Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She had even missed the rain.

Not that the Scottish borders were renowned for their low rainfall. But if someone had told Éowyn, three years ago, how much she would come to miss Manchester, she would have laughed at them.

She had to admit, though, that she hadn’t missed the rain so much she was prepared to walk. Instead, she treated herself to the bus for the two miles from her flat to college. She managed to bag a window seat, and sat, gig bag on her lap, staring out the window. Rusholme’s “curry mile” passed her by, a stream of vibrant shops: some windows filled with saris and fabrics creating a riot of colour; jewellery shops glittering with rich golds; cafes and restaurants that made her mouth water just at the thought; sweet shops that gave her a sugar rush simply by looking through the window.

Fourth year. Master’s year. She thumbed through her phone, checking her schedule.

Lessons, of course. Horn, and piano. Piano was a bit of a chore. That necessary evil. Theory. Musicology. Composition. In depth studies of chosen composers. Orchestration. And of course, the thing that made orchestration possible: the orchestra. Or more accurately, several orchestras – the main symphony orchestra, the repertoire sessions and (more fool her) the orchestra that accompanied the opera students. But then, she wanted to be a professional, and the more orchestral experience she got the better.

And all of it leading up to her final performance exam. She needed something technically really flashy and something that would really stretch her musicianship.

What would the new student intake be like? Every year since her own first year brought the same question.

Keen first years. Postgraduate students here to do one and two years master’s courses, having studied elsewhere.

And there was, of course, the annual influx of that curious phenomenon, the bright kids who’d gone to Cambridge to do something entirely different, spent their whole undergraduate degree playing in the university orchestras or singing, and now wanted to round that off with a proper music qualification. Annoyingly, they were almost without exception very good indeed. She expected she would know at least some of them from her teenage days in the National Youth Orchestra.

The NYO! She smiled. Normal kids had, she didn’t quite know, K-Pop or whatever as the background music to their teens. She had Mahler, Beethoven, Prokofiev. She felt almost nostalgic.

Nostalgic until she remembered her painful teenage crush. She’d been 14. And had developed an all-consuming and obviously doomed infatuation with the then leader, Aragorn Walker.

A bit of her had known even at the time that a 17 year old wasn’t going to look twice at the gangly, hopelessly clumsy, spotty 14 year old playing 7th horn in Mahler and twiddling her thumbs for most of the rest of the programme. She was still smitten. Hardly surprising: he was impossibly talented, not exactly good looking, but very, very attractive in an extremely masculine sort of way, and with a real air of command, even for a youth in his late teens. She’d pined for him for two summers in succession, until he went to university.

She’d seen him once, since then – he’d come back to watch their annual Proms gig. With his arm casually around the waist of the most incredibly beautiful woman Éowyn had ever seen. Éowyn had felt a visceral stab of sickness on seeing the two of them together, then thrown herself at the principal cello at the after concert party. Even though she had tried her best to focus on the fact that she’d finally made it to section principal, Aragorn’s mere presence did take the icing off the gingerbread a bit.

What was that quote her Granny used to come up with? “The best way to get over a man is to get under another.” Not that she actually had (well, not that summer, anyway). She was still at the age where a passionate snog and a hand on her breast over the top of her jumper seemed like the height of passion. She knew (thank you, internet and the capacity for cyber-stalking it provided) that Aragorn had gone on to Cambridge to read law, had led the university orchestra there (the first orchestra – they had two!), then gone on to a pupillage in a swanky chambers in London. By all accounts he was as brilliant at law as he had been – possibly still was – at the violin.

Her eyes unfocused from the far distance, she watched the raindrops trickling down the bus window. She supposed she’d never entirely got over him. But then again, why would she? An early adolescent crush, morphing into the myth of “the one who got away” (or, more accurately, “the one who never was”). A tiny safe corner for what little fragment of sex drive she still had left, after what had happened since. She dug her fingernails into her palms until a little spark of pain forced her into the present. With a conscious effort, she made herself look beyond the raindrops to the street scene beyond.

The brightly lit, colourful shops gave way to the manicured green Victorian perfection of Whitworth park, replaced in turn by the Gothic magnificence of the original university buildings. Éowyn got to her feet and made her way down the crowded aisle of the bus as it neared her stop, trying not to bump too many people with her horn. She stepped down onto the pavement, then strode out, coat pulled tight against the rain. Only 50 yards or so till she got to the entrance of the college, but she still felt like a drowned rat when she got there.

She stopped just inside the door and tried to push her wet hair back from her face.

“Éowyn!” The strong Glaswegian accent came from somewhere just up the broad flight of stairs to the concert halls. She turned. There was Merry, trumpet case in hand, floppy dark curls and broad grin unchanged from last time she’d seen him before the summer vacation.

They met half way across the foyer, and Merry wrapped her in a hug.

“It’s so good to see you.” Éowyn felt her shoulders relax, a tension she hadn’t even been aware of ebbing from her body.

“I’d ask how your summer was, but I know it was shit.” Merry held her hands in both of his, looking at her anxiously.

“Later. Down the pub or something. If I try to talk about it now, I’ll cry.” Éowyn tilted her chin, a small but determined gesture. Merry released her hands, then stepped back.

“This,” he said, “Is my cousin Pippin.”

She turned to see a man – scarcely more than a boy, really – holding a trombone case. He gave a broad, uncomplicated grin.

“Learned my stuff in the brass band world. Here for the session orchestra.”

Éowyn was surprised – she’d been expecting another Glaswegian. But Pippin’s accent was a broad Yorkshire accent.

“So, pub this evening?” Merry asked.

“Definitely. Last thing I’ve got on today is a repertoire session.”

“Meet you here at 6.00?”

“Sounds good. Anyway, gotta rush. Papers to sign, admin to do, course timetables to pick up.” She blew Merry a theatrical kiss, waved to his cousin and headed off towards the administrative offices.

Rossini: Overture to the Barber of Seville, Qatar Phil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdGtyQnCMtI

NB: AO3 for various (pretty understandable) reasons won’t let one do clickable links any more, so you’ll have to copy-and-paste.

The title for this is taken from John Donne’s The Triple Fool, which can be summarised thus: I was stupid enough to fall in love, then stupid all over again by writing “whining poetry” about it (mistakenly thinking I could use the poetry to tidy away all my emotions), then stupid a third time over because someone came along and set my poem to music, letting all the emotions out again.

Which I guess is what this fic is all about!

As I said in the outline, I’ve been toying with this since I read ElrondsScribe’s In Theory and Practise. I’ve had little fragments here and there but it really came together in my head a couple of weekends ago when I spent a whole weekend playing for a local opera group (two concerts, associated rehearsals, by Monday I couldn’t feel my lips at all!) Anyway, this was the opener for the programme – look out for the B major arpeggios in the slow opening, and of course the moment the horn gets the tune! I spent a lot of time in the weeks running up to this playing along to this recording (which has the advantage for an amateur of not taking the allegro stupidly fast). I have very forgiving neighbours.

I’m not sure what the update schedule will be – I’ll aim for weekly, but we’ll see. I have a whole chapter list and plot synopsis roughed out, and about 15,000 words so far, so it shouldn’t die the death on me part way through because I know where I’m going with it.

Advert: I will of course also be writing my usual Christmas fic, and this year it also has an opera-based theme: Rossini’s Cenerentola.

Chapter Text

The admin had taken quite a chunk out of the morning, then she’d spent an hour catching up with her horn teacher, Erkenbrand Hartmann. He felt like – indeed was – an old friend. He’d moved to the RNCM after over 30 years playing with the Vienna Phil. The time had come, he said, to turn from performing to teaching; no horn player stayed on top of their game for ever. In his opinion, the lip muscles just wouldn’t take that level of punishment indefinitely; the psyche wouldn’t take that level of stress either. Better to quit while you were on top of your game.

So now he taught, and Éowyn was lucky enough to be one of his students. As well as the three years she already had under her belt at the RNCM, prior to that she’d come down to Manchester on the train once a month for a lesson with him for her final two years at school, the two years that overlapped with her being principal horn with the NYO.

It had been great to catch up. They’d been through the list of pieces that would need the intensive work: Bozza’s En Forêt which she was working up as a virtuoso audition piece for when she got round to job interviews; Strauss’ second concerto, which she’d be playing in performance towards the end of term; and the almost-solo horn part in Shostakovich’s second cello concerto which she was playing in performance with the college orchestra in a couple of weeks time.

After that, she’d closeted herself away in a practice room and fitted in an hour’s work on her own. A preliminary look at the Bozza – bloody hell, it was hard.

Now she was in the last session of the afternoon – the twice-weekly repertoire session. The British music scene was renowned for the sparsity of its rehearsal time. Players were expected to know the repertoire inside out, and (on the occasions where they were caught out) be able to sight-read just about anything note-perfect, on demand. The college aimed to make sure its students went into this cut-throat professional world well prepared. (The rest of Europe thought the British were mad to do things this way, but then, this was hardly an unusual state of affairs: they thought – probably with considerable justification – that the British were mad in most respects.)

Éowyn took her place – back row, stage left, just to the side of the woodwind. She worked systematically through her warm-up – scales, arpeggios, sevenths, legato gradually working up to a few lip trills. She knew she was doing it partly to mask nerves. It was the first repertoire session of the term, and the instructors came with quite a reputation. Most of the sessions would be taken by Prof. Galadriel Noldor. Noldor wasn’t just faculty; she was also assistant conductor with the Hallé.

She looked over at the rest of the orchestra. Quite a few familiar faces, some new ones. A few gaps – obviously some of the students were favouring the “fashionably late” approach. They’d get their arses kicked if Noldor got there before them. She looked at the music in front of her. Top of the heap was Scheherazade. She glanced over at the first violins. One of the conspicuously empty chairs was the leader’s. Trouble ahead, she thought, not sure if she wanted drama this early in the term or whether it would be a good story to tell Merry down the pub later.
-
Just before the hour, three latecomers sauntered in – Legolas, who usually played principal flute, not a blond hair out of place, Gimli, the first bassoon, a rumpled mess of ginger hair and beard, and… Oh god, it couldn’t be.

The newcomer, tall, dark-haired, a bit of stubble. Aragorn bloody Walker, clearly in the intake of post-grad diploma students, still as gorgeous as ever. Equally clearly no longer in the Inner Temple. One of those annoying Cambridge grads who’d decided he couldn’t stay away from music. Damn, damn, damn. Why him? Why now? Why couldn’t he just sod off?

Before she could really process this information, Galadriel Noldor swept into the room, sleek and blonde and perfectly turned out, her leather satchel with her scores brushing against a hip clad in exquisite pale tan trousers, complemented by a pale blue cashmere sweater that matched her eyes. She popped the satchel onto one of the front-row audience seats, pulled out the first score and the case containing her batons, and took to the stage.

“Good afternoon, everyone. We’ve got a busy few hours ahead of us, but we’re starting big and romantic with lots of tunes – we’ll save the difficult stuff for later in the term. This is more in the way of a get-to-know-each-other session.”

She picked up her baton.

Éowyn loved this opening: the big, fat chords, the brass down at the bottom of its register. Then the poignant woodwind chords. But within moments, Noldor had stopped them.

“Horrible. Can we tune again?”

Another go. This time they got as far as Aragorn’s opening solo.

“Okay, Mr. Walker. Lovely. But too loud. I need intensity and projection – you are a soloist here, not a member of the string section – but I want quiet intensity and projection.”

She turned to the rest of the orchestra.

“Which means the rest of you really have to bring the volume down. Okay? Moving on, if there’s one theme we’re going to come back to over and over again this term, it’s adapting your tone and soundscape to the piece you’re playing. Rimsky Korsakov does not sound like Brahms does not sound like Shostakovich does not sound like Mahler does not sound like Britten. The best orchestras adapt to what they’re playing. Obviously they specialise, and so do conductors – for instance, go and listen to how Marin Alsop tackles Sibelius and Shostakovich – that’s the perfect sound for those composers in my opinion. Tchaikovsky I’d want Petrenko and the RPO.”

Éowyn noted that Noldor didn’t mention what she was famous for – conjuring a rich sound for Brahms which still let the individual parts speak out. She still remembered an incredible performance of the second she’d gone to last year, with Noldor conducting. The way the second violin figure at the end appeared out of nowhere from beneath the trombones, then vanished again had been a magical effect, one Éowyn didn’t remember from any recordings she’d listened to, or even from when she’d played it. The fact that Noldor hadn’t bigged herself up appealed to Éowyn; she liked people who could set their own ego on one side.

Noldor had finished her mini-lecture.

“Okay, once more from the top. No stops unless it’s a complete car crash.”

This time they ran the piece without a break. The lilting string melody soared and wheeled like a graceful sea bird carving the wind above waves, building in volume until the brass joined in, then dropping back down for the woodwind’s motif, before Éowyn hit the handful of piercing notes which cut through the rest of the orchestra, giving a counterpoint to the clarinet’s melody.

Then Aragorn filled in with the violin solo, and Éowyn was so transported by the beauty of the sound she almost missed her next entry.

The orchestra swelled once more, then dropped back, this time for a duet between Legolas on flute and the principal cello, Beregond, before the cello was replaced once more by Aragorn’s intricate swirls of colour on the violin. Finally the movement wound its way to its end, with arpeggios from the cello overlaid by chords from the wind.

Then Éowyn listened transfixed as Aragorn played the cadenza between movements – the voice of Scheherazade, soothing the rage of the king, transfixing him with tales of exotic adventure, to escape her own execution and to earn herself another night of story-telling. The rest of the orchestra began to take up the dance-like tune, an instrument at a time in the wind. Gimli picked up the dance-like tune with a jewel-like delicacy at odds (Éowyn felt) with both instrument and the player’s personality. The tune passed through the whole string section, then on to the solo cello once more, with Éowyn echoing his figure.

On through the brass fanfares of the next movement and scampering figures in the woodwind and strings, with horns and trumpets playing flourishes over the top. The scampering became a heavier tread, moving into a march-like theme, with drums and cymbals, before Gimli got to return to the plangent solo from earlier in the movement before the music morphed back into a seamless reprise of the earlier dance-like tune.

And out of nowhere, a memory of Éowyn’s childhood came to her, dancing to this very tune, round and round the sitting room in the farmhouse with her mum. She must have been about 5 or 6. Another of granny Morwen’s records. Her mum had loved this piece so much.

As the flute and harp played the lament, Éowyn readied herself – the first horn entry was fine, but its repetition a few bars later was stopped.

Focus, attack, get it right first time, because there is no second time on stage. She rammed her hand into the bell. Not only was it stopped, it was stopped and marked piano. The worst possible combination. She hit it bang on, each note sounding mysteriously muffled and rasping, but perfectly in tune.

The music moved onto another lilting, dance-like movement, and Éowyn allowed herself space to breathe – there was quite a long rest before her next section. As the strings swayed in a gentle 6/8 rhythm, Éowyn did as she so often did in rests, let her fingers drift idly over the swirling patterns etched into the valve caps. It was such an ingrained habit, she rarely thought about why these days.

The final movement began with its sequence of virtuoso violin cadenzas and double stopping, the beauty of Aragorn’s playing hitting her already emotional state like a ton of bricks. She pulled herself together and focussed on her playing, attacking the rapid notes in the brass entry. The driving rhythms of the final movement enabled her to hold it together.

Finally the frantic allegro softened into a final reprise of the lilting tune, then Aragorn and the harpist worked through their final cadenza, the orchestra softly playing beneath them until the woodwind played out the repetition of the opening bell-like chords as Aragorn played the final rising arpeggios above them, soaring towards the heavens, the notes carrying Éowyn with them, to a place she didn’t want to be, to a place uncomfortably like the feelings of her 14 year old self.

Noldor held her hands motionless for what felt like an eternity, before allowing them to bring their instruments down. Then her voice broke the spell, and Éowyn breathed once more.

“Thank you, everyone. Excellent work, Aragorn. That was actually a surprisingly good run through for a first session of the term. Now we’re going to take it to bits, starting from the last movement and working back. First up, brass section. Yes, it’s the double and triple tonguing. I want that really accurate and together. Every note in every part has to be spot on and together with everyone else – not just within your own section, but across the whole of the brass. Trumpets first at letter Q, then horns at R.”

Éowyn took another deep breath. Technique. Focus on technique. Block out emotions. She could let go of the emotional overload of the last forty minutes if only she had a sufficiently difficult technical problem to worry about.

An hour or so later, Éowyn tucked her horn back in its case. She felt both physically knackered and mentally drained. Mercifully a distraction presented itself as Merry headed over from the opposite side of the stage, trumpet case in hand. Together they grabbed bags and coats, then made their way through the doors and down the sweeping staircase from the main auditorium.

“Pippin’s gone on ahead with Sam and his friend from the Uni,” Merry announced. “We’re meeting them in the Taphouse. The good news is it’s stopped raining.”

“Thank fuck for that.”

They set out into the grey autumn light and headed towards the city centre.

Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade, University of Music Franz Liszt, Nicolas Pasquet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0SGp_jdYL8

Chapter Text

Éowyn suspected Merry had engineered for them to be alone together by choosing the Taphouse rather than the closer Grosvenor. On the surface robustly cheerful, he had hidden depths, and sometimes surprised her with his ability to intuit what she was thinking.

But of course, the long walk probably meant he was expecting them to have The Conversation. She didn’t really want to talk about it. Especially not after the unexpected emotional overload of the last few hours. On the other hand, Merry had been so supportive, such a good friend, always there for a text exchange or phone call when things got unbearable, she felt she owed him at least some sort of account. So, reluctantly, painfully, they talked on the walk to the pub, deliberately going round three sides of a square round the backstreets towards UMIST, just to get a bit of privacy and to minimise the risk of bumping into anyone they knew.

“I still can’t believe he got off.”

“You know what defence lawyers are like.” And juries, she thought, but didn’t say out loud.

“But…”

“He argued that I’d wanted it, that I’d chased him. And they used the fact that I’d not brought it up earlier, in fact I’d socialised with him at family stuff, after the…”

“But that was because your uncle Theo was dying and you didn’t want to upset him. And… fuck it! You were 17. He was in his thirties.”

“Over the age of consent. The defence barrister painted me as some sort of a teen Mata Hari, jail bait, you name it.”

“Fuck…”

“Yeah. Past sexual history is not admissible in court any more… except when it it. And apparently me going off the rails for a couple of years is. Never mind the fact that me going off the rails happened after… I mean, before him I hadn’t. Not with anyone. After, I just went a bit nuts. Like I had to prove that I was choosing what I wanted to do with me.”

She paused, swallowed hard, took a deep breath. She hadn’t told this to anyone. Merry was probably the only person she trusted to tell this to.

