Eorling Mead Hall

[littlemanpoet]

Léofric came by and greeted them. Rowenna returned his greeting, using his full name as she always did with everyone. Javan was an excitable boy, to be sure. Rowenna wondered if Léofric was quite as eager to have Javan as Javan was to be Léofric's helper.

“That’s what I like to do. I’ve always liked horses a great deal, and I can ride ‘em, too. You like horses, don’t you? Can you ride?”

Rowenna smiled. "Yes. I had my own filly before -" she furrowed her brow "-before I was taken by the outlaws." She had been about to say 'before ... you know'; she had promised herself that she would never shy away from the memory of the horrors of her captivity, but she had almost done so, so soon. She realized with a little anger that she would have to force herself to think the hard thoughts and speak the hard words. The warm memories from earlier times must not be allowed to buffer her from the memory of rough hands using her roughly, evil words spoken to her. And the warm memories must not be allowed to soften her into easy chatter. She felt her face compose. To Javan it looked like she had been about to really be happy, only to shy away from it and become cold and stoney again.

"I did choose this work, believe it or not. I do this to remind me that I am an escaped slave and an orphan."

She held his eyes to see that her words sunk in, then gripped the brush, watered it in the bucket, and began scrubbing again.

[Folwren]

For a moment it looked like Rowenna was going to actually continue being companionable. Javan’s smile got a little wider and his eyes a little more eager as she told him she did once have a filly. Perhaps she would tell him what the young horse was like, what color she was, and what Rowenna had named her.

But no. Suddenly the happiness seemed to fade and her smile left not only her lips but also her eyes. Once more a hard line came up around the muscle in her jaw. She was composed, humorless, cold, and her talk went back to the job at hand.

“I did choose this work, believe it or not. I do this to remind me that I am an escaped slave and an orphan.” She looked at Javan with the look he’d often gotten from his mother or older sisters to make sure he understood something he didn’t want to understand.

“Well,” Javan said, a little ruffled at her behavior - her closing up like a clam shell. “Well, I don’t think that makes much sense. You’re not a slave any more, that’s what I think, and you shouldn’t act like one.”

She ignored him, seemingly, and went on scrubbing the floor, using both hands on the brush. “You shouldn’t look at the ground so much,” Javan told her. “And at people’s feet. You’re better than that. You can look people in the face now.”

[littlemanpoet]

A grim smile came to Rowenna's lips as she continued to scrub. To be told by a mere boy that one is not making sense was ironic. And of course it would appear that way to Javan. He did not understand how a moment - or many moments strung together without quarter - could change one with no going back. She did not mourn the change, for the last two years had made her strong of will and of mind in a way that could not have happened otherwise, except perhaps after many years. In a way she felt old. But she had thought of a way to explain it to Javan.

"Everyone is a slave, no matter how free. Even King Eomer may not do certain things, such as murder his queen, or forsake the Eorling vassalage to Gondor, or he will face the consequences. Everyone is a slave. You Javan are also a slave: is there not someone you dare not cross?

"And you are not making sense. If I am the murderess you say, then I cannot be "better than that", as you put it."

She was testing him, to see how much capacity for thought lay behind those sparkling eyes. He was too young to understand, of course, but she dared to hope that she might be surprised.

[Folwren]

A look of confusion passed over Javan’s face. It struggled with his conviction that he was right, and neither the expression of confusion nor the conviction won, rather that of angry annoyance.

“I’m not a slave!” Javan burst out. “Not to anyone, I’m not! I’m not afraid of anyone. Not - not Thornden or even lord Eodwine, that’s what. And I never said you were a murderess! I just said that the others might think you are. You never wanted to kill anyone! And I think that if you spent more time thinking about your present freedom and how jolly well you have it now and less time feeling sorry for yourself and what happened, you’d be much happier and you might not be stuck scrubbing stupid floors and breaking your back in menial tasks day in and day out.”

He aimed a kick at the bucket of water to illustrate his point. The blow was harder than he meant it, and the water sloshed violently as the bucket leaped sideways a foot. Most of it spilled, soaking Rowenna’s skirts.

