
of scorn had surrounded him since that day few believed the self-immolation story so
Aragorn could find no better man to lead the White Company. The job required a man who
could not possibly conspire with Faramir and here Aragorn had made a mistake: for all his
knowledge of people, he had not foreseen that the prince, whom Beregond had often
dandled on his knee, would be perhaps the only person in all of Gondor to believe in the
captain s innocence.
As for the men of the White Company, who not only guarded the fort but also filled all the
housekeeping jobs (from majordomo to cook), they did not talk to the prince much at all.
Yes, Your Highness; no, Your Highness; I don t know, Your Highness that was the
extent of the conversation, with don t know a clear favorite. They were ordered to guard,
so they guarded; were they ordered to kill him, they would undoubtedly do that, too.
Faramir could not figure out whose orders those cutthroats obeyed, but he did not believe
even for a moment that it was Beregond. At the same time, there seemed to be no messages
from Aragorn, either, unless they had clandestine communications with Minas Tirith without
the captain s knowledge but then why make it so complex?
Indeed it was a strange crowd that made its home in Emyn Arnen that spring, and the
funniest thing was that all the participants of The Prince of Ithilien and His Court show
made a touchingly united effort to keep that strangeness from becoming the subject of
discussion outside its walls, where real life went on.
In real life it was a rare day that Faramir did not bless a new group of subjects yet another
group of settlers from Gondor. Many of those were not at all eager to show themselves to
the court, preferring instead to huddle in the farthest reaches of the forest; it was clear that
they regarded tax collectors as a much more harmful and dangerous threat than the goblins
that supposedly infested those thickets. During the war those people have learned to wield
weapons expertly and got out of the habit of bowing to landlords, so the Prince of Ithilien
would not have been able to control the fortified forest hamlets these people were building
even if he wanted to, which he did not. All he did was try to convey to the newcomers that
they would not be fleeced in his demesne, and the message seemed to be getting through:
lately grim armed men from the far hamlets have been showing up at the main Settlement,
with pointed inquiries about prices for honey and smoked venison. That year axes and
hammers sounded throughout Ithilien: the settlers built houses, cleared forests for fields, put
up mills and dry distilleries. They were settling the forests beyond Anduin for good.
Chapter 22
More than a month has gone by since the end of the Mordorian campaign, and still Éowyn
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