“But the barrister. It was all ‘She’s a slag, look at how many blokes, half the Hawick rugby team by the sound of it…’ Which, incidentally, is an exaggeration.” Éowyn wielded black humour like a shield – or a mace. “It was probably more like a quarter. Only the backs. A girl’s gotta have standards.” She tried, and failed, to produce a light-hearted smile.

“Fuck. The barrister was a fucking bawbag. And the judge was a bawbag too, for allowing it.”

Éowyn stopped mid-stride and looked at the ground for a moment. “Like I say, I think I went a bit wild for a while because I wanted to show myself my body was mine. If that makes any sense.”

Merry reached out and patted her arm. “Aye. I think I can see that.”

“But now that’s been taken from me and used against me.”

Merry stopped and gave her a brief hug. “Not your fault. The system’s shite.”

“Plus it took me three years to summon up the courage to report and it’s taken another two for it actually to reach court. The barrister had great fun with the whole ‘Well, we completely understand if you can’t remember precise details after all this time, or indeed any details, or tell the difference between accurate recollections and fantasy.’”

“What? Fucking gobshite!”

“Oh yes. Apparently counselling for PTSD probably planted all sorts of ‘false memories.’ If I’d wanted justice, I should have stayed suicidal.”

Merry was silent for quite a while. Éowyn knew him well enough to know he was probably torn between fury and not wanting to let that fury show because he wanted to take his lead from her. Eventually he spoke.

“So… How are you coping?”

“Not brilliantly. Flashbacks. Insomnia. Kind of unpredictable bursting into tears. And also bursts of red-hot anger, usually directed at people who really don’t deserve me to be angry at them. I’m trying to control that last one. Music is the only thing keeping me sane.”

“And what’s happened to the worm?”

“Well unfortunately he hasn’t stepped under a bus. But he has at least moved a long way away. He’s gone to work for White Wizard Foods – you know, the big agribusiness company. Based in the east of England, so a long way from here, and an even longer way from the borders. They’re ones trying to push for genetic modification and washing poultry in bleach and irradiating meat past its sell-by date so it doesn’t smell off, and all that kind of stuff. It’ll be just his thing. He’ll probably end up as CEO.”

“Maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll fall into a vat of bleach or be eaten by a Frankenturkey. Or choke on a Frankengrape.”

“Can but hope.”

“Rebellions are built on hope…” Merry was a big Star Wars fan.

“Talking of which… Well, we weren’t, but we should be. Lets change the subject. Is it just me or is Poe Dameron the most annoying character in the franchise?”

“You’ve forgotten Jar Jar Binks,” said Merry. He was secretly relieved to be able to go along with Éowyn’s desperate change of subject.

“No, no, Dameron takes the prize. He’s a whiny mansplainy git who gets a whole task force shot to bits because He. Will. Not. Listen. To. A. Woman. In. A. Position. Of. Authority.”

Merry started to laugh, then started to argue back. By the time they’d covered Dameron’s annoying nature, the shortcomings of the scriptwriters, the gaping plot holes and non-sequiturs, the fact that John Boyega’s character had been given the same character arc – coward to reluctant hero – three fucking times in a row (“Not surprising he felt he’d been underused as an actor”) the pub hove into sight.

Éowyn realised the digression into Star Wars had put a bit of distance between her and… well… it. She felt she could now cope with an evening of socialising, or at least pretend to cope.

“Come on, first pint’s on me.”

Summary:
Éowyn tried to take Grima to court, but unsurprisingly (because the British justice system is catastrophically bad at prosecuting rapists) he was found not guilty, she is a mess and he’s buggered off free to start a new life.

NB content warning also applies to the aria.

Next chapter very soon to try to cheer everyone up.

Britten: “Give him this orchid” (from the Rape of Lucretia), Kitty Whately
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bchB26XPmi0

Complete performance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz_2eCydvXM

Chapter Text

Merry brought another three pints to the table, carefully balanced between outspread fingers, and set them down.

Éowyn took a long pull on hers.

“Steady,” said Sam. “You really don’t want to try to match these two drink for drink. It will go horribly wrong for you.”

Sam was a friend of Pippin’s, also doing the session work course. Guitar and bass guitar. He sat beside his friend Frodo, an earnest-looking young man studying English literature at the University. They’d been friends since childhood.

Pippin turned out to have no off switch. He talked. And talked. And talked. And (thanks to his strong Yorkshire accent), Éowyn only caught about one word in three. She just nodded every so often. She was still reeling from the conversation with Merry. Not to mention that this had come on top of the discovery that Aragorn Walker was taking the postgrad performance course. And the realisation that she still fancied the arse off him.

Now Éowyn was sitting there, a couple of pints into the evening and mulling over the fact that it was a school night so she couldn’t get wasted. She was quite tempted to anyway, but knew that in her current state she was as likely to get maudlin and tearful as she was to get brash and forgetful. She was really quite glad of Pippin’s incessant prattling. It meant she didn’t have to make conversation and didn’t have to pretend she was okay. Though she could see Frodo looking at her, and had a strong sense that he could tell how upset she was.

“So how come you’re slumming it with us musicians?” she asked.

Frodo smiled. “Sam and I grew up together.”

“His uncle owned the big house. My dad was the head gardener,” said Sam, cheerfully.

“We were inseparable as kids.”

“Then you got sent away to boarding school, but we still hung out in the holidays.”

“You make it sound like I was given a prison sentence,” said Frodo, taking a modest mouthful of his beer. “It wasn’t as bad as all that. Just that Uncle Bilbo – he brought me up – wanted me to have the best.”

Éowyn felt a chill of recognition run down her spine. “You were brought up by your uncle? So was I.”

Frodo looked thoughtful. “My parents died in a boating accident when I was young.”

“My dad was in the army – died in Iraq. My mum died of breast cancer.” Without thinking, her hand strayed to the horn case beside her, and she touched it for comfort.

Frodo nodded. “I never really knew my parents. But my uncle is lovely.”

“I can’t imagine boarding school,” said Pippin. “I went to the local comp. Was it the way you hear about, all dodgy school teachers flicking towels at you in the showers?”

Éowyn winced. Pippin clearly didn’t come with any sort of filter between brain and mouth.

Frodo was clearly used to this sort of thing though.

“The school thing – it was just what people of my uncle’s generation thought was best. And it was okay. Not the horror stories you hear in the press. The masters were decent. I got on with the other boys… All a bit ‘playing fields of England,’ but okay despite that.”

“God, what was that dreadful poem your uncle taught us?” Sam laughed, then tried to put on a posh voice. “There’s a breathless hush in the close tonight.”

“Ten to make and the match to win/ A bumping pitch and a blinding light/ An hour to play and the last man in,” Frodo declaimed, then looked at Sam and grinned.

“But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks! Play up, play up and play the game,” the two chorused in unison. Then collapsed into laughter. It was obviously a long standing joke between them.

“Honestly, sometime it could be like being teleported back to Edwardian times,” Frodo said.

“My comp you spent your time trying to avoid having your dinner money nicked or your head flushed down the toilet at break time. Brass band was my escape from all that crap. Once you were in the band room, the older blokes kept the young ones in line – no-one misbehaved or they knew they’d be out on their arses.”

“My school was okay,” Éowyn said, “But I knew early on that music was going to be my life, so I was going through the motions a bit with school work, just itching to get home to practice.”

“How much practice does it take?” Frodo asked.

“For the horn, I’d say 4 hours playing a day. Obviously there’s a balance between practice, performance and rehearsals – some days most of that 4 hours will be practice, other days not a lot at all.”

“Violinists have it worst,” said Merry. “They’re typically doing 6, 8 hours a day. Pianists too.”

“Mind you,” said Éowyn, “Most of us orchestral musicians have to do piano as well. Just in case – well actually, probably because it’s the likeliest job – we end up teaching for a living. You have to be able to accompany your pupils.”
“Session musicians too,” said Sam. “It’s the easiest instrument to work on composition or arrangement on. Though tech is changing that – the instrumentation packages on laptops these days allow you to listen to your score.”

Frodo grinned. “Thinking of teaching, I was probably the pupil piano teachers dread, plodding but without talent. Learned piano, dutifully working through the grades, getting low marks. Uncle Bilbo finally let me give up when I only just scaped through grade VI. So I can see teaching might not be your dream job. What is?”

“First horn with a top orchestra,” Éowyn said, without hesitation. “Not that it’s likely to happen?”

“Why not?” asked Merry. He turned to Frodo. “She’s selling herself short. She’s the star brass player in our year.”

Éowyn hid her embarrassment behind another mouthful of beer. “Merry’s exaggerating. He’s a fantastic trumpeter. Pretty much everyone who gets this far is. There just aren’t enough jobs to go round. But that’s enough about us.” She grinned. “At the risk of sounding like this is some sort of speed-dating session, what’s your favourite bit of history.”

“The English Civil War,” said Frodo.

“Oh, don’t get him started,” said Sam. “He’ll go on for hours about ‘the Divine Right’ and ‘Cromwell – dictator or constitutional genius.’”

“Not something we did much of in my Scottish school.”

Frodo laughed. “That’s ironic, since arguably the first couple of decades of the English civil war took the form of power struggles in Scotland, which eventually spilled south into English politics.”

“See, told you,” said Sam.

“Your turn, Sam. So, gardening to guitars? How did that happen?” Éowyn asked.

“I learned at school, then me and my mates started a band, then I was playing more and more, then I got kind of fascinated by arranging music. I’d love to go into film music eventually.”

“Talking of which – have you seen Dunkirk?” Merry said. “What did you think of the music.”

“Brilliant. Hans Zimmer is a genius.”

“It gave me goosebumps,” said Éowyn. “Okay, question for you, Mr. Film-Score-Buff. How far into the sound track did you get before you worked out what those almost subsonic notes, sampled really, really slowly, were.”

“God, that effect was so clever,” said Merry.

Frodo looked puzzled.

“Zimmer – though I think it might have been one of his co-writer’s ideas – took Elgar’s Nimrod and slowed it right down and embedded it in the rest of the script. About one note every fourth bar to start with. So you start with just a nagging sense of familiarity: ‘I’ve heard these chord progressions somewhere but I can’t place them.’ Then gradually the notes get more frequent, then finally you work out what it is, maybe about half way through,” Sam explained.

“It’s so eerie,” said Éowyn. “You’ve got these really deep notes, which throw you off kilter anyway, and they’re sort of recognisable and not, and you’re really grasping for an anchor.”

“It’s a great film all round,” said Sam. “God, it’s so scary to think those lads on the beaches were our age.”

“I can’t imagine being that insanely brave,” Merry said.

“Sometimes, though,” said Frodo, “People just end up doing insanely brave things because they act on instinct in the moment.”

“Yeah, what was that story you told me about the cadet corps at your school? The guy about to drown?” Sam asked.

“We were doing outward bound type stuff at a place called Osgiliath, not far from Oswestry. There was this rickety bridge across the river, and it gave way as one of the boys was crossing it. He ended up the water, being swept away. And we knew he was the weakest swimmer in the group. And another lad – couple of years older than us – just jumped straight in, swept down the rapids with the boy who’d fallen in. He managed to swim over to him, kept him afloat as they were carried off, clattered against all the rocks on the way, until eventually they got to the slacker water downstream of the rapids. They got hauled out, the lad who couldn’t swim coughing his guts up. Then the other boy tried to stand up and collapsed. Turned out he’d broken a leg being tossed against the boulders. Bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“He came to visit the summer after, didn’t he? At Bag End,” Sam said

“Yes. His leg had been patched up by then – multiple surgeries – but apparently things were awkward at home. His dad was part of a military family going back generations. Big brother was in the army, little brother was meant to join up too. But they won’t take you with a leg held together with steel pins. The dad threatened to sue the school at one point. Really bad atmosphere. Our housemaster at school suggested he come to us to recuperate. He and my uncle got on like a house on fire. Hours discussing history, or Greek and Latin poetry. Plus he spent hours playing the piano, which my uncle loved listening too.”

“He wasn’t up himself, either,” said Sam. “I thought he would be – in fact first time I met him I had a real go at him. Told him he was a musical snob. So he played Take Five.”

“Straight? The way classical musicians always do?” Pippin asked.

“No, he had a real feel for jazz. Me ‘n’ Rosie and him spent the summer jamming.”

“Rosie’s Sam’s girlfriend. She’s a sax player.” Frodo filled in the information.

“Doesn’t want to go to music college though, says she’s happy just to have it as a hobby. She’s a chef. Says one of us has to be in gainful employment,” Sam laughed.

“Ain’t that the truth?” Merry said in agreement. “It’s not like any of us are going to get rich doing this. Like Éowyn said earlier, the odds on getting any sort of performing job are long. You do realise most of us are going to end up as teachers?”

“I’m not so different,” said Frodo. “I’ll probably end up teaching history. Corduroy jacket and leather elbow patches and all. I’m already trawling the second-hand shops looking for the kit.”

Butterworth: A Shropshire Lad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l39GDoyqWAw

Butterworth died on the Somme (also where Tolkien’s three closest boyhood friends died – Tolkien was the only one of their group to survive). Picked partly because it’s one of the pieces I’m playing this weekend (violin rather than horn this time round). Let me know if you’re in the West Country and at a loose end this Saturday night!

Brubeck: Take Five
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmDDOFXSgAs
I'm currently using the aforementioned music software - in my case, MuseScore, because I'm too tight to spring for Sibelius - to try and do a brass arrangement of Take Five.

The fragment of poetry is Newbolt's Vitai Lampada - one of the really annoying things about my odd, scatter-brain mind is that I'm incredibly good at memorising bad poetry and really bad at memorising good poetry. It's the bane of my life.

Chapter Text

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbyut72TILQ

Éowyn was relieved she’d been sensible and not had that third pint. Her head thanked her, her wallet even more so.

She tapped on the door of the teaching room. The name plate said E. Marshall.

“Come in,” said a deep bass voice. To her surprise, it was a familiar accent – Scottish borders, like her own. She opened the door.

Like most of the teaching rooms, it boasted a piano for accompaniment, a couple of stands, chairs, and a desk. A natural horn sat on the desk. In one of the chairs sat a tall, rangy man, middle aged, in denim with hair in a blond pony-tail: a kind of left over from the 70s. She wouldn’t be surprised if, when he stood up, the jeans were revealed to have bell-bottoms. In his left hand he held a score, in the right a pencil with which he was annotating passages. He set it to one side and gave her a broad smile, eyes crinkling. To her relief she immediately felt comfortable with him.

“Miss Earl, take a seat and tell me about yourself.”

“Hi, I’m Éowyn, umm. The biography. Umm, switched from cello to horn at 11, ex NYO, Glasgow youth orchestra, fluffed the brass group stages of Young Musician, came here at 18, now in my fourth year.”

“You’d better call me Elfhelm. Nice to hear a voice from home. Pro tip – don’t mention your failures on your CV. Not good marketing. Besides, crashing and burning in Young Musician as a kid doesn’t tell me anything about what you’ll be like as an adult player. So, a decade of playing – why natural horn, why now?”

“Something my modern horn teacher said – that you can’t really properly understand what composers before, I dunno, Brahms maybe, want out of the horn if you don’t know enough about its history. Even if you’re not intending to be a specialist, you should at least try to play a natural horn and get reasonably proficient at it.”

Elfhelm sighed. “Just my luck. Another good horn player passing through as a tourist. It’s like you guys come in here in disguise, hide among the baroque musicians for a while, then go back to ‘normal life’.” He rolled his eyes, but then gave a grin. “But your teacher is right, everyone should learn to play a natural horn too. What have you got there?”

“It’s on loan from the college – a Paxman Studenti.”

“Not professional quality, but it’ll do the job nicely for your purposes. What have you tried so far?”

“I’ve had it over the summer and I’ve had a go at the Telemann G major. And tried the Haydn D major.”

Elfhelm nodded. “The Haydn was quite an ambitious choice. But I’m going to get you to start with something else – I like to thrown my students off balance. The Telemann double concerto. Playing with other people gives me an immediate feel for your musicianship in a way nothing else does. You can play first, I’ll play second. You should be able to play all of this without hand stopping at all. Do a few arpeggios to warm up first – we’ll talk about the best way of getting comfortable with the instrument – obviously the full Farkas-style warm-up for a modern horn isn’t appropriate here, but you do want to be comfortable with the high notes, slurs and particularly lip-trills.”

They went through a few exercises, with Elfhelm stopping at intervals to offer pointers. Then he handed her the first horn part of the Telemann.

He lifted his horn to his lips and murmured “Three-and-four-and” round the mouthpiece. They both launched into the largo.

Nearly an hour later, Éowyn headed down the stairs to the cafe, brain feeling overloaded and slightly fried. The good news was she liked Elfhelm, felt she could work with him. The bad news was this stuff was further from her normal playing than she’d anticipated.

In the queue she found herself behind Pippin and Merry. “Do you two live here? Or just spend 90% of your time here?”

“Got to keep the blood sugar levels up,” Pippin said. “Surely every brass player knows that.”

“How did your first natural horn session go?” Merry asked.

“Okay, I think. I’ve got a period instrument orchestra session the day after tomorrow. That will be where it all starts to come together I hope.”

“Oh God,” said Merry. “Isn’t that the course Wykeham King takes? When he’s not swanning around London, Paris and Milan, of course…”

Éowyn laughed. “You make him sound like a fashion designer.”

Merry struck an attitude. “Darling, your top C is just shocking. It clashes horribly with my B flat. And it’s so last season.”

“Who is this guy?” asked Pippin. “Remember, I’m just a pleb from down t’ pit.”

“Ay oop, is that a black pudding in your case, or are you pleased to see me?” said Merry, in a parody Yorkshire accent rendered even more unconvincing by his own native Glaswegian.

Pippin rolled his eyes, and punched Merry in the upper arm.

“Ouch. Seriously, though, you’re one of the best trombonists I know. But I guess you play different stuff. Wykeham King founded one of the foremost baroque orchestras in Europe, what, about 30 years ago? Anyway, he transformed the way people think about period instruments. But he’s also – if his reputation is anything to go by – an absolutely prize shit. I mean, accusations of workplace bullying and threats of industrial tribunals settled out of court level of weapons-grade radioactive prize shit.”

Pippin let out a long whistle. “And you’re taking this guy’s course, Éowyn? Are you completely mad?”

“Probably,” said Éowyn. “But if I can survive it, it will look fantastic on my CV.”

“Rather you than me,” said Merry.

“Anyway, at least the first session of the course is with Prof. Noldor – she’s filling in for him while he’s elsewhere.”

Telemann, concerto for 2 horns, Paul Avril, Loren Tayerle, Ars Lyrica Houston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbyut72TILQ

Chapter Text

This was the moment of truth, then.

Her first public foray with the hand horn. Éowyn selected the E flat crook from her bag and slotted it in place, then tried a few exploratory arpeggios. Elfhelm was right, the warm up on a natural horn felt quite different. She added in a few scales, trying to smooth out the tone between the open and stopped notes.