Javan clapped his hand over his mouth in dismay. “Oh, golly,” he said in a much quieter tone. “I’m awfully sorry, Rowenna. I didn’t mean to make you wet. I’m so sorry. . .” He was kneeling again beside her instantly, pulling the bucket away and mopping the water up with the nearest cloth he could find. He stopped after a moment, appalled, realizing the cloth was Rowenna’s skirt. “I...” he blinked. How utterly unfortunate. She must think him a dunce. “I’m so sorry.”

[littlemanpoet]

He was just a child, of course. Rowenna's words had done what they were supposed to do, see what he was made of. And of course he revealed far more than he meant to. She jumped back when he kicked the bucket, but not enough to miss getting wet. She shook her head at his antics, now full of woe for his misdeed. He was more a slave than he could possibly understand, but it would do no good to explain that to him. Maybe some day he would break free of some of it, enough to choose his enslavements.

When he lifted the hem of her skirt in his hand and realized that his cloth was in fact her skirt, the look on his face almost made Rowenna lose control and fall into a fit of giggling again. Silly boy. She sighed, forced the smile off of her face, and spoke quietly.

"Javan, look at me." Slowly the boy raised his hanging head and met her eyes. "Come with me to the kitchen and ask Frodides for towels. I'll need to refill the bucket now. The water was getting too cold at any rate."

"But your skirt is all wet!" He was close to tears.

"What of it? Skirts dry after a while." She rose. "Come with me."

She led him down the hallway and to the kitchen, wondering about Javan's claim that she was feeling sorry for herself. It could not be right, but she found it hard to shake it from her thoughts.

~*~

Eodwine had been listening from around the corner. He had feared that he would be found out by Léof, but he had passed the other way also. Eodwine had been intrigued by the oddity of the boy striking up a conversation with the young woman that most everyone else left alone; she seemed to prefer being left alone. So when she had become almost conversational, Eodwine had been curious to find out what she would say to such a boy. Her replies had been strange, while Javan's had been exactly what one might expect from such a high spirited lad. Did Rowenna really view herself as an escaped slave and orphan? Doubtless, her two years among the outlaws had been harmful. But how much so? There was no way to know without having known her before it happened. Eodwine shrugged and came out of the shadows. He walked by the wet floor and followed the pair, some way behind now, toward the kitchen, to break his fast.

[Firefoot]

Léof was about halfway through his breakfast, enjoying the eggs and freshly baked bread and chatting lightly with Kara and Ginna. He knew neither of them particularly well, seeing as he was typically occupied on the opposite side of the Hall as either of them, although he was decidedly more comfortable with Kara, for the simple expediency that she was closer to both his age and background. He usually wasn’t quite sure what to make of Ginna, nobleman’s daughter that she was, and of quite a marriageable age. Léof figured that his own father would want to be rid of his sister long before then. He tried to stay away from that thought, and the guilty realization that he had thought less and less of his sister’s plight in the last weeks. It was easy to forget, with this new life of his going on all around him.

Just then, Rowenna trooped in with a very guilty-looking Javan trailing behind. There was a moment of shocked silence in the kitchen before Kara and Ginna were bustling after towels and Léof found enough of a voice to exclaim, “What happened? What did you do?” This last was aimed primarily at Javan in response to his expression, and Léof almost immediately regretted it; he wasn’t trying to cast accusations about; it had probably been a simple accident.

[Folwren]

Javan sent Léof a pitiful, rather pleading look. “I kicked the bucket of water and it spilled all over the place,” he said. “And then-” He stopped himself abruptly and blushed a deeper, more thorough shade of red. He nearly told them he had used Rowenna’s skirt to mop it up. Instead, he ducked his head to avoid any more of their looks, snatched two towels out of Ginna’s hands and turned to escape. He dodged out the kitchen door, preparing to launch himself into an immediate run, but his forward momentum was very suddenly stopped as he came into contact with the large and very solid body of lord Eodwine himself.

Javan stumbled back, a look of absolute horror rising to his face when he saw who it was he had nearly bowled over. “Lord Eodwine!” he gasped, but then he stopped. He turned his head sharply to look at Rowenna who was watching him. He swallowed. What had he said less than five minutes ago? ‘I’m not afraid of anyone...not even lord Eodwine.’

“I’m sorry,” he muttered without looking the eorl in the face and then he began to move forward, to pass him and to get out into safety.