“First time with the instrument?”

The young woman next to her smiled, a warm smile, brown eyes crinkling with an openess that made Éowyn relax, and held out a hand. “Disa Khazad.”

“Éowyn Earl. Yes. First time with this thing in an orchestra. I’ve been trying to get to grips with it over the summer.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get to grips with it really quickly. I saw you performing Mozart 2 at the end of last summer term – you’re damn good.”

Éowyn blushed and muttered thanks.

“Do you want to play first or second?” Disa asked.

“Second, I wouldn’t dream of bumping you out of your regular place.”

The rest of the orchestra were warming up too, but looking much more comfortable. Most of the string players interested in period instruments had already been playing them for a long time. Even the pair of oboists seemed to have a level of comfort beyond Éowyn’s. She hadn’t felt this out of her depth since her first orchestra rehearsal age 12. The complete disaster in her local youth orchestra where she hadn’t realised that quite often, the second horn did not have the tune. Or indeed anything even remotely resembling the tune. More likely some obscure bits in the outer darkness of harmonies her 12-year-old self hadn’t even known existed.

Prof. Noldor swept into the room.

“Morning, all. As announced in the course handout, you’re stuck with me this week. The specialist work begins next week, but at the moment Prof. King is on tour in Germany with L’Orchestre Ancien de Paris. Who are my soloists for today?”

The principal violin and viola each put up a hand.

“Valandil Faithful, professor.”

“I’m Isildur Elendilson,” added the violist.

“Okay, I think I’d prefer to have you standing at the front, if you would.”

The two soloists took their positions.

“So, we’ll run the first movement then I’ll offer some pointers. Quick show of hands – who’s been on baroque instruments for over three years?”

Most of the hands went up.

“And who’s relatively new to this?”

Éowyn’s hand went up.

“Ah yes, I remember you from the repertoire session last week. From Scheherazade to period instruments. Bit of a change of pace.”

Éowyn said nervously, “Yes, that might be an understatement. But my teacher said you can’t really understand what composers wanted out of your sound unless you understand the instruments they were actually writing for.”

“Well, that’s a pretty good reason. Let’s see how it goes. I’ll try to be gentle with you. Prof King, I should warn you, won’t be.”

Éowyn tried to push this piece of information to the back of her mind. Try as she might, though, her earlier conversation kept resurfacing. Wykeham King – sorry, Professor Sir Wykeham King, was notorious across the professional music circuit for his short temper, bordering on bullying. But his interpretations and recordings were sublime.

Noldor gave an upbeat, and they started on the opening allegro. Éowyn found herself able to work her way through with mostly open notes and the minimum of hand stopping. At the end of the movement, Noldor talked them through her thoughts.

“Second violas – we need a bit more. There’s a reason Mozart scored it this way with a doubled viola section – he wants you to be heard. Also, can we get the opening a bit more precise. Detaché bowing – we need a little bit of air between the opening chords. The period bows should help you with this – work with them, not against them. Absolutely precise on the dotted rhythms, please – not just starting the notes, but finishing them at the right time. Articulation is everything in this period. Isildur, Valandil, you can take a little bit more time on the cadenza. Relax into it.”

She looked over towards the horn section.

“Second horn, I get the impression you’re trying very hard to smooth out the stopped notes, get them to sound like the open notes…”

“Sorry, I am trying. It’s taking me a while to adjust.”

“Ah, no, I hadn’t finished,” Noldor said firmly. “Do you actually need to smooth them out? You have to ask yourself, is Mozart asking you to transcend the limits of the instrument he’s writing for, or is he trying to exploit the limits of the instrument he’s writing for?”

“You mean, does he want me to get rid of the shifts in tone, or is he using the shifts in tone as part of the musical effect?”

“Precisely. And not just Mozart. Why did Brahms continue to write horn parts for natural even though his players had access to valved horns? He actually asked his players to make sure they put in a couple of weeks practice on a natural horn before performing his symphonies. What does that tell you? Something to think about. Spend a bit of time on Anneke Scott’s YouTube channel. She doesn’t just play natural horns, she plays early valved horns, and always tries to match the instrument to the period. I think you’ll find her approach a revelation. And – I’m sure Elfhelm’s already told you this – borrow her book from the library.”

She turned the page on her score.

“Okay, slow movement. Now this is interesting – unlike the outer movements, the viola always ends the repetition. The violin gets the last word in the fast, sparkling movements. But Isildur, the viola gets the last word in the slow, emotional centre of the work. That final phrase before the cadenza – make it count.”

She raised her baton. This second run through went a great deal better. In particular, Elendil and Isildur seemed to have found a rapport with one another which made the dialogue at the heart of the music sing out.

The second half of the rehearsal was taken up with a Symphony by Boyce. Then Noldor took them through a rough outline of the rest of the course.

“As well as working with Professor King, some of you will also get the chance to work with some of the soloists from the opera course. I’ve got a list here of suggested groupings which I’ll email round later – quite often opera arias will have particular instruments acting as obbligato. Horns, oboes, solo violin, solo trumpet. So you’ll be expected to find your singer and work through stuff with them – with input from your respective tutors, of course.”

She ran through the papers on her stand a last time.

“One final thought before we go. Prof. King has said he’d like to get a feel for the sort of repertoire you’re interested in. So if you could email me suggestions of concerti, that sort of thing, and I’ll pass them onto him.”

Éowyn was surprised – that level of student input didn’t gel with what she’d been told about King. Maybe this course wasn’t going to be as horrendous as she’d feared.

Epic author’s note ahoy. Apologies. If in doubt scroll straight down to the comedy entry at the bottom.

Mozart – Sinfonia Concertante in E flat major, Sitkovetsky (violin), Ridout (viola), Manchester Camerata
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JAAQqVnpR8

I really wanted the version from the 2024 Proms, with Kang, Ridout and Ensemble Resonanz on original instruments (partly because it has natural horns, but mainly because it was a gloriously over-the-top, romanticised rendition, which, despite my fondness for period accuracy, I also have an enormous soft spot for), but all there is online is a 2 minute clip on facebook. Timothy Ridout is one of the best violists I’ve come across, and this Proms performance was quite reminiscent of the one I grew up with – my dad’s vinyl 1950s recording with Paul Doktor and Christa Richter-Steiner.

Re. playing Mozart “straight” versus romanticising him, I think you can make a case for either approach. My first ever violin teacher (played in the Hallé) said something that’s stuck with me for life: you can’t understand and play Mozart unless you listen to, know and understand his operas inside out. It’s in the operas that the interaction of intellect and emotion hit you full on – which is why I don’t think romanticising Mozart is necessarily a bad thing. I mean, listen to any of Cosi or Don Giovanni and try telling me this is a man
who doesn’t have passion and romance and drama and epic struggles between good and evil at the centre of his music!

And, the author’s note I know you’ve all being waiting for: your opportunity to nerd out over historical attitudes to the invention of the valved horn.
https://www.public.asu.edu/~jqerics/brahms-natural-horn.html
I will not be offended if this turns out to “fall still-born from the press”, in David Hume’s words.

Sorry, ElrondsScribe – Valandil is a violinist in this. Because I wanted Miriel to be a pianist so she could play Florence Price.

I’ve gone down a bit of a viola rabbit hole (like many violinists, I also play the viola, and have played it quite a lot in chamber music) and found this excellent article with video clips.
https://www.classical-music.com/features/artists/best-viola-players
Picking one out in particular – William Primrose plays a viola arrangement of Paganini Caprice no. 24
https://youtu.be/2zBAZlbPn8E
(more on this tune in a later chapter…)

And as light relief, “Two Set Violin” and Hilary Hahn goofing around with the Paganini caprice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=eOjO4ekcJQA
Hilary Hahn is an incredible violinist, and has been a guest on quite a few of Two Set’s videos. It’s a standing joke that Eddy (the guy on the right) has a huge crush on her. If you are a violinist, watch this and weep (while simultaneously howling with laughter).

Chapter Text

After the baroque session, she’d detoured via the library to pick up The Historic Horn.

Now Éowyn wandered down the corridor clutching the case holding the natural horn. She wasn’t being a stalker. No, definitely not. If she wanted to sit and read Anneke Scott’s book on that nice sofa in the corridor outside this set of practice rooms, well, why not? It was as good a place as any, and the sofa was a comfy one.

From one of the practice rooms, she could hear the sounds of a violin sonata – Brahms. She didn’t know the violin repertoire very well but the composer was unmistakable. More to the point, the violinist was one whose appearance was equally unmistakable – Aragorn Walker.
-
Not that she’d glimpsed him in the foyer when she came out of the library, and followed him here, or anything like that. No, this was sheer coincidence. Absolutely, one hundred percent an accident. Like she said, totally not stalking.

The sonata opened with a couple of languorous piano chords, then a singing violin tune, floating downwards, then swooping back up. Then… car crash.

The pianist’s voice drifted through the closed door. “No – we shift by half a bar. Here.”

The voice was a warm baritone. Incredibly posh. But a nice voice, nonetheless. Though, in her humble opinion, not as sexy Aragorn’s. She wondered why the smoker’s growl from endless rollies did it for her, given that she hated smoking. Uncle Theo had had COPD from smoking. She tried to imagine Aragorn coughing his guts up in the morning in the hope that it would put her off, but somehow the image wouldn’t form in her mind.

The pair started again. Another car-crash of an attempt.

“I’m playing two groups of sextuplet quavers in each bar. You’re playing dotted rhythms, three groups of four quavers.”

“Thank you, captain obvious…” Aragorn clearly did not like any hint of criticism, even though (hard to be certain without knowing the piece) Éowyn thought he probably had been the one who cocked up.

My god, Éowyn thought. Aragorn could be an arrogant bastard when he wanted to be. She vaguely remembered this from his NYO days.

The pianist, however, wasn’t fazed. He continued, in a calm, measured tone.

“Yeah, but you’re not accounting for the shift, here in bar 12. It starts off as a fairly standard cross rhythm in bar 11, threes – your dotted crotchets - against twos – my pairs of sextuplets. But then you have a minimum and crotchet, and suddenly your threes are cutting across my sextuplets, starting on the half bar instead of the bar lines. Which means your dotted crotchet figures are cutting across the bar lines too.”

Éowyn, eavesdropping, felt her head hurt. Without the score in front of her, that was nigh-on impossible to follow.

They started again. Again, something went wrong. It seemed the pianist’s explanation was impossible to follow even with the music in front of them.

“Just keep thinking in quavers and ignore where I’m putting my stresses.” The pianist was nothing if not reasonable. “I can’t fit round you – I have to keep playing quavers.” Éowyn expected another put-down, but instead Aragorn actually conceded the point.

“Fuck, this is a right sod of an opening.” He did, however, sound a bit tetchy.

They had yet another go, and this time it sounded okay-ish. Whatever was going on with that fearsomely complicated passage, they somehow made it through and arrived out the other side more-or-less in time with each other. Éowyn couldn’t help but feel that she was listening to the auditory equivalent of a not-very-good tightrope walker. The wobbles were off-putting. You were just waiting for the acrobat to fall.

“Ah, that’s where you are.” A familiar voice interrupted her. She looked round to see Merry, curly hair bouncing as he walked, approaching her. “What are you reading?”

“The Historical Horn Handbook.”
-
“Sounds like a laugh a minute!”

“Shut up. It’s really interesting, actually. And her YouTube channel’s really good, too. Prof Noldor told me to look it up.”

“Do you fancy lunch?”

“Is it that time already?” She checked the time. “Merry, it’s only half eleven.”

“Never too early to get in the lunch queue. I need my three square meals a day. Plus snacks.”

Not for the first time, Éowyn marvelled at how much food Merry could pack into such a small frame. She got to her feet.

She meant to walk past the room with her head down, but she couldn’t help herself: she glanced through the small glazed window in the door.

Aragorn looked as he always did, messy dark hair framing a face with cheekbones you could cut a finger on. If you got close enough to run your fingers along them, that was. Now there was a fantasy and a half.

The pianist – the man with the nice voice – had remarkably similar colouring. Dark hair fell past his collar. His face was fixed in an expression of intense concentration. He had a pale complexion and a slightly hawk-like nose. Cast into the shade by Aragorn, of course, but Éowyn had a feeling that if you met this man in less exalted company, you’d find him quite attractive. She gave her head a shake. What was it with her and dark hair? And cheekbones. She was a sucker for that sort of look. Talk about having a type.

Once they were out of earshot of the practice rooms, Merry gave a theatrical sigh. “Still mooning over Aragorn like you did as a teenager?”

“Shut up.”

“Plenty of other options. What about that sexy blond flautist he hangs out with?”

“Three things. One: I am not looking. Two: I don’t do blonds. Three: he’s gay.”

“Gay?”

“C’mon – he and that ginger bassoonist are obviously an item. Anyway, like I said. Not. Looking.”

“So, pub again tonight?”

“You’ve forgotten…” Éowyn couldn’t keep the hurt out of her voice.

“Oh shit, yes. You’ve got your first gig of the year tonight. I had forgotten. But don’t worry, plans are there to be changed. We’ll all be there. THEN pub.”

Brahms: G major violin sonata, Fischer, Avdeeva
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ec_DnPL578

AN: The opening of the Brahms G major is indeed a sod. I’ve played it with a number of pianists, and only ever come across one where we gelled well enough to get it right. (Which led to the “Harry met Sally” imitation, but that’s a long story...)

Anneke Scott discusses piston valve horns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klwLCspMgfQ
and plays Saint Saëns on a piston valve horn from 1908
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMVRBaJcycE

And here’s Anneke playing a sonata by Steup on a natural horn (no valves of any sort).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wTFi-TWRUA
You can here the shifts in tone as she blocks the bell with her hand to get the notes in between the open notes of the harmonic series.

Nerd moment: a brass instrument can fit an integer number of half wavelengths along the piping. So the open notes (horn in C basso by way of example) are C (two octaves below middle C), G, C, E, G, C (middle C), D, E, G, C (think of listening to a bugle call – you get the tonic, the fifth and occasionally the thirds as you go higher up the harmonic series). The valves add extra bits of tubing in so you can get at the notes in between.

A modern horn is in F (with a B flat option but horn players tend to treat that as an alternative set of fingerings), so its open notes run F (octave and a bit below middle C), C, F, A, C (middle C), F, G, A, C, F (plus some higher harmonics if you’re playing super-virtuoso stuff). Note that in this harmonic series some of the notes get within a tone of one another (and there are “false harmonics” very close to these as well - there's an "almost" A next to the G above middle C, for example) which is why the horn is so hard to play for a beginner (compared to the other brass instruments) – because it’s incredibly easy to come in on the wrong note by accident. Other brass instruments typically play further down their harmonic series, so you don’t reach the notes that are really close together.

And quick whinge about our carol books. Why are so many of the settings in five flats? Mind you, I've got it easy - the trombones and tuba are in concert pitch, so they've got six flats to wrestle with. The trumpets/ cornets and tenor horn get away with three and four flats, respectively. Brass transposition fun and games, gotta love it. Or cry. Or both. I have rashly volunteered to do some new arrangements. That's going to make my head hurt. (If there are any brass band purists reading this... we are a kind of equal ops, any warm body who can blow raspberries into an absurdly curly length of brass tubing welcome sort of ensemble, hence the crazy mix of instruments.)

Chapter Text

Noldor ran the whole concerto in rehearsal, which was probably just as well. Some of the changes in tempo in the final movement were particularly difficult, though (for once) Éowyn got the impression the strings had it worse than the wind.

Beregond was a very fine cellist – a final year student, like Éowyn. His tone was beautiful and his attack and rhythm in the first movement were spot on. Despite this, Éowyn had an uncomfortable feeling that she was only just clinging on by a fingernail in the duets between cello and horn – she felt her stomach knot with anxiety, because this was her big moment in the concert, bigger even than the famous solo in the Brahms. She had to keep a tight rein on herself though. The temptation was to try to take the volume up a notch to make sure everything was secure. But it was only the rehearsal; she musn’t over-blow. She needed her embouchure to be in good shape tonight.

The slow movement had Noldor back on her hobby horse – the sound she wanted from the orchestra, the right sound for Shostakovich.

As Beregond ran some of the third movement – an extended cello cadenza where he wanted feedback from Noldor as to how it sounded from the back of the auditorium – Éowyn found herself studying the orchestra. Many she’d been playing with for three years, some were new to her. It was fascinating to watch the level of concentration. The two young men at the front of the orchestral cellos, for starters, who quite often goofed around, were rapt in their concentration. Not surprising. She’d feel similarly about a horn player as good as Beregond was as a cellist. Everyone in the RNCM had huge technical ability and musicianship, but there were always a handful of students in each year who stood out as “something special” – and Beregond was one of these. Beregond, who could charm the birds from the trees, and make the orchestra’s goofballs stop goofing around.

Then there were the students she felt an affinity with because she knew they were wrestling with demons of their own. The second oboe who (Éowyn knew) had come very close to quitting in second year, not able to handle the pressure. The principal clarinet who she used to drink with, matching him shot for shot, at the end of her wild-child phase in first year. Then she and her other friends had grown out of it, and he hadn’t. In their second year it had been awkward – he would turn up at various of his friends’ rooms, hers included, with a bottle of wine, and when the person he was visiting politely declined, he’d open the bottle anyway. She thought he was kidding himself that another person was present, it didn’t count as “drinking alone” when he put away the whole bottle by himself, even if the other person was drinking a mug of tea.

And there was Beregond himself. Same year as her. He had his sweatshirt shoved up, revealing the scars on his arms. This is what had made her, initially, put him in the “also wrestling with demons” category, mistakenly as it turned out. She’d noticed the scars and politely averted her eyes. But later, having seen him close up in a t-shirt while they were all goofing around playing “jumpers for goalposts” in Whitworth Park, she’d realised they were burn marks. She’d been there when one of the other cellos had asked him about it in the pub. He’d been very off-hand about it – said it was a car crash, he’d had to get a door open.

“At least I had the sense to wrap my hoodie round my hands like oven gloves, but it meant my arms got burned instead.” Then he’d clammed up, not prepared to say anything more. Éowyn could understand that. Clamming up was her default position.

“Okay, cut to the last eight bars of the cadenza,” Noldor said, and they were into the final movement. Thank god they’d run it the week before: the constantly changing time signatures were a nightmare. Their first attempt had been nothing short of disastrous. Today went better. Still a bit wobbly, but they held it, just. Clearly Éowyn was not the only player who’d spent a week with various recordings, desperately trying to work out how her part fitted with the rest of the music.

Finally Noldor announced herself satisfied with the concerto, and let them take a ten minute break before they topped-and-tailed the symphony. Éowyn went to put her horn in its case. She discovered it was next to where Beregond had left his own case, and she gave him a smile as he put his instrument away.

“Bits of that sound brutally difficult, but it sounds fantastic.”

“Yup, it’s going to be squeaky pants time tonight,” he said, with a grin. “Specially that final movement.”

“Tell me about it. The orchestra part’s hard enough, yours sounds terrifying… Sorry, that came out wrong – you sound amazing, but the part itself sounds terrifying.”

“Don’t worry, I got what you meant. Anyway, I’m off for my pre-concert ritual of a hot shower, followed by a hot cup of tea and some chocolate digestives, then try to quell the rising panic.”

“You’ll be fine – it sounded great, honestly. Break a leg!”

After the rehearsal, Éowyn just had time to grab a sandwich from the shops back towards the university before she nipped into the ladies to change into her concert garb. Not that this was overly elaborate – black trousers and a plain black shirt. She’d been wearing the same outfit for years, couldn’t even remember where she’d got them. H&M or somewhere equally cheap. It did the job.

She was always quietly amused by the elaborate outfits some of the string players and woodwind pulled off. Not that they didn’t look nice; it’s just she was aware that she’d look a right plonker if she made that sort of effort. What was that phrase her uncle sometimes used? (Though, in fairness, never directed at her.) “You can’t gild a turd.” No, anonymity in plain trousers and shirt was very much her thing. People could remember her playing: that, she cared about. She didn’t need them to remember her looks.

She made her way into the room backstage. For a moment she looked around, searching for Merry, before remembering that tonight the first trumpet was being played by his friend, Freddy Bolger. Merry would be out front, in the audience.

Freddy was already there, looking uncharacteristically smart, though spoiling the effect by tugging at his bow tie as if it was too tight. His moment of glory came in the first piece: the William Tell overture. Trumpeters would roll their eyes at this and pretend they were too cool for school and totally didn’t care about it, but (Éowyn was sure), secretly they loved it. Who didn’t want to be the Lone Ranger?

And now it was time for the Shostakovich. Noldor ushered Beregond onto the stage in front of her as the audience applauded. A rush of nerves hit Éowyn in the gut. No other horn players in this piece, no section to support her. Just her. She was on her own. Without thinking, her fingers traced the patterns on the valve caps of her horn. Her tic. Her way of comforting herself. Her way of calming herself. Her way of telling herself she could do this. Four sharp staccato notes on the cello, leading into the woodwind’s introductory motif.

The cello solo became more frantic, fast, percussive double stops and rapid-fire passages like machine-gun fire. The clarinet ran through its reprise of the motifs so far, then the horn entry loomed. Éowyn settled her lips on the mouthpiece, took a deep breath through her nose, and tucked her tongue behind her lips ready to tackle her first entry, the movement forward. Clear, and brassy, cutting across the rest of the orchestra. A brief moment’s reprieve as the cellist attacked the theme once more, then those four notes were hers once more. Back and fourth the music went, the cello embroidering the main theme, the horn reminding everyone of that four-note phrase, over and over again.

Closer and closer… the lengthy horn passage was coming up fast. Not stratospherically high, just high enough and sustained enough to be worrying. The clarinet’s plangent notes cued her up for the first passage, then she and the cello worked through their exchange.

And… she nailed it. Every note with bell like clarity, the phrasing perfectly shaping the theme. The music built to its conclusion, a return to the home key with a startling upwards glissando from the horn before the final note.

The high carried her into the slow movement, with its spare, crystalline string opening. She came in, soaring over the strings, clear and piercing, just the right sound for Shostakovich, a sound picked up perfectly by Beregond playing ethereal, frosty harmonics high on the cello. Another horn solo, then into the mysterious ending, the cello harmonics acting as counterpoint to the strange, childlike sound of the celeste, like some sort of fae elven instrument, ringing out, its clarity cutting through the rest of the orchestra.

Beregond’s cadenza was magnificent. Then somehow the high of having played the previous movements so well, and the adrenaline, meant that the whole orchestra clicked for the last movement, in a way that had eluded them in rehearsals. When the concerto finally ended, to rapturous applause, Eowyn felt as though she was floating. The star of the show was Beregond, of course, but she felt a huge sense of achievement that her part had gone perfectly. She spent the interval buzzing.

After the concert, she headed out front to find Merry. He threw his arms round her and gave her a hug, before high-fiving her.

“That was fantastic.”

“Brilliant!”

Eowyn was surprised to see Disa standing next to Merry, along with Pippin and a shortish man, almost as broad as he was tall, with crazy long hair and an even crazier beard. Disa grinned.

“Merry invited Pippin, who invited Durin here, who asked me.”

“Hi.” He held out a hand in an oddly formal gesture. She shook. He had a strong grip. “Disa’s told me she’s playing with you in the baroque orchestra.”

Éowyn tried to place his accent. Somewhere… Scandinavian? Probably explained the hand shake.

Disa interrupted. “C’mon, let’s go get some beer. You must need it after that. That horn part in the Shostakovich is just brilliant, though.” She moved up next to Durin and rested her hand on his shoulder.

“Beer is always good,” said Durin. Éowyn smiled. Somehow she could imagine him, horn mug in hand, skolling.

As they turned to head for the exit, Éowyn caught a glimpse of Beregond out of the corner of her eye. She turned slightly, thinking of maybe going over to congratulate him. But she realised he was deep in conversation with someone. She frowned. Someone vaguely familiar. Beregond saw her and waved. Éowyn gave him a thumbs up and mimed applause.

The man talking to him turned. It was the pianist who’d been playing with Aragorn. He looked straight at her with a curious intensity. For a moment he met her gaze. She felt rooted to the spot. He gave just the slightest of gentle smiles. Éowyn looked away, hit by an unaccountable wave of embarrassment. Then she found Merry grabbing her by the arm and steering her towards the door.

Shostakovich 1st Cello concerto, Sol Gabetta, Orquesta Sinfónica de RTVE, Kalmar (chosen partly because the camera work is great).
https://youtu.be/tG0laIxC0Lo

The start of the passage with the duet between cellist and horn – this time Sol Gabetta on cello
https://youtu.be/tG0laIxC0Lo?t=168

And another recording, Steven Isserlis and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxI2IO7qTpE
(The programme notes on this YouTube video are very good, giving a lot of historical detail about Shostakovich’s uncomfortable relationship with the ruling Communist party.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxI2IO7qTpE

Plus the authentic sound of a Soviet era Russian orchestra (the State Academic Orchestra of the USSR) and Rostropovich (the cellist for whom the piece was written) playing Shostakovich’s 2nd cello concerto as part of a 60th birthday concert for Shostakovich.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF_pWzegXA

Chapter Text

Éowyn was just putting her tray with her dirty lunch plates into the rack at the back of the canteen when she became aware of someone at her elbow.

“Hi, have you got a moment or ten?” It was Disa, mobile phone in hand.

“Yeah, just for a bit. I’ve got a history of music lecture at half past, but I can spare some time before then.”

Disa waved the phone. “Noldor’s emailed through the list of pairings with singers. You and I have got a couple of Mozart numbers together: Se vuol’ ballare with Haldir Marchwarden, and Per pietà with Arwen Halven. And you’re doing Handel’s Va tacito with Lothiriel Swann, you lucky bastard.”

“Why? Is she good?”

“Dunno. Don’t know the woman from Adam. But the horn part in Va tacito is fabulous.”

She looked round the canteen. “We’re in luck – I think that’s Arwen over there.”

Éowyn followed her gaze. And froze.

People talked about your heart stopping. Or the world turning on its axis. Or your blood turning to ice. Or your stomach doing somersaults. Éowyn’s mind ran through a hundred and one clichés. Her instant, overwhelming reaction was a sensation of paralysis. She couldn’t move. It was Aragorn’s girlfriend from back at that NYO concert.

But the paralysis was only in her mind; her limbs still responded when Disa grabbed her arm and started to tow her across the room, weaving between tables.

Arwen was even more staggeringly beautiful close up than she’d been glimpsed in the distance. She was also totally unaware of their approach – completely absorbed in today’s Guardian. Disa stopped next to the table, and looked at Éowyn as if half expecting her to make the opening approach. Éowyn gave a little shrug: this was Disa’s initiative – she could carry it through. Plus Éowyn had exactly no desire whatsoever to engage in conversation with Aragorn’s girlfriend.

“Hi.” As openings went this was not up to Disa’s usual confident approach, but the dark-haired woman looked up.

“Yes?”

“We’re your horn players for Per pietà. We thought we’d come and say hi and see if you wanted a run through with us at some point.”

“Oh. Yeah. Great. Hey, grab a coffee or something and come and sit down.”

It was Éowyn's worst nightmare. Except that it turned out it wasn’t; there was scope for it to get even worse.

“You sit down Éowyn, I’ll go and grab a couple of drinks. Tea or coffee.”

Great. So now she not only had to face Arwen, she had to do it alone.

“Coffee,” Éowyn managed to say, and sat down awkwardly. Sat, staring helplessly across the table at the most beautiful woman in the world, the woman whose boyfriend was the object of her crush to end all crushes.

Arwen smiled. Éowyn produced what she hoped was a smile. The phrase rictus grin popped into her head. She shoved it into the dark recesses of her mind. She tried to talk.

“I’m only the second horn in this. But Disa thought we could sort out tempi, dynamics, that sort of thing. Uh. I’m kind of new to the baroque horn. But Disa’s looking out for me. I just have to play along underneath her part. But I mean, we’re both important. Not as important as you, obviously. You being the soloist and everything.”

God, she was babbling. Where was the off-switch on her mouth? She seemed to have lost all control of it.

Arwen looked a bit nonplussed but nodded politely. “I’m sure we’ll work it out.”

Thank God. Disa was back with a couple of cups of coffee. Éowyn took hers gratefully, took a sip as much as to occupy her wretched mouth. Dammit, it was too hot. She’d have to wait for it to cool. Which ruled it out as an avoidance tactic. Arwen and Disa got down to business.

Arwen turned out to be nice.

God, wasn’t that a kicker?

She was also intelligent, and had plenty of interesting ideas about how she wanted the performance to go.

Dammit. Did the universe have no mercy?

She and Disa pored over the copy, sitting side-by-side, dark heads bowed over the pages.

“How quiet do you think you can get it at this point? I’m meant to be super-anguished, I want the vocal effect of making the audience think I’m almost whispering in despair. I want to have them leaning forward in their seats straining to hear.”

At last, with a glance at the clock, Arwen excused herself.

Disa turned an amused face to Éowyn.

“What the hell? Cat get your tongue?”

“Sorry. Didn’t know what to say, so I thought I’d let you handle it.”

“Got a bit of a crush, have we?”

Éowyn's cheeks flushed bright red.

“Don’t blame you. If I swung that way, I would too. She’s drop dead gorgeous, and has that something. Stage presence, star quality, I dunno. Though you should know… she’s also straight.”

Éowyn felt the blush spread right down her neck, and probably (for all she knew) all the way to her ears.

“No, not her…”

Disa looked at her quizzically.

“Her boyfriend.” Éowyn covered her face with her hands. “God, this is embarrassing.”

Disa roared with laughter. “No way! You have a crush on Mr. Designer Stubble and Artfully Ruffled Hair. The violinist all the girls in the string section wanna fuck. And half the boys. So the ice-maiden can melt after all.”

“Ice-maiden? What the fuck?”

“That’s what Durin’s nickname for you is.”

“Ah, fuck off.”

“It’s kindly meant. He was impressed with how cool you were holding it together in that Shostakovich. ‘Cool as an ice floe,’ he said. Just chalk it up to him being Icelandic. Different cultural frame of reference.”

“Tell him from me to bugger off. If that doesn’t get lost in translation.”

Disa chuckled. “I think that one’s a cultural universal.”

“So,” said Éowyn. “You and Durin, huh?”

“You mean, ‘How did a Black girl from Peckham end up dating a Viking from Reykjavik?’”

“More ‘How did a baroque horn player end up with a jazz drummer?’”

“The usual way: got drunk at an after-concert party, snogged the best looking man there, woke up in his bed, he made me a fry-up and the best cup of coffee I’ve had in ages, and I thought ‘This one’s a keeper.’”

“The best cup of coffee. Yeah. Right. Never heard it called that before.”

Disa pretended to look hurt.

“It was a brilliant cup of coffee, I’ll have you know. But yeah, now you come to mention it, the sex was not bad.”

Mozart, Per pietà (Cosi fan Tutti), Cecilia Bartoli.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WnI0ClQRqU

I grew up with this particular recording – it was one of my mum’s favourite records. At this point in the opera, egged on by the meddling Don Alfonso, the two young men (having supposedly gone to war, then returned in disguise as Albanian soldiers of fortune) are trying to woo each other’s fiancés as part of a bet. One of the young women (who also happen to be sisters, just to make the emotional stakes and consequences of betrayal even higher), Fiordiligi, has realised she’s on the brink of succumbing to her “Albanian’s” charms, and sings this aria, begging her (supposedly) absent fiancé for pardon. (In fact he – also disguised as an Albanian – has just successfully seduced her sister.) The horn obbligato is a typically Mozartian joke: horns for cuckold’s horns.

The faster second part of the aria is very Éowyn-esque – having been consumed by guilt, Fiordiligi decides the only thing for it is to put on one of her fiancé’s old uniforms and follow him to war. Unfortunately, this is the point at which her “Albanian” returns and launches into one of the most impassioned attempts at seduction in any of Mozart’s operas.

If you want to watch the whole opera (with subtitles), this is a rather lovely production:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXCEuYL1pBU
If you watch the overture, you’ll be able to see a period instrument orchestra in action. (English Baroque Soloists with John Eliot Gardiner conducting – though the strings look to me like they’re using a mix of modern bows and period bows. Unfortunately there’s no close-ups of the horns.)

Cecilia Bartoli was one of the best ever coloratura singers I’ve ever heard. Here she is singing some Vivaldi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O9OfxS0r08

And just to give you a sense of how hard this is, here’s a professional opera singer doing a reaction video to this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jbW1AaXhjo

And now for something completely different, counter-tenor Kangmin Justin Kim in drag as “Kimchilia Bartoli.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdQU-N8b3HA
Apparently Cecilia took the joke in the spirit it was intended and next time she met him, embraced him with the words “Kimchilia, mia sorella!”

Chapter Text

Repertoire again. Today was a couple of piano concertos – Tchaikovsky 1, Brahms 1. The idea was to get a nodding acquaintance with just about everything life as an orchestral player might throw at you. This, she had to admit, was an easy opener: pretty standard and tuneful. She made a couple of quick run throughs of the opening fanfare.

At the front of the audience seats sat a row of slightly nervous looking students – the piano majors, waiting for their turn. They’d probably get a movement each, she supposed. In the centre was the dark-haired young man with the prominent nose and intense expression she’d come across playing with Aragorn the other day. The door swung open and the two staff members in charge of the session walked in - Prof. Noldor, as usual, and Prof. Thorin Stone, the head of the piano department. Stone had a reputation for being a bit of a grumpy sod at times, and very blunt. But also very, very good. He had a lengthy and distinguished career as a concert pianist behind him.

The orchestra stood as Noldor took to the podium. She gestured for them to sit, then turned round to her colleague.

“Would you care to select our first victim, Thorin?”

Stone grinned, a shark fin just cutting the surface of the water, as he surveyed his protegés. “Mr. Hurin? Care to join us?”

The dark-haired young man she recognised got up and made his way to the piano. He put a battered copy of the music on the stand and flexed his fingers. Stone sat beside him on a spare chair, ready to turn pages… and critique.

Noldor turned to the young man and smiled. Éowyn recognised the expression – this was Noldor in her firm but fair mode, not as scary (at first sight) as Stone, though (from past experience) absolutely terrifying if she thought you were pissing her around.

“Faramir, isn’t it? Give me some sort of idea of what sort of speed you want the opening to go.”

“About like this…” To Éowyn’s surprise, he sang the opening tune, that warm baritone she’d heard in his speaking voice opening up pleasantly. As he sang, he conducted the first few bars. Noldor nodded.

“Okay,” said Noldor. “Orchestra. General steer before we start. Tchaikovsky. It does want a 19th century lush string sound – but it’s still got to be noticeably Russian. We don’t want the full Mahler eating-a-whole-Sachertorte-by-yourself effect. Quite a lot of bass, articulation, a certain gritty edge to the fortes. If you’ve heard Russian church music, find that depth of sound. If you haven’t heard Russian church music, complete your musical education on your own time and listen to some. And horns… that opening needs to be brassy. Berlin Phil. Not Dennis Brain playing Mozart.”

The orchestra settled.

Noldor lifted her hands. Éowyn put her horn to her mouth. Brassy! Noldor wanted brassy – she’d give her brassy. She lifted the bell slightly and waited for the beat, tongue poised behind her lips. Two beats… She hit each note of the descending motif bang on, clean and bell-like, the open, resonant sound filling the hall. The rest of the orchestra joined in, full, solid blocks of sound. Then the strings took up the tune, cued in by heavy chords from the piano.

As she counted her rests, Éowyn watched the pianist at the piano. He was three-quarters turned from her, from her vantage point in the horn section. She could see the side of his face – high cheekbones, a sharp jaw, and an air of concentration; everything about his pose suggested intense focus. The chords came out with surprising power – the lyrical Brahms she’d heard in the practice room hadn’t clued her in to what he was capable of.

The strings reached the end of the opening tune. Time for the reprise in the piano. The man played it with considerable technical flair and an economy of touch. Every chord, every sequence came out just right. Or so it seemed to Éowyn.

Noldor must have some sort of almost telepathic means of communication with Stone. She held up her hands to stop the orchestra.

Stone gesticulated at the copy. “Note perfect, accurate, but you’re playing this like Mozart. All intellect and no passion.”

“I think, played right, Mozart’s very passionate…” the pianist began to argue back.

Éowyn swore she caught Noldor rolling her eyes. But Noldor wasn’t going to get drawn into this argument; this was Stone’s gig.

“No, no, no.” Stone was getting almost animated. “Not the point. Where we’ve just stopped. There’s a reason that tune is the one every second-rate movie director uses as background music as his star-crossed lovers run across a deserted beach towards each other in slow motion. It just oozes passion. But your performance. Doesn’t. This music – ask yourself what it’s about. Like I said. Passion. Romance. Most of all. Sex.”

Stone’s reputation for having no filter on his thoughts was legendary among the student body. He didn’t disappoint with his coup de grace.

“I mean, seriously, have you ever got laid?”

The pianist pushed a lock of dark hair back from his face and flushed faintly pink. “Not for a while, no.”

His tone was self deprecating, but there was more than a hint of dry humour lurking beneath the surface. Éowyn couldn’t help herself. She gave a snort of laughter.

The pianist – what was his name again? Faramir? Faramir looked over his shoulder back towards the horn section. Looked straight at her. His eyebrows raised, then he blushed – a furious, full-on blush this time. Then hastily turned back to the keyboard.

A faint twitch played about the corner of Noldor’s lips. She raised her baton again. “Once more with passion…”

You had to credit the man. Moments earlier he had been crucified with embarrassment. Now he held it together with a tight focus and concentration that belied the way he’d just been hung out to dry in front of his peers. The rest of the movement passed with a few pauses for pointers – some for suggestions for the piano, others for the orchestra.

“More attack here…”

“Hold that just for a fraction to allow the pianist to gather himself. Pretty much every pianist you play with will want a bit of space here.”

“Strings, drop it a little, I want to be able to hear the bassoons…”

At the end of the movement, Stone turned to Faramir.

“Not a complete car crash. You’re technically completely on top of it, and, as we all know it’s a complete bastard just to get round the notes. So you’ve got a good platform from which to build. But you still haven’t got it. I’ll email you a couple of versions – compare and contrast Daniel Barenboim and Martha Agerich, and decide which you prefer – and why. I know which I think I’d take to my desert island. Big hint, it’s not the same one I’d want playing my only desert island recording of Mozart 27.”

Faramir tucked his copy under his arm and returned to the audience seats.

“Okay, next up. Miriel Regent, you get the slow movement.”

A tall, willowy young woman walked to the piano and sat down. Éowyn was very struck by her sheer physical presence – immense poise, a cloud of beautiful dark curls and flawless dark skin. She secretly admired such women; such a contrast to herself – a messy, untidy tomboy who inhabited her tall, slightly awkward body as if it were a mere tool for physical activity rather than part of herself. Oh, to have the sort of sense of one-ness with her body that this woman seemed to have.

Noldor raised her hands and they started on the slow movement. The pianist listened attentively, head cocked slightly to one side as the opening pizzicato and woodwind motifs wound round one another, then her long, elegant fingers started to drift effortlessly across the keyboard, combing accuracy and lyricism and – Éowyn had to admit – exactly the sort of simmering emotion that had been lacking in the first movement. Now she got it.

Éowyn rested her right arm on the top of her horn, and allowed her chin to settle onto it, taking in the lyrical melody. She knew she had a while before the change of tempo and the next horn entry, and the shift would be unmistakable. Her eyes wandered round the orchestra. There was some overlap with the baroque ensemble she’d played in, though she knew a few people specialised completely by third or fourth year.

A slight movement caught her eye – the pianist sitting next to the dark haired man had allowed his music to slide off his knee and was groping on the floor to pick it up. As she glanced towards him, she realised the dark haired man – Faramir, wasn’t it? – was staring at her. Just as he had after the concert, with that incredibly intent gaze. Again, he gave the tiniest flicker of a smile, but this time he looked away first, towards the cellos.

Barenboim plays Tchaikovsky 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYOOoba2zvU

Martha Agerich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DmfJu3oNDM And Anna Fedorova
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNfpMRSCFPE

Meanwhile, Mozart playing at its best: Mitsuko Uchida:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvRE2wIFbW8
(Stone may be thinking of taking Agerich to his desert island, but I’d want Uchida. For those of you who didn’t grow up with Radio 4, “Desert Island Disks” is something of a British institution – someone famous, pretty much any walk of life, spends half an hour being interviewed about their life and picking the 8 recordings they’d most like to be stranded with.)

And in the “now for something completely different” slot, possibly the greatest comedy sketch ever:
https://www.facebook.com/legendarymusicians2020/videos/morecambe-and-wise-andre-previn-the-full-sketch/575707570019833/
Brought to you by the woman who shipped Galadriel and Eric Morecambe (as Roy the Netflix Accountant).

Chapter Text

The modern repertoire session on Monday had gone well. The Baroque session, today, was not. Understatement of the year. Understatement of her entire career to date. Merry and Pippin had been right; she’d made a horrible mistake. Éowyn sat there, fingernails digging into the palms of her hands, hating every moment of the baroque session.

There was King, having told Noldor he wanted their suggestions.

It turned out to have been a set-up.

He wanted their suggestions so he could shoot them down. In flames.

Miriel (who turned out to play harpsichord as well as piano) had suggested Semele by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre.

“Ah yes, the distaff side of composition.” King’s voice dripped with disdain. “I rather think we’ll stick with the Baroque Masters. They are masters for a reason.”

Miriel looked stunned. Like Éowyn, she had obviously assumed the request for suggestions had been made in good faith, and was completely blind-sided by this.

“Hmm, Telemann’s double horn concerto – suggested by Disa Khazad.”

King looked over to the horn section, where Éowyn and Disa sat side-by-side.

“Ah, wonderful, this time we have the distaff side represented by the players rather than the composer. Tell me, ladies, do you think the composers of the day would have used the fairer sex to play their brass instruments for them?”

Disa wasn’t going down without a fight on this one. “Vivaldi’s orchestra in L’Ospedale was entirely female. In fact, a contemporary source, an English diplomat, expresses surprise that ‘even the horns’ are played by girls.”

“And this contemporary source… where did you unearth this?”

“I think I remember it in the programme notes on a second-hand record of Vivaldi’s wind concertos that I picked up…”

“You think you remember. Programme notes on a record sleeve.” King’s voice took on a falsetto, sing-song quality, then returned to its normal gravelly timbre. “Scholarship at its finest. I bow to your superior knowledge. Oh no, I’ve just remembered. I’m the professor here. So, no, I don’t.”

Valandil Faithful and Arondir Avari (one of the other violinists) had suggested Joseph de Bologne’s Symphonie Concertante.

“Ah yes, the Black Mozart. I don’t think we need tokenism, do we?”

Like Disa, Valandil wasn’t going down without a fight.

“Given the time-line, and the fact that it was Bologne who inspired Mozart, not the other way round, you might more accurately describe Mozart as the white Bologne.”

King snorted. “A genius can take relatively lowly source material and transcend it. In some ways, that might even serve as a definition of musical genius.”

Valandil’s look made Éowyn think of boxing; it was the look someone got when he’d been punched hard in the solar plexus. Isildur, sitting at the front of the viola section, looked moments away from leaping up to return the blow. King forged on, seemingly oblivious. Although, on second thought, probably not oblivious. Probably relishing every moment.

“We will start, I think, with a Haydn symphony. It doesn’t do to put too much stress on my motley crew at the start of term. Which, looking at the pathetic shower in front of me is probably for the best.”

He’d then spent the next hour and a half shredding them, tearing apart every wrong note, every split note, every minute error in tuning, every failure to read his mind when it came to changes of tempi (deliberately badly signalled, Éowyn came to suspect).

She finally escaped from the inner circles of Baroque hell. Still shaking slightly, she got a can of coke and a bag of crisps. Maybe the Merry and Pippin were right, maybe brass players needed to keep their blood sugar levels up. And maybe Pippin was even more right that she shouldn’t have taken this bloody course in the first place. She wandered off for her lesson. The feeling of shell-shock hadn’t worn off.

She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop.

It was just that she was waiting for her lesson with Marshall. And Noldor’s office was next door.

The first voice she heard was Valandil’s.

“It was outright racism. The way he said ‘Black Mozart.’”

Noldor’s voice followed, sounding tired and uncharacteristically downbeat.

“Look, we’ve gone through what he said, as close to verbatim as you can remember it. And there’s nothing in there that’s actually a racist slur. Just historical observations. Because Bologne was Black, and is quite frequently referred to as the Black Mozart.”

“But it was the tone of voice, and the stuff about tokenism, and the way he looked at us.” This time it was Arondir speaking.

A female voice – Disa – chipped in. “That’s the way I read it too.”

Noldor sighed. “But disciplinary action depends on precise words, not tone of voice. I don’t doubt your account. King is… is well known for being… difficult. But there’s nothing here that can actually stick.”

Éowyn’s knuckles tightened on the handle of her case. Words from the past. “Beyond reasonable doubt…” Where the “lack of reasonable doubt” seemed to imply a demand for a level of proof that existed nowhere outside of pure mathematics. Certainly not a level of proof that could be met in the messy, real world. The world where real people suffered real wrongs, and the wrongdoers got away with it. Every bloody time. Including, it seemed, this time.

Unsurprisingly, with that interlude still playing in her mind, her lesson with Elfhelm was a complete disaster.

With fifteen minutes to go he decided they should cut their losses and said “Your head’s just not in the game today, is it?”

Éowyn nodded, sadly.

“Okay, let me buy you a cup of tea in the cafe. We can use the time for planning. We’ll talk through how you’ve got this term’s work organised and what you’re hoping to get out of it.”

Eowyn started to say something, stopped, then blurted it out anyway. “Am I being an idiot and wasting everyone’s time with the natural horn?”

“Wasting everyone’s time? Well, the only person whose time it would really matter to be wasting would be your own. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re doing that. I wish you loved the instrument for its own sake, but playing it to understand modern horns better, and understand composers’ intentions – that’s still a worthwhile aim.”

“Thank you. It’s just…”

“You don’t have to struggle through his module, you know. There are other things you could do to make up the credits.”

“I know.”

“But you’re stubborn, aren’t you?” Elfhelm gave something that sounded rather like a sigh of exasperation.

Joseph de Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George, Symphonie Concertante in G Major, Simiso Radebe, Kabelo Monnathebe (violins), Buskaid Soweto.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRBUA5rgaLs

If you haven’t seen it, the recent (ish) biopic, Chevalier, is a great watch, albeit in the manner of biopics, taking various liberties with the actual history. Saint George, the son of a minor French nobleman and an enslaved woman on his plantation, was 11 years older than Mozart – the young (I think still in his teens) Mozart saw Saint George playing in and conducting his own Symphonie Concertante and was inspired to write two of his own. The violin “duelling banjos” style play-off in the film did not happen.

One thing that was accurate in the film: Saint George was good friends with Marie Antoinette (in fact, he backed off the friendship to preserve her reputation when court gossips began to suggest they might be more than just friends). Later, after Marie Antoinette and Louis had gone to the guillotine, Saint George threw in his lot with the Revolutionaries. He was one of the best swordsmen of the time, and as a soldier, apparently a brilliant tactician and strategist. Of course as the Revolutionaries began to turn on each other, things got very hairy, but he survived the Terror and ended up (IIRC) eventually getting pardoned by Napoleon when the latter came to power, though I don’t think his military career survived the regime change.

Chapter Text

After the previous week’s debacle, Éowyn's enthusiasm for period music was at an all-time low, but nonetheless, she steeled herself for the encounter.

“Hi, are you Lothíriel Swann?”

Éowyn felt stupid the moment the words left her mouth. She stood awkwardly, shifting her weight from one leg to the other, feeling (as her brother would have said) like a lemon.

The young woman at the cafe table looked up at her from beneath the most absurdly long, dark lashes Éowyn had ever seen. Her almost black hair was cropped short in a pixie cut, and she looked almost, but not quite, classically beautiful – Hollywood would have no doubt turned up its nose at her rather prominent nose, but Éowyn thought it lifted her appearance beyond the anodyne, ready-for-instagram smooth attractiveness she saw everywhere on TV, and gave it an edge that would hold one’s interest way longer than mere prettiness.

She assessed Éowyn with a shrewd gaze. “Yeah. That’s me. Why do you want to know?”

“Ah, I’m, err… Pencilled in to play the horn obbligato for your aria.”

“Oh,” the other girl said, suddenly looking much friendlier. “Cool.” She glanced round the cafe, and suddenly a broad smile split her face. “My cousin’s sitting over there at the other side of the cafe. He tried to sneak in without me seeing him, wants to read his book. But he’s going to be disappointed. We’ll get him to play continuo.”

Lothíriel paused for a moment.

“You do have a natural horn, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Éowyn replied, swinging the case round off her shoulder. “I’ve got one on loan. I should warn you I’m fairly new to trying to play it though.”

Lothíriel got to her feet, and led the way across the cafe, weaving in and out of the tables, arriving at the far corner where a young man sat by himself, nose in a book. Éowyn stopped dead in her tracks. It was the pianist who’d been playing with Aragorn. The pianist who (according to Prof Stone’s rather snotty assessment) tried to play Tchaikovsky like he was Mozart.

“Fara, do you have an hour or so?”

He looked up with a start, then gave a faint, slightly lopsided smile. “Depends what for.”

“Va tacita. We need an accompanist.”

He looked at Éowyn's battered case. “Baroque pitch?”

“Yes, we’re hoping we can find a room with a harpsichord.”

“Don’t tell my teacher, for god’s sake. He swears that playing it knackers my touch for the piano. What key is the aria in?”

“F.”

“That’s not too bad. Even if we can only find a piano, I can take it down a semitone easily enough.” He got up and tucked his book into a scruffy-looking rucksack. Now at eye level with Éowyn – or rather, somewhat above, since he must have been comfortably over six foot – he stuck his hand out. Feeling slightly awkward, she shook it.

“I’m Faramir Hurin, by the way, since my cousin seems to be ridiculously bad at introductions,” he said. The voice was every bit as posh as when she’d heard him playing the Brahms G major with Aragorn.

“I remember you from the Tchaikovsky the other day. Éowyn. Éowyn Earl.”

“Yes, I know, I recognise you too.” He blushed and looked down, then swallowed and looked back up at her, seeming to gather himself. “One of the many witnesses to my humiliation. Nice to meet you. I think.”

Éowyn grinned. “We’ve all been there. Trust me, the scope for embarrassment as a horn player is almost endless.”

“What did he do?” asked Lothíriel, positively bouncing with excitement at the prospect of some juicy gossip.

“Never mind,” said Faramir, just as Éowyn said, “Nothing much, old news.”

Faramir gave her a tight smile and a half-nod, then gestured towards the door, and led the way. Lothíriel followed, then Éowyn, to his left and half a pace behind him. Surreptitiously, she took a look at him as they walked. She could see the family resemblance to Lothíriel; he looked uncannily like his cousin, down to the dark hair and prominent nose. He also had the same absurdly long dark lashes, but for some reason they didn’t look at all feminine on him. In fact, oddly, she found herself thinking he wouldn’t look out of place on her brother’s rugby team, at full back or fly half. Somehow, something about his build and stance made her think there was an athleticism and wiry strength hidden under the baggy sweatshirt and jeans that seemed slightly too big for him. Mentally, she gave her head a shake. What was wrong with her, checking out every man she saw? Wasn’t having the crush of all crushes on Aragorn Walker enough for her hormones?

He ushered Lothíriel through the door, then held it open for Éowyn as well, in what felt like a strangely old-fashioned gesture.

Their luck was in – they found one of the relatively rare practice rooms with a harpsichord. Whatever Faramir’s teacher might say about the desirability or otherwise of the instrument, it was clear that he made a regular thing of playing, because he produced a tuning key and meter from his bag, and quickly ran through the keyboard checking the pitch. A few turns of the key this way and that every so often, and a few minutes work, and he seemed satisfied.

“Someone’s already been playing it this morning, it’s not far off at all,” he said with some satisfaction.

Meanwhile, Éowyn had got her horn out and had spent the time while Faramir was fiddling with the harpsichord warming the instrument up. She slotted the F crook into place and played a few arpeggios and a cautious scale or two, experimenting with the right hand position to try to get the tuning on the hand-stopped notes right. Lothíriel, meanwhile, was working through a few vocal warm-ups. The overall effect was a cacophony, but Éowyn didn’t mind as she felt it covered up any bum notes she might be producing. She glanced over at Faramir and realised he too was warming up – trying to get the feel of improvising from a figured bass. She realised there wasn’t a harpsichord part as such, just a string score and a few numbers above the cello part offering clues as to how the keyboard part might go.

He must have caught her glance. “I’m by no means an expert at this period, and I’m not completely fluent at working from the figured bass, so you’ll have to put up with me busking my way through it as best I can. From the top?”

She nodded.

“Lothi, what tempo do you want?”

“What do you reckon?”

“Haven’t you listened to any performances?” Faramir gave a sigh.

“No, you know I’ve been concentrating on Mozart recently.”

“Let’s go for a fairly fast andante – Baroque andante rather than Romantic andante.” He played a few bars. “Sound okay?” Lothíriel nodded.

He gave an expectant look at Éowyn, then lifted his hands slightly as if to give an upbeat, before launching into the first three notes. Éowyn joined in with her slightly staggered entry.

Their first attempt was a bit rough. Lothíriel fluffed a few accidentals, Éowyn messed up her first lip trill (to her annoyance) though she spotted the next one coming in plenty time and got in the right head space, and to her delight it just seemed to fall into place. Underneath the pair of them, Faramir played with a quiet, unshowy confidence. So much for “not completely fluent with a figured bass.”

The second attempt was better. Éowyn felt quite pleased, and Lothíriel looked positively cocky, only for Faramir to take the wind out of their sails.

“You’re on autopilot, Lottie. Are you even paying attention to the words?”

“Aw, come on, you can’t fault my pronunciation.”

“But do you know what they mean?”

“Go quietly and something-or-other-ly when you… then it says something about a horn. I do remember that bit. Corno di caccia.”

Faramir let his head drop into his hands. “You’ve been skiving your Italian lessons again, haven’t you? For fuck’s sake Lottie, I know you’re a fabulous mimic and you can get the sounds right, but you are not going to make it as an opera singer unless you understand.”

“Huh, not all of us get to spend a year in Rome with Auntie Ivvy,” Lothíriel replied, slightly petulantly.

“Good, so you concede my Italian is better than yours,” Faramir replied, with a look that should have been able to quell the most ebullient of erring relatives, but seemed to make no dent whatsoever in Lothíriel's invincible composure. He sighed. “Okay, it’s ‘va tacito’ not ‘vai’, so it’s ‘he goes silently,’ not an order to ‘go silently.’”

“Who does?”

“Your cacciator – hunter by the way. Corno di caccia is a hunting horn – which admittedly is the reason for the choice of horn as obligato. The whole thing is – turning the word order round so it works in English – ‘The cunning hunter goes silently and stealthily when he stalks his prey.’ Though in your case, I think it’s about as cunning as one of Baldrick’s plans.”

Lothíriel stuck her tongue out at him.

“And then there’s the role itself. You are, in case you hadn’t noticed, meant to be Julius bloody Caesar, ruler of most of the known world, come to take over Egypt and displace Ptolemy while fucking his sister Cleopatra. It’s not some namby pamby sodding Victorian drawing room ballad. Strut your stuff, for god’s sake.”

Éowyn hid a smile at the incongruous contrast between Faramir’s readiness to pepper his sentences with random expletives and his cultured, upper-crust voice. With a sigh, he turned his score back to the beginning of the piece. They tried again.

Éowyn thought it went better. She had reckoned without Faramir’s perfectionism.

“Lottie. Imagine you’re your father, in the admiralty, making the case for a bigger budget. Or Rothos. Swaggering into a bar and telling every bird who’ll listen that he flies Harriers for a living.”

“Bird?” said Éowyn, icily.

Faramir shot her a withering look. “I am getting into character as Rothos, fighter jock. Or Julius Caesar, Roman emperor, ruler of the known world and lover of Cleopatra, the most beautiful woman since Helen of Troy. Basically anyone other than a slightly weedy music student.”

The self-deprecating humour was delivered absolutely deadpan, but Éowyn could swear she saw a slight crinkling round his eyes, a sort of twinkle of amusement. She was also reminded of her earlier impression: however one might describe his physique, ‘weedy’ was not the first word she’d reach for.

Éowyn suddenly realised she’d missed the more interesting bit of what he’d said in her momentary annoyance. Admiralty? Harriers? What the hell was this family? She didn’t get time to think about it in any depth though, because Faramir signalled that he was ready to start another run through.

“From four bars before the vocal entry.

They tried again. He stopped them after a dozen or so bars.

“Avido è di preda. Really attack that. Really spit out the ‘P’. Roll that ‘R’ for all you’re worth. Stalking his prey – you’re stalking Ptolemy, and not only that, you’re telling him to his face that that’s what you’re doing. Really attack the consonants. And stand up straight. We want military bearing here.”

Another hopeless attempt. Then inspiration struck.

Éowyn cradled her horn, pulling out the mouthpiece.

“You know what we need? A bit of method acting. Come on. I’ll just stash my horn in my locker. Faramir, you can come too.”

Looking puzzled, Faramir shut the lid of the harpsichord.

As she herded them down the broad staircase that ran down the front of the building, inside the wall of glass that made up the front of the college and then hustled them out onto Oxford Road, Éowyn began to wonder if she’d finally lost her grip on her sanity. What the hell? Did it really matter? She hardly knew either of them. If she wanted to do something a bit insane, then why not shake things up a bit.

Sarah Connolly as Caesar in David McVicar’s Glyndebourne production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fieBT98DCLc

There will be much more Va tacito later on, but for the moment this should do…

Chapter Text

She was mad.

This was the only explanation. Here she was, hustling two near strangers down the maze of backstreets near the river, taking them to her place.

The place she came when she needed solitude. The place she came when she needed to let off steam. The place where she could just be. The place where she felt safe.

Why?

Lothíriel looked confused and a bit annoyed. She’d gone mulishly silent. Faramir was also silent. But he looked… quietly amused.

All the while, she was wondering whether she should find some sort of excuse and take them somewhere entirely different. The cinema. She could claim she’d meant to take them to see an action movie, so Lothíriel could study toxically masculine power plays at one remove. But no, she’d promised method acting.

Or perhaps the Royal Exchange. She could wax lyrical about productions she’d seen there – Macbeth, the Duchess of Malfi, even Shakespeare’s take on Caesar. Talk about how they’d been staged. How they’d done the fight scenes. How they’d done the big set-pieces about power and politics.

And all the time she was running through these possible escapes, her treacherous feet were carrying her nearer and nearer to their actual destination.

There it was, the green wooden door with the peeling paint, set in a dingy, soot-stained brick wall. She pushed it open, led them through the second, partly glazed door and into the gymnasium beyond.

“Éowyn! I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

The gym was empty except for Gamling, in a set of grey trackies, sweeping up the area round the ring. Round the edge of the hall were all the paraphenalia Éowyn had become so familiar with that normally she didn’t even notice them. But now, with these two near-strangers in tow, she saw the room through their eyes. The punchbags, swinging from their metal brackets. The speed balls, mounted on their springs. The weights section in the corner – dumbells and barbells, no fancy machines here, barring the one for lat pull-downs. The high windows with their small glass panes covered with years’ accretions of dirt, both inside and out. The cobwebs high up near the ceiling. The dingy institution drab green paint, flaking in places.

Gamling propped the sweeping brush against the wall, and walked over to greet Éowyn. He walked with that bouncy gait that old pros have, shoulders rotating as he moved.

“So who’re your friends?”

“This is Lothíriel and this is Faramir – they’re at the college with me. I want to give Lothíriel a go at boxing.”

“Him too?” Gamling jerked his hand, pointing to Faramir with his thumb.

“No thanks,” said Faramir. “My leg’s more steel pins than bone – my physio would kill me.”

Gamling’s eyebrows rose. It was that ridiculously posh voice. Éowyn had almost stopped registering it, but now...

This really had been a mistake. Faramir stood out like… a Presbyterian minister in the middle of a piss-up. Or a school-marm in a bordello.

Gamling looked at Éowyn interrogatively.

“Lottie’s doing a… Okay, she’s a singer. Opera singer. And opera is a bit weird, lots of girls dressing as boys dressing as girls kind of thing.”

“So, Canal Street on a Saturday night?” Gamling gave a grin, revealing a missing tooth.

“Kind of. Anyway, Lottie’s doing a role as a man, and she’s just not convincing.”

Gamling’s eyes flicked towards Lothíriel and back.

“I can see that.”

Éowyn glanced sideways and registered for the first time the fact that the younger woman was wearing a sheepskin coat, mini-skirt and ankle boots with kitten heels. And absurdly over-the-top gold earrings.

God, she could be so unobservant at times. Most of the time, in fact. Clothes were so far outside the list of things she found interesting that she didn’t even register them 99% of the time. And as for dressing in a feminine way? She’d failed femininity 101.

She suddenly realised that she should have asked Lothíriel.

Gamling was shrewder than Éowyn had given him credit for.

“And you… Lottie, is it? How do you feel about having a go at boxing? No point doing it if this is all about what she…” He gestured at Éowyn. “Thinks is a good idea. I’ve known her, what, three years now, and she does have… let’s just say, a bit of previous for mad ideas. So if you’re not comfortable, I’m certainly not going to make you.”

Lothíriel looked at him, and for the first time since Éowyn had towed them out of the building, gave a bit of a half-smile.

“I’ll give it a go. It was really his fault.” She pointed at her cousin. “He said I wasn’t doing a very convincing job. So… do I need gloves or something.”

“Probably not this session. If you’re really good, I might let you hit something at the end, if Éowyn’s got a spare set of gloves. But to start with, we want stance, footwork, movement. To be honest, if it’s just ‘moving like a bloke’ you’re interested in, that’s probably most of what you need. Come with me, over to the area where the punchbags are. Are you right or left handed?”

“Left handed.”

“A southpaw,” he said with a grin. “That actually makes coaching a bit easier. We can stand facing each other, and you just treat me as a mirror image.”

Éowyn could have sworn she saw Faramir’s eyebrows rise slightly at the idea that Gamling, with his broken nose and ragged ears, could be the mirror image of the pixie-like Audrey Hepburn lookalike now facing him.

“Okay, your lead leg is your right leg. Get your feet either side of this white line. Right foot points almost towards me – at about one o’clock, left foot behind at about two o’clock, shoulders turned in line with your hips so you present less of a target.”

Lothíriel copied the stance.

“Now, bounce up and down a bit on the balls of your feet, just get everything loosened up.”

The next five minutes were taken up with the basics of stance and movement.

“Always keep your feet either side of that line. Step forward, your back foot follows and you’re still in that position. Step back, and your back foot goes too. Comfortable steps, not huge strides. Now side to side – same principle. Imagine a second line next to the first. You step sideways to that second line – but your feet are still there, either side of it, one o’clock, two o’clock.”

They moved in synch, Lothíriel dutifully following Gamling’s lead. It was like a weird kind of dance – samba without the music. With an absurdly mismatched couple.

Éowyn went and sat on the bench for the lat pull-down machine. Faramir followed her lead, and sat on the bench normally used for presses. They settled in companionable silence to watch.

After Gamling was satisfied Lothíriel had at least the basics of movement, he showed her how to guard her face, hands up by cheekbones. Then he made her repeat the same sequences all over again, this time hands up. By the end of it, Lothíriel was pink and breathless.

“Go grab a drink of water, young lady. And you, Éowyn, what’s with this slacking off? Warm yourself up and go grab your gloves and do some work with the punchbag.”

“Bloody hell, no rest for the wicked,” she whinged.

But she dutifully pulled off her sweatshirt and went over to fetch a skipping rope. She was acutely aware that she had an audience, and turned her back to the weights corner. Once more, she wondered why the hell she had brought random near-strangers into her place. She liked to have her life compartmentalized. It helped her deal with things. Music at the forefront. Family equally important, but separate. Boxing as her escape. Emotions boxed up and safely stored in a locked room. And now here she was, letting the boundaries bleed into one another. Musicians in her escape room.

And family… Family in Manchester. Éomer had decided to do his engineering PhD at UMIST. Why the hell had she agreed to share a flat with him? She was close to him, yes, loved him dearly. But… Again, it messed with her strategy. Everything in its separate box. Every problem tackled one at a time.

But now, she’d get home from a tough rehearsal, and find her brother on the phone, chatting to their aunt or cousin. All her nice, carefully constructed walls between the separate parts of her life. And here was Éomer, knocking holes in them.

Plus washing up wasn’t his strong point.

She cast a glance sideways. Lothíriel had got the hang of the straight jab with her weaker hand, it seemed, and now Gamling was getting her to work on a one-two combination, jab with the right, follow through with a longer, harder cross from the back shoulder with her stronger left hand.

“That’s good. Remember to exhale on the punches. Make a ‘shoosh’ you can hear if it helps. Open up the chest as you move with the left, then close up again.”

Lothíriel repeated the movements.

“That’s good – that noise is coming right from your diaphragm.”

“It should be,” Lothiriel said. “I’m a singer, after all.”

She tried a few more combinations.

“Keep your hands up when you’re not punching. And try to make it more fluid. Not separate punches and have a think about it in between each one. One continuous sequence.”

Lothíriel stopped and leaned forward, breathing hard, hands on knees. “God, there’s a lot to think about. And it’s knackering.”

“It is.” Gamling grinned. “Don’t worry. You’re doing really well. It does feel unnatural to start with. You need to practice this at home.”

Éowyn went to fetch her gloves, wandering over to the lockers against the opposite wall. When she returned, Gamling grabbed a couple of pads.

“Tell you what, Lottie, you sit down for five and have a bit of a breather, and I’ll get Éowyn moving through this whole sequence, and you can watch. She’ll be hitting the pads, not just shadow boxing. And she’ll be adding in a couple of extra punches – it’ll go jab, cross, hook, cross.”

Lothíriel went and sat down next to Faramir. He patted her on the shoulder, and murmured something into her ear, which led her to give him a playful punch on the upper arm.

“Ouch. Twenty minutes of boxing training and I can already feel the difference.” But he grinned anyway.

Gamling set up the timer. “Two two-minute bouts, thirty second breather.”

Éowyn set to, hitting against Gamling’s pads. He made it harder for her, dancing round in front of her so she had to move with him, occasionally reaching out and swiping a pad over her head so she had to duck. Quite often he’d move back so her punches didn’t connect, usually taunting her a bit when this happened. But some of the punches landed with a satisfying feeling.

The bell went. She put her hands behind her head, sucking in air. Her gaze happened to settle on Faramir, where he sat on the weights bench. He was watching her. As soon as she looked back at him, though, he looked away. Almost in embarrassment, she felt. Though quite what he had to be embarrassed about, she didn’t know. She was, as far as she was aware, the one who’d behaved like a raving lunatic since the moment she first dragged them out of the college.

The bell went to signal the end of the thirty seconds, and she moved into her stance. This second round, Gamling worked her even harder, dancing back out of reach, darting forward to swipe a pad over her head if he felt she was getting sloppy, even shove the pads towards her face if he thought she was dropping her guard. By the time the bell went for the second time, she was completely knackered, winded and dripping with sweat.

She glanced over at Faramir. He wasn’t watching her any more. He’d found an old newspaper and was leafing through it. She supposed she couldn’t really blame him; this must be boring as hell to sit through.

“Well,” said Gamling, turning to Lothíriel. “Has this helped? How do you think you’ll do as Prince Charming in panto, or whatever it is you’re doing?”

“I don’t know. I suppose the Nit-Picker in Chief over there will let me know next time we rehearse.” She nudged Faramir who looked up from the paper.

“We’ll give the aria another go tomorrow if we can find a time we’re all free,” he said. “Actually, Éowyn, this was a genius idea.” He gave her a huge smile.

Éowyn shifted from one foot to the other, feeling slightly awkward.

“Anyway, I’ve got to go – I’m meeting up with some old friends from home. Lottie – text me some times that work for both of you. Nice to meet you, Gamling. Thanks for helping Lottie out.”

Lothíriel said “Hang on a minute, I’m heading back to college, I’ll come with you.”

Faramir slung his coat over his shoulder, and Lothíriel followed in his wake.

After they’d left, Éowyn found Gamling looking at her inquisitively. She suddenly felt rather guilty.

“I’m sorry for taking up your time, Gamling. Can I help out with the sweeping up and tidying to make up for it.”

“That’d be nice. So, those two?”

“Students at college. Like I said, Lothíriel is a singer, and Faramir’s a pianist. Sorry, it was a spur of the moment type thing. She was just making such a hash of what she was trying to sing. I mean, the notes sounded lovely, but the way she was acting and moving, it was like she was, I dunno, playing the role of a spoiled princess or something.”

Gamling got a roll of bin bags from the cupboard and started to wander round the room, emptying the various bins, while Éowyn swept up.

“I mean, spoiled princess would work, I can see that,” Gamling said. “But who was she meant to be?”

“Julius Caesar.”

Gamling started to laugh. Laugh so hard he had to lean against the wall, and wipe tears from his eyes with his sleeve.

“That’s never gonna work.”

Éowyn started to laugh too.

“And what gives with the bloke? Got your eye on him, have you?”

“Hell no. I’ve given up on men, you know that.”

“What, completely?”

Eowyn felt herself starting to blush. “Yeah, well, the bloke I want isn’t available, is he?”

“So find one who is… Like that bloke you brought with you.”

“What, posh boy? Are you kidding?”

But it suddenly struck her that it was very, very safe to be obsessed with a man who was unavailable.

The Death of Tybalt – ballet sequence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWtIaAox3m4

And a concert performance, so you can watch the orchestra:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE3P2-2ORBo

Finally, credit where credit’s due – I know next to nothing about boxing, so all the details of Gamling’s coaching are stolen from this YouTube video by Tony Jeffries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKDHdsVN0b8

In unrelated news, I am very cold – just spent an hour busking with my mates outside the local supermarket. Good news – we made 50 quid for the Food Bank. Bad news – I’m bloomin’ freezing (and it is very hard to keep a French horn in tune when it is cold.)

Chapter Text

They were squashed into a room that was really too small for them.

Four horn players – horns one to four in the upcoming Bruckner performance in a couple of night’s time. For once, Disa had dusted off her modern horn, explaining that she couldn’t let it go entirely as chances were, there was more of a living to be made from playing both, even if all she did with the modern horn was teach. So here they were, having a horn section rehearsal. In this tiny little room that didn’t feel much bigger than a broom closet.

The bell of Éowyn's horn brushed briefly against Hama’s knee.

“Tell you what, you do the left hand, I’ll do the right,” he quipped.

“Now there’s an offer a girl just can’t refuse,” said Disa.

“Ooh-err! You keep your hand out of her orifice, cheeky.” Théomund managed quite a passable Kenneth Williams imitation.

“God, sectionals with a bunch of perpetual adolescents,” said Éowyn, rolling her eyes.

“I think we’ve been very good.” It was Théomund again. “We’ve got through pretty much all of the tricky corners in the Bruckner.”

“In fact there’s only one thing left to do,” Hama said.

“No,” said Éowyn, firmly.

“Yes,” said Théomund.

Hama grinned, and played a quick fanfare on his horn. “It’s time for a game of… First Horn Snap.”

“Oh piss off.”

“What’s first horn snap?” asked Disa.

“It’s a variation on the tried and tested technique for coping with entries where you have to come in cold after a long gap. Normally you do it with a kitchen timer – about 50 seconds is right. It rings, you play your entry with no warm up at all, just come straight in. Only in this case…” Hama produced a deck of cards. “We play snap, and every time someone shouts ‘SNAP’ Éowyn has to play her next entry.”

“In fact,” added Théomund. “I’ve come up with a variant of a variant. First horn schnapps.” He produced a hip flask and perched it on the window sill. “She gets it right, whoever called snap drinks. She fluffs a note, she drinks.”

About three-quarters of an hour later, Éowyn and Disa made their way down the staircase. Éowyn was still sober, having only had to drink two shots (near the end – she put it down to tiredness). Disa on the other hand… Disa hung on her arm, giggling.

“Let’s get some coffee into you, and a bit of food to mop up the schnapps.”

Éowyn pulled Disa into the cafe, sat her at a table, and went up to the counter to get two coffees and a couple of chocolate brownies. As she made her way back with the tray, she saw Merry over the other side of the room. He waved.

She realised he was sitting with Pippin, Sam and Sam’s friend Frodo… and Faramir. Frodo and Faramir seemed to be deep in an animated conversation.

She nodded to Merry with a smile, and headed back to Disa.

“I like first horn snappy-schnapp,” said Disa.

“Sure you do. Drink this.” Eowyn shoved the mug over to her, followed by one of the plates.

“Your friend the trumpeter is over there.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And Sam. Sam plays with Durin sometimes.”

“Yes, I know that too.”

“Who’s the dark-haired guy? The good-looking one?”

“One of the piano majors. Faramir Hurin.”

“You know he keeps looking over at you when he thinks you’re not looking.”

“And you know you’re very drunk and have an overactive imagination.”

“Mmm hmm. He’s not bad, you know…”

“Shut up and drink your coffee.”

She couldn’t resist a surreptitious glance over her shoulder. Thank fuck for that. Disa really was imagining things. Faramir was completely absorbed in conversation with Frodo.

Bruckner, 4th Symphony, Zubin Mehta and the Vienna Phil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v45b8fets84

The horns in this clip are "Vienna horns" with an extra loop of tubing, and piston valves (19th century design, from near the beginning of the advent of valved horns in orchestral playing).

Horn versus Wagner tuba (and cultural difference re. high versus low horn parts)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzwsmuQe-24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXKCEbCeQo0

The horn section of the Berlin Phil demonstrating Wagner tubas and talking about playing their favourite (and least favourite) bits of Bruckner (and goofing around).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFm2C-ve7qw

Chapter Text

Éowyn sat in the corridor, shaking with rage. Her second horn had broken down in tears; she wasn’t going to give that bastard the satisfaction. Over and over and over again, the same passage until notes they could manage easily to start with failed to sound.

The third horn had eventually walked out.

“I’m not taking this.”

“Walk out that door and you will fail.”

“Just watch me – and watch for the formal complaint.”

“Bloody snowflake generation. I’ll see you never work professionally.”

“Fuck you.”

Éowyn had wanted to do the same. Wanted to so badly. But – was it childhood? Years of swallowing her anger, her fear, because of what that bastard Grima might do to her uncle? She swallowed the anger, swallowed the hurt.

The only saving grace was that Disa had flu, and was safely tucked up in bed in the flat she shared with Durin. At least she hadn’t had to sit through the complete shit show.

Now she sat in the corridor, hating herself. Hating herself for not adding her own “Fuck you.” Her horn sat on the floor beside her. She had her hands round her knees, motionless, knuckles white. Her face matched – white as the proverbial sheet, except for two spots of red high on her cheeks.

She was so wrapped up in her fury and hate and self-loathing that she didn’t notice the soft footfall approaching. The first she was aware of was a figure with familiar floppy dark hair kneeling beside her.

At first she thought he was going to reach out and put a hand on her arm, and she tensed, ready to shake off the physical contact. But none came. Instead he shuffled round and sat on the floor, a foot or so away from her.

“I heard. The blow up between King and your third horn looks set to become the stuff of college legend. Your mate Hama's currently up before the head of the college. No-one’s sure whether he’ll just quietly get moved onto a different module or whether he’s deeper in the shit than that.”

There was a long silence. Eventually Éowyn spoke.

“It should be King up before the head of the college. No-one should be allowed to behave like that. In fact, he should have already been kicked out for being a sexist, racist bastard.”

“Totally agree.”

“I hate the bastard.”

“So switch course.”

“But I want… I need this experience with period instruments.”

Faramir waited.

“He may be a shit, but he’s also the best in the business.”

Another long silence.

In a quieter voice, almost a whisper: “Does that make me a shit for putting up with it for personal gain?”

More silence.

“Should I have stood up to him the way Hama did?”

She waited.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“What is there to say? I can’t fix it for you. I can’t make your mind up for you. All I can offer is to listen.” He paused for a moment. “Though I will say this much: self loathing never helped anyone. Take it from someone who’s been there.”

Éowyn rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. The gesture left a glistening trail of snot, but she was past caring. Wordlessly, Faramir held out a clean handkerchief.

“Maybe I’m being stupid. Maybe I am as shit as he says I am. Maybe there is no future for me as a professional.”

“Now that I’m not prepared to listen to. Remember I’ve heard you play – that repertoire session. That opening to the Tchaikovsky. And – I don’t think you noticed – I came to watch Beregond play the Shostakovich the other night. You were brilliant. Your tone quality is stunning. The way you listen to the rest of the orchestra, the way you fit with everything that’s going on – you are a fucking fantastic musician.”

It was Éowyn’s turn to sit in silence. Her stomach did a kind of churning motion. She wasn’t used to praise. She was more used to being unnoticed, being taken for granted. She didn’t know what to say. So she did what she always did: let her thoughts wander off at a tangent, towards a related topic that didn’t involve tackling the issue head on.

Eventually she spoke. “The thing I can’t forgive… I bloody love that symphony. That was the symphony that made me want to learn the horn. There I was, ten-year-old me playing the cello badly, and I heard that, and I just knew. I listened to the old LP of that symphony on my granny’s record player till I just about wore it out. Then I went and badgered the school music teacher till he turned the stockroom upside down and found the shitty piece of crap the school had as its one and only horn. I think it was so old it was made out of war surplus battleship armour plating. Now in one rehearsal, he’s spoiled it.”

“No, he hasn’t. You’ll get over this. You’ve got over worse shit.”

Éowyn looked at him sharply. “What have you… who’s said?”

“No-one’s said anything. You should know your friends better than that. They’re not going to gossip. And I’m not trying to pry. But… well, it takes one to know one. I can spot someone who’s had a lot of practice in hiding the shit in their life. Spot them a bloody mile off.”

Éowyn started. Who was this man who could wander round inside her head? Then deflected.

“Are you going to give me the ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ fortune cookie speech?”

“Fuck no. I’m going to ask you what the hardest piece you’re working on is.”

“Eugène Bozza – En Forêt.”

“Got the music on your i-pad? I mean, with the accompaniment?”

Éowyn nodded.

“Got your modern horn?”

“In my locker.”

“Right. You, me, horn, piano, practice room. Now. En Forêt. You’re going to show me just what a bloody good player you are.”

He stood up, then held a hand out, grasped her forearm and, seemingly effortlessly, pulled her to her feet.

Beethoven: 3rd Symphony, 3rd movement, Halle, Eldar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hsi8AjNVlU

Eugène Bozza: En Forêt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGpbx51rC54

Chapter Text

Two days later Éowyn had finally begun to calm down.

“How’re you feeling?”

Éowyn and Disa were drinking coffee before their practice session with Arwen, working on Per pietà.

“Still a bit crap, and really weak to be honest. That bug did a real number on me.”

“At least you missed the crap fest.”

“So, Hama?”

“Got away with a complete bollocking from Noldor, kicked off King’s course, so he’s got to pick up another module half way through term, which will be a shit-load of extra work for him. But it could have been worse – King was really gunning for him to be kicked out of college. Though to be honest I’m not sure he could have got away with doing that. Swearing at a tutor is pretty unprofessional, but not an expulsion offence.”

“Fucking King.”

“Yup.”

Disa took a sip of coffee.

“Hi, Disa.”

The two of them turned. It was Valandil, case slung over one shoulder, music case tucked under his arm.

“I’ve been looking for you. Miriel, Arondir and I are trying to put together a concert – a celebration of Black composers. Coleridge-Taylor, Hiawatha overture. Florence Price – concerto in one movement. William Grant Still’s 1st Symphony. What we’re after is getting as many Black musicians involved, try to get as many of the principal slots in the orchestra as possible showcasing Black musicians.”

“I’m in.” Disa looked delighted. Then her smile faded and she said, a little sadly, “This is about that arsehole King, isn’t it?”

“Think of it as being in the spirit of ‘Don’t get mad, get even.’ White musicians welcome, so long as they don’t take over.” He looked over at Éowyn.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do behind the scenes – publicity, sticking up posters,” Éowyn added.

“I bet Hama would be up for second horn,” Disa said, with a wicked glint in her eye.

“Great. I’ll get parts to all of you as soon as I can. See you later.”

As he walked off, he passed Arwen, heading towards them. She pulled up a chair and set down her coffee cup.

“What did Valandil want?”

Disa filled her in on the planned concert.

“Great idea. I’ll definitely come and watch.”

“So, quick run-through of Per pietà. Anything in particular?” Éowyn asked.

“Just don’t play too loud.”

“Opera really stretches your ability to play high and quiet,” Éowyn chuckled. “Forget planks, the diaphragm control is a full-body workout.”

“So, we’ve got about an hour then I need to hit the library before it closes, pick up some books for my dissertation.”

“What are you writing about?”

“Women composers of the 16th and 17th century with an emphasis on Leonora d’Este and Barbara Strozzi. Fascinating contrast – d’Este was a nun, and wrote religious motets, Strozzi was primarily a singer and composer, though thought of by society at the time as a courtesan – wrote secular madrigals, very much in the style of Monteverdi. Both fabulous, but so different. Oh – and d’Este’s mum was Lucrezia Borgia.”

“What, the poisoner?” Disa said.

“Well, yeah, sort of – but like a lot of such versions of history, she probably wasn’t as bad as enemies of the Borgia family painted her to be. Usual story – history is written by the winners. And almost always by men.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” said Disa.

“I know – let’s do a little experiment. It’s review day in The Guardian. Let’s see how many women compared to men they’re covering – music, film, books.” Éowyn pulled a copy of the paper out of her case and put it on the table.

Arwen froze. Then muttered “Shit.” Then pulled the paper towards her.

Eowyn looked down at the front page. The headline read “Mairon given cabinet post.”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit.” Arwen was rapidly scanning the article. “Aragorn’s going to be incandescent.”

“Former head of Tudor Street Chambers, Halbrand Mairon, has been given a peerage by the Prime Minister, and has been appointed as Justice Secretary in the recent cabinet reshuffle. He has been one of the most vocal proponents of Britain opting out of the European Convention on Human Rights…” Disa read.

“Tudor Street is where Aragorn did his pupillage. It nearly broke him. I mean, Ara was brilliant, but Mairon was a fucking monster as a boss. Think Wykeham King, but a hundred times worse.”

“Eww.” Disa wrinkled her nose.

“Plus, as you can see, a monster when it comes to his wider plans for the country.”

“Shit. The EHRC. That’s bad. Really bad.” Éowyn didn’t pay close attention to politics, but even so, she could see that this was bad with a capital ‘B’.

“It took me nearly a year to persuade Aragorn to ditch it all and come back to music and he’s been so much happier – and saner… But now there’s this shit.”

She looked at the two of them. “Can we do half an hour – and give me half an hour to find Aragorn first. I don’t want him finding out about this from someone else.”

“Yeah, sure, half an hour is fine. Éowyn and I have other stuff we can work on.”

Arwen got up and headed to the door.

“God, never a dull moment round here,” said Disa.

The two of them sat drinking coffee in silence. Then suddenly Disa dug Éowyn in the ribs and winked. Faramir was heading towards them, mug in hand.

“Hi Éowyn,” he said with a smile. “How’s the Bozza going?”

Then he saw the paper, lying on the table. He went chalk white. For a moment, Éowyn thought she saw him sway slightly, as if his legs were about to give out.

“Shit.”

“That seems to be the consensus of opinion, yeah.” Disa prodded the paper with her index finger.

“No, this guy is really, really bad news.”

“So we’d gathered,” said Éowyn. Then she looked up at the expression on his face. He looked – she searched for the right word – broken. “No, but… this is personal, isn’t it?”

“Sorry, I can’t… I can’t talk about it right now.” And Faramir too headed for the door.

“Christ, never mind dull moments, this place is turning into a bloody soap opera,” Disa said, shaking her head.

Barbara Strozzi, Che si può fare, Céline Scheen and Ensemble Artaserse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F458aC_FUM

As far as I know, there is no Tudor Street Chambers (I randomly picked the address from just round the corner from Inner Temple). No resemblance to any genuine barristers’ chambers is intended. You may however, insert the real-life PM of your choice. (There are probably several recent choices who would be quite happy to have Sauron as their Secretary of State.)

The playlist with Coleridge-Taylor, Price and Still will appear later on.

Chapter Text

https://youtu.be/BOZEj8wyj-I

King was away in Paris. Hang out the bunting, launch the fireworks, crack open the champagne.

The mood in the rehearsal room was light, effervescent almost. After the week before’s blow-up none of the faculty had stepped into the breach, which surprised Éowyn a bit. But Valandil, as leader of the Baroque group, had stepped up with the happy idea of playing all of the Brandenburgs. It did mean that Éowyn and Disa were only involved for the first part of the morning, in the first of the concertos, but they were having an absolute blast.

“Joyful.” That was the word that sprang to Éowyn's mind. Then with a wave of sadness, she wondered how long it had been before she felt like this. She’d enjoyed a lot of the stuff they’d done this term, felt a huge sense of pride over the way the Shostakovich had gone, but this feeling?

It was a release, a reminder, a liberation.

Not that Valandil didn’t work them hard. His whole life was early music, and he had a very firm conception of how he wanted things to go, especially the changes in tempo and mood in the final movement. But everything was conducted with good humour and a sense of fun. And above all, a joy in music making with like-minded people.

It felt like a loss when it came to an end. She and Disa, along with the oboists, packed their instruments away.

“Bach should have written horn parts in all of them,” Éowyn said, as she watched the two recorder players get ready for the next concerto.

“Not enough horn parts. The eternal sadness with Baroque music. Shall we have a cup of tea and then run some stuff for two horns in one of the practice rooms? Telemann, Vivaldi, and we can work on the opera bits and pieces.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Éowyn, slinging the case over her shoulder. As they walked down the stairs chatting about anything and everything, it suddenly struck her that Disa counted as a friend. And that, having grown up in an almost male household, she’d never really had a proper female friend before. The warm feeling from the Bach came back again.

Later that day she found herself, more familiar Alexander horn sitting in her hands, in her usual place as first horn in the repertoire orchestra. It was another afternoon of piano concertos and Faramir was first up. She remembered his rather strange reaction to the newspaper headline of the previous day. Whatever this guy Mairon was up to, it seemed to have the capacity for fucking up multiple lives – Aragorn (here she glanced over at the front desk of firsts and got that familiar flipping feeling in her stomach), by extension Arwen (a pang of guilt), and Faramir (she wasn’t quite sure what she felt about him – if she was forced to think about it, which she hoped she wasn’t, she supposed it would be that warm feeling of Bach, and Disa, and friendship – the thought passed through her mind, got shoved into the comparment labelled “do not think about this,” and filed away).

Whatever the backstory to the previous day’s reaction, Faramir now seemed to have got his emotions under control again. From Éowyn's vantage point in the horn section, he looked completely calm and collected as he adjusted the height of the piano stool to his liking.

Since it was a piano day, that meant Stone was here, shark-like grin in position beneath his black beard as he waited to see what today’s offerings were going to be like.

Faramir’s pick today was that workhorse of the piano repertoire (and standard offering on Classic FM), Rachmaninov 2. Still, standard offering didn’t mean bad – it might get played so often one could get bored with it, but considered in its own right, it still deserved its place in the repertoire.

And – to Éowyn's ear – Faramir brought something new to it, a depth of yearning and longing that transformed it. Though, of course, she had to admit that could simply be the associations the piece inevitably carried – she remembered watching That Movie with her auntie back when she was a teenager, grainy black and white on the TV screen.

But to her immense surprise, it seemed that Stone agreed with her.

“That’s a lot better than the Tchaikovsky was. I’m still not convinced you’ve succeeded in getting laid, but at least I get the impression you want to.”

Sorry to have been AWOL. I was "oop north" visiting family for Christmas (got to check out the orchestra I hope Éowyn will eventually get a job with...) and I've also been trying to get La Cenerentola done and dusted because it is, after all, a Christmas fic, and I only have two days left before the Christmas decorations are supposed to come down.

Bach – 1st Brandenburg Concerto – Freiburger Barockorchester
https://youtu.be/BOZEj8wyj-I

Vivaldi – Concerto for two horns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0PAqHB-ZfQ
Note – these aren’t hand horns; if you watch closely you can see these have tiny thumb holes.
https://jeremymontagu.co.uk/The%20Mysteries%20of%20Fingerhole%20Horns.html
https://eggerinstruments.ch/en/historic/horns/baroque-horns/

Interestingly, the holes aren’t to add extra notes into the harmonic series, they’re just to adjust the tuning of the natural harmonic series. Here’s Alison Balsom explaining this in connection with the natural Baroque trumpet (her lip-trills are to die for):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b24w_ykmwD4
She’s brilliant at explaining what I’ve tried to have Noldor and Elfhelm explaining to Éowyn: that learning the natural instrument teaches you how the music of the period works from the inside.

Rachmaninov 2, Anna Fedorova, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, Panteleev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEGOihjqO9w
And for those of you who fancy a classic 1945 three hankie weepy, directed by David Lean, here is That Movie in its entirety:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCt8S-Aio5M

Chapter Text

Term was reaching the half way point, and Merry had suggested a trip to the pub. The numbers had rapidly got out of hand – even Legolas and Gimli had ended up trailing along with them, along with Arwen (but mercifully without Aragorn, who had gone out to dinner with a lawyer friend, as Arwen had explained with no small degree of irritation). So this was how Éowyn had found herself sandwiched between Disa and Lothíriel, Faramir diagonally opposite her.

“So, Lottie, have you done your homework?” Faramir eyed her cousin over the top of his pint of beer. Éowyn realised she was slightly surprised – she would have had him taped as a wine-drinker.

“Homework?”

“The set of videos I sent you of Va tacito?”

Lothíriel blushed and shook her head.

“I don’t know why I bother. Whole minutes it must have taken me to put that list of links together, minutes, I tell you, and you spurn it. Pearls before swine.” He shook his head, his dark hair swinging across his face.

“And horn players,” said Eowyn. “You cc-ed me, remember? Pearls before swine and horn players.”

“Meh,” said Disa. “Swine, horn players. Same thing. Just mucking around making farting noises.”

“Speak for yourself darling. Some of us are artists, I’ll have you know.” Just to underline her point, Éowyn blew a very long, very loud raspberry.

“So, having cast my pearls before horn players, I don’t suppose,” said Faramir, pretending a morose outlook on life, “That you had a look at them.”

He looked at her expectantly, and waited for a reaction. Éowyn spun the moment out, and took a swig of her own beer. “Actually I did.”

Faramir brightened noticeably – perhaps the morose look hadn’t been a pretence. The way he tended to wear his heart on his sleeve was really quite endearing. She was half aware that he was a few years older than her, due to the slightly strange upbringing (something involving an aunt in Rome, and A levels abandoned for a baccalaureate, from what Lothíriel had said), but at times like this he looked incredibly young.

“So what did you think?”

“Well, it’s weird – they all bring different things to it. Overall, I think my favourite is Sarah Connolly. I can really believe her as Caesar, she’s got a brilliant military swagger. And her singing is superb. Noticeably slower than the other performances though (which would be hell for the horn player).”

“Gaëlle Arquez takes it faster.”

“Yes, her singing is wonderful too. But the production… I mean, she’s more Artemis Fowl than Julius Caesar.”

She timed it perfectly. Faramir spluttered beer across the table. He mopped up with a hankie and apologised. Trust him to look embarrassed. Feeling she was on a roll with her comic timing, she continued.

“And Ptolemy appears to be reimagined as Draco Malfoy.”

He gave a gratifying snort of laughter.

“Okay, so the production didn’t do it for you. But if Connolly is believable as Caesar, why not an actual man? Andreas Scholl.”

“If I was listening to the music on disk, and didn’t know what it was about, I’d buy it. And I love the staging – it’s fucking hilarious. The whole “mine’s bigger than yours” thrones on hydraulic lifts thing, and Ptolemy’s getting deliberately stuck part way up. Bloody genius. But ultimately, a man singing falsetto? Because let’s face it, that’s what counter-tenors are. Sorry, just not sexy.”

“So you’d take the woman singing Caesar over the man? And she’d be sexier? Interesting…”

“Get your mind out the gutter. Bloody men, faintest hint of girl-on-girl action and your brains turn to mush,” Arwen cut in – Éowyn had thought she was chatting to Legolas, but it turned out she’d been listening to their conversation.

“Arguably that’s what trouser roles are all about,” Disa said. She was writing a dissertation on changing roles for women in the history of opera. Éowyn knew she could wax lyrical about this for hours. It looked as though she was warming up to the idea of a full scale lecture, because she continued on the same theme.

“Certainly by the time you get to Mozart’s later stuff when he was writing for women rather than castrati. And very definitely the opening scene of Rosenkavalier. Absurdly young ‘man,’ played by a girl, having sex with an older woman – your classic MILF. Then they find an excuse to put the girl-dressed-as-boy back into a dress and have the lecherous old man come on to her. It’s basically the late 19th century version of a 70s VHS from a store with brown paper on the windows – ‘Lipstick lesbians get it on,’ or something like that.”

“See, it’s not just my mind that’s in the gutter.” Faramir looked straight at Éowyn, and she had a sense of some sort of challenge being offered. He broke eye contact first, though, and took another sip of bitter.

“Anyway,” he opined, looking down at the table, “That’s opera for you, sex and death, preferably both at once and often a bit kinky.” He glanced up for a moment as if trying to read her reaction.

“Siegmund and Sieglinde,” said Arwen with a laugh. She sketched air-quotes with her very elegant fingers. “Vice is nice, but incest is best…”

“Kink and incest?” said Pippin, squeezing onto the bench beside Merry. “Sounds like I’m missing all the fun.”

“Opera, it’s the original rock ‘n’ roll,” said Arwen. “Anyway, going back to where we started…” She scrolled through her phone for moment or two. “Here we go. Can counter-tenors be sexy? Have a look at this – Carlo Vistoli sings Va tacito. You’ll probably need these.” She handed her phone and a pair of headphones to Éowyn.

Éowyn listened and watched the screen intently, though part of her was aware of Arwen waiting for her reaction. And also Faramir, watching with a slight smile on his face. Eventually, she took the headphones off and handed them back, along with the phone.

“Well?”

“The horn playing is fucking fab.”

“And the counter-tenor?”

Éowyn laughed and held her hands in the air. “I surrender. You’re right. He’s sexy as fuck.”

“Like I said,” Faramir chipped in. “Not just my mind in the gutter.”

“My mind is pure as the driven slush, I’ll have you know. And requires more beer. Back in a mo.” Éowyn got to her feet. Suddenly she felt like she needed a break from the unaccountably charged atmosphere that seemed to have grown around her.

By the time she got back from the bar, the seating had readjusted itself in that curious Brownian motion that takes place in large pub gatherings, like a group of Emperor penguins shuffling round in the Antarctic winter, members continually migrating from the warm interior to the cold exterior and back again. Éowyn had to squeeze in between Faramir and Merry.

Merry and Pippin were deep in conversation about video games and the subject of something they referred to as “boob plate armour.” Éowyn raised her eyebrows.

“It started with Seigmund and Sieglinde, segued through the Ride of the Valkyries and ended up with women warriors in video games,” Faramir explained.

“Why do I get the feeling they’re not in the games for their fighting prowess?”

Faramir laughed. “Ask them.” He waved a hand across her in the direction of Merry and Pippin.

“Hey, we’re doing a serious critical examination here. Pointing out that your classic boob-plate armour would be fatal ‘cos it would channel arrows straight towards your heart. We’re the good guys, fighting for historical realism and armour for women that does the job.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Éowyn. “Underneath your jumper you’ve got one of those t-shirts that says ‘this is what a feminist looks like.’”

“Oh god, don’t,” said Arwen. “Never met a man with one of those who didn’t turn out to be a sexist arse. It’s the Joss Whedon effect.”

Almost simultaneously, Faramir said, “Surcoats. That’s what you need. Takes the edge off the arrow strike and also prevents it fragmenting and sending shrapnel into your face – which, incidentally, is also a problem with male breast-plates, and why they have that v-shaped flange.”

“Cool, a proper history nerd,” said Pippin, just as Disa answered Arwen with “Hell yeah. Too right.”

Éowyn realised she was now uncomfortably stuck between two different and diverging conversations and was starting to get a headache. For the second time that evening, she felt an urgent need for a break. What had been meant to be a quiet unwind down the pub had spiralled into something altogether too busy, too filled with people. She decided to go for a pee.

As she came out of the toilet, the main door of the pub swung open and in walked… her brother.

Bugger. Another failure in compartmentalization.

He was with a couple of his mates from the engineering department, fellow nerds she’d met a few times when they came round for pizza and a movie or a late night gaming session. He saw her immediately, and waved. Nothing for it but to go over and talk to him. Still, at least it got her away from what showed every sign of degenerating into typical pub rants in place of conversation.

“Hi, little blister.”

“Hi, big bother.”

“Those your musician mates over there? Can we join you? It’s our only chance of getting a table.”

“Knock yourself out.”

And so even more people squeezed in. Which is how Éowyn ended the night, sandwiched between a couple of engineering PhDs talking shop, while watching Faramir hold forth animatedly to Pippin and Merry and wondering whether she might not have been able to put up with a conversation about boob plate armour after all. It had to be better than some obscure joke about “shifting all the poles to the same side of the plane,” which apparently was hilarious if you were an engineer.

And better than – rather alarmingly – watching from the opposite end of the table as her brother, her own bloody brother, chatted up then copped off with Lothíriel. As she finally headed for the door (alone) she saw the two of them playing tonsil tennis in a dark corner near the fruit machine. Oh god, please let them go to hers rather than his; she didn’t think she could cope with seeing Lothíriel over breakfast. Not that she wasn’t nice, she was. But she was way too young for Éomer, and it was all just too weird.

Her compartmentalization was shot to shit. Crashing and burning as she watched helplessly.

Richard Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier, Catherine Carby (Octavian), Cheryl Barker (The Marschallin), Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt0NXmOQG7E
No subtitles, I’m afraid, but this is the opening scene in which Octavian (the titular “Knight of the Rose”) wakes up in bed with his much older, richer and socially superior lover, the Marschallin.

And here – god, I love the stuff you stumble across on YouTube – Jeff Spurgeon from WQXR does the plot of Der Rosenkavalier in three minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoNl3kWntK4
Genius.

Siegmund and Sieglinde (Stuart Skelton and Samantha Crawford) – I’ve always assumed this pair was Tolkien’s inspiration for the doomed, unknowingly incestuous love of Túrin and Níniel in the Silmarillion (though Siegmund and Sieglinde know they’re brother and sister, they just don’t care). He would of course have known the Edda inside out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQPVX-BjUFU
We’ll come back to Die Walküre later, because how could we possibly have a story about Éowyn, shieldmaiden and French horn player, without a bit of Valkyrie action in there?

Plus (for the fellow nerds out there) my list of Va tacito performances: compare and contrast.

• Andreas Scholl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRImsDQbaYY
• Sarah Connolly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fieBT98DCLc
• Gaëlle Arquez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj3GqIqXKus
• Carlo Vistoli https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No-InkHfl4o

Later edit - for my fellow nerds (I know you're out there) - I've found a great dissertation comparing and contrasting Mozart's use of castrati and female mezzo sopranos in his operas: "Mozart's "Mezzos": A Comparative Study Between Castrato and
Female Roles in Mozart's Operas" by Erin Gonzalez (submitted for her DMus, and available via digitalscholarship.unlv.edu).
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/3604/

Chapter Text

The day after the pub trip, Éowyn was nursing a slight hangover. And living with the slightly uncomfortable knowledge that Éomer had been a dirty stop-out – with someone she knew. That bit wasn’t so bad, but Lottie was a first year, for god’s sake. She’d thought her brother was a bit better than that. Which may have explained her grumpiness, and why what had started as a friendly discussion about which symphonies you loved, and which you thought were over-rated had turned, well, a bit heated.

Disa and Éowyn were going at it, hammer and tongs. Good-naturedly, but with an edge.

“No, you’ve got it arse-about-face. The 4th movement is an anticlimax. I love the first three movements, but when they start singing, it all goes pear-shaped for me.”

“How can you say that? You philistine. It’s one of the great moments, possibly the greatest moment in music. The orchestra have experimented with all the earlier themes and found them wanting and suddenly, bam, there it is, the chorus with the most memorable tune in classical music.”

“You see, I just find the experimentation really tedious and contrived. It’s so artificial. It’s ‘let me tell you a story – and bludgeon you round the head while I’m at it.’ Same reason Fidelio fails as an opera. Beethoven was not good at narrative – he does polemic, not story-telling. But unfortunately thought he was - good at story telling. So he thinks he’s doing something ground-breaking and it falls flat.”

“Bullshit. He was embroiled in the age of revolution, he was passionate about this stuff. It comes from the heart as well as the head. It’s the start of an argument for a better world – and done in music.”

Éowyn and Disa were back on a well-worn argument between the two of them. Lothíriel was refereeing, or possibly acting as agent provocateur, it was hard to tell. Somehow, Faramir had managed to bag a place at their table with his cup of coffee and book. He was pretending to read, but Éowyn could tell he was also watching the battle with considerable amusement.

She had reached the point of gesticulating with her teaspoon to emphasise her points: never a winning stage in any argument, she knew, but then, when had learning from experience ever got in the way of a good bullshit session? But suddenly her concentration – and teaspoon – wobbled. The cause was, well, it was a known issue. Aragorn Walker, within 10 feet. In fact, 10 feet and closing. She felt the familiar sensation of her brain turning to mush.

Then he actually stopped beside their table.

“Nice solo in the Brahms yesterday.” He gave her that smile, the thousand watt smile, the one that melted her innards. “Looking forward to seeing what you can do with the Mahler next week.” And he winked. He actually winked.

Éowyn could feel her cheeks catching flame. Oh god, why couldn’t she be cool and detached about it all? Disa frowned. Great: and now she’d annoyed her friend by being such a total sap about it.

But it turned out, as Walker sauntered away into the distance (god, he had a nice arse) that her friend wasn’t annoyed with her.

“Bloody hell, he’s such a tosser. Thinks he’s god’s gift,” Disa snapped.

“So does someone else,” Lothíriel said with a smirk and a pointed glance at Éowyn.

Éowyn wanted the ground to swallow her up. Did the whole bloody college know about her doomed crush? She was so consumed with embarrassment, she barely noticed Faramir snap his book shut and leave without a word.

Disa kicked Lothíriel under the table.

“No, it’s okay, I deserve a roasting about it. I am an idiot, I know,” Éowyn said. “I am trying to pull myself together.”

“And he’s a tosser for playing on it and flirting with you just to wind you up. Specially when he has a girlfriend. A nice girlfriend who deserves better.” Disa sounded genuinely angry.

They parted ways to go to their separate lessons and practice sessions, Éowyn feeling there was an awkward atmosphere that could have done with being cleared up. The trouble was, she had no idea how to set about clearing it up. Other than by getting over Aragorn bloody Walker.

It was maybe a couple of hours later when she made her way back down the corridor from the practice room. As she walked, she heard a familiar aria drifting from one of the other rooms. Mozart’s Se vuol ballare. One of the horn pieces she and Disa were working on, with Haldir. But whoever was in the practice room, singing away, it wasn’t Haldir.

There was something “off” about it. It was pleasant enough, as far as it went. The accompanist was good, with a lovely touch and a real feel for Mozart. In fact, arguably, the pianist was the best thing about it. The baritone voice, well, it was warm, and pleasant, and reasonably accurate, and (as far as she could tell from a position of near complete ignorance of the language) the Italian was fluent – the Italian of someone who understood what he was singing. Furthermore, there was real emotion in there. But there was no real power, no projection. It was… amateurish. Reasonably good, but still amateurish. Which was not at all what you expected round these parts.

And the emotion… There was something odd about that too. Then she realised: it was genuine anger, not acting.

Intrigued, she peered through the little glass window in the door. And stepped away as rapidly as she could. Of all the people to suddenly develop a taste for singing opera. It was Faramir.

Hoping he hadn’t seen her, for it seemed like a curiously private moment, she retreated down the corridor feeling puzzled.

Later, when she caught up with Disa, she said “So, Se vuol ballare. What’s it actually about? What’s going on in the opera at that point?”

Disa grinned.

“God, you’re hopeless. Though I suppose as a horn-player you’ve got more excuse than Lottie, who’s actually meant to be learning Italian. It’s usually translated as ‘If you want to dance, my lord, I’ll pay the piper.” Figaro’s just discovered the Count intends to resurrect droit de seigneur, specifically with a view to seducing Figaro’s fiancée.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I came across Faramir singing it earlier on. Singing it like someone had just pissed on his chips. Seemed a bit odd. I can’t think why he’d be doing that.”

Disa made a vague snorting noise which she rapidly turned into a sort of approximation to a cough. “No. Why indeed? I can’t think either.”

Éowyn turned round, trying to come up with a smart follow-up, but someone behind her tapped her on the shoulder. She turned round. Pippin and Sam stood behind her.

“Hi Éowyn, are you free this afternoon and evening? We’re kind of desperate.”

“What’s happened?”

“The session orchestra. Our third horn’s been taken into hospital with appendicitis. The guy who’d normally fill in has gone to Birmingham to see his girlfriend.”

“What are you playing?”

“Movie music.”

Pippin played his last card in desperation. “Durin’s throwing an after concert party.”

“Disa? This sounds like a job made for you.”

“I promised I’d go to Isildur and Valandil’s recital tonight. Remember?”

Eowyn looked at the two of them, smiling hopefully, looking a bit like eternal schoolboys. She gave her head a shake.

“Oh, go on then. Beer’s on you, though.”

“It’s a deal.”

“What time’s the rehearsal?”

“Three.”

She checked the time.

“Just time for a cuppa before hand – that’s on you too.”

Mozart, Se vuol ballare, Vito Priante (bass), Ticciati, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=est2z4PEwfs

It’s the eve of Figaro’s wedding to Susannah. He’s been singing the praises of how kind Count Almaviva is to give them this incredibly convenient bedroom, in between the Countess’s room (if she needs Susannah, she can ring “ting ting”) and the Count’s room (if he needs Figaro, he can ring, “dong dong”). Susannah points out that Figaro is being idiotically naive and the Count is not being kind at all. In fact, the Count is waiting for an opportunity to send Figaro to the far side of the estate, then “DONG DONG”, he’ll ring for Susannah to come to his room. (This duet has some bastard arpeggios in the horn part at the end...)

Figaro gets mad, then, being Figaro, starts plotting (being very much a “don’t get mad, get even” kind of a bloke).

If you listen carefully, you’ll be able to hear that the accompaniment is two horns and pizzicato strings – I recently got to play this, which was slightly terrifying as my top register is not what it used to be.

And a complete performance by students – this time the RCM in London rather than RNCM, but as you can see, by this stage in their training they are turning out professional quality performances:
>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ik-PzAXsQ

Brahms’ 1st symphony – the horn solo – Netherlands Phil, Haenchen
https://youtu.be/W_xjkPKi_eI?t=1843

Chapter Text

On the way to the rehearsal after her reviving cup of tea, Éowyn had tried one last roll of the die to get out of playing.

“You guys realise I don’t know the repertoire…”

“Course you do. Everyone does. You’ve watched the films a million times.”

So here she was. Having an absolute blast. The brass writing was fantastic. She felt rather sorry for the strings, who seemed to exist for the most part simply to provide touches of emotional colour.

And the rhythms. Oh the rhythms. The sheer fun of having a drum kit, centre stage. Played with great panache and impeccable skill by Durin, spectacular hair and beard making him look like a mountain troll, almost as wide as he was tall (which wasn’t very). He was, she realised, a spectacularly good drummer.

And there in the front row of the audience were all her friends – Merry had obviously issued a three-line whip. Sam’s friend Frodo was there, Lothíriel and Arwen too. And Lothíriel had brought her brother along. That had to be a first. Éomer normally complained that until such time as Éowyn learned to play a proper instrument (by which he meant electric guitar) and learned to play proper music (by which he meant thrash metal), there were some things even brotherly love wouldn’t get him to endure. In fairness, the one and only time she’d got him to come to one of her previous concerts, they’d been playing Bruckner. Which wasn’t the ideal introduction for the beginner. Understatement of the year. Possibly decade.

To Éowyn’s immense amusement, it turned out Arwen was a foot-tapper. (Aragorn was not there, for which absence Éowyn was immensely grateful). And there, with a huge grin on his face, was Faramir. She’d assumed he’d be a snob about this sort of thing, but from the unguarded look on his face, he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

She was taking a moment or two to study them all – the strings were having a rare moment of prominence, along with an oboe for Ennio Morricone’s score for the Mission. As she often did in breaks between her passages, her right arm rested on the top of her horn, fingers absently tracing the etched swirls on the valve caps. Her connection to her mum. God, she hoped if she ever had kids, she’d live to see them grow up. Kids… Now there was a weird train of thought. She’d never really given it much thought. How did you combine kids with a career as a musician? Some people did, she knew that. Domestic bliss had never featured on her horizon. Really, other than music, for the last few years her thoughts hadn’t gone much beyond survival.

Audience applause brought her out of her reverie. What was next? Oh yes, Pirates of the Caribbean. The run through in rehearsal earlier had established that this was both easy and tremendous fun – the perfect combination. Things didn’t have to be virtuoso level at all times. Not every part had to be Mahler or Richard Strauss. Or Bruckner, for that matter.

They launched into the opening bars. Opening fanfare out of the way, she settled to count the next rest. She realised that Faramir was sitting in her sight-line, just behind the conductor’s arm. Was he watching the conductor, or her? He smiled, and she wondered if the smile was the recollection of the small boy he once was, watching daring sword-fights in the cinema. For a moment, it crossed her mind to wonder whether the smile was for her. Don’t be daft, she told herself. Where had that thought had even come from? Then she was within two bars of her next entry and she pulled herself together and focussed on getting that right.

The closer was a Bond medley – plenty of heavy brass, and Sam’s chance to shine with that absolutely iconic guitar riff. When the applause finally finished, Éowyn’s face ached as much from the grin across her face as from playing.

She’d just stowed her horn in its case and grabbed her coat when Sam tugged at her elbow.

“I’ve got the beer – c’mon, Durin’s place.”

Éowyn had never been quite sure whether she liked house parties. There was always a bit of a weird atmosphere of trying too hard. Forced Bacchanalianism. On the other hand, she was still buzzing from the concert which cast a happy glow over everything around her. And this party seemed to have a nice mellow atmosphere to it. Probably down to its hosts. Disa and Durin were the embodiment of the phrase laid back..

“That was brilliant. Why don’t you play that kind of stuff all the time?” Éomer came bouncing up to her and sat down heavily on the sofa. Lothíriel followed close behind and perched on the arm. He put a hand round her waist, casually. Oh great. They were officially an item, it seemed. This meant sooner or later she would have to put up with Lothíriel's unquenchable exuberance at breakfast. Mentally she told herself off for being such a grump. Lottie was a nice girl. Just… a bit bouncy. Like Tigger in human form. And she was more of an Eeyore. Specially first thing in the morning.

She chatted to the pair of them for a while, then they drifted off in search of food (rumours of pizza were circulating; Éowyn would put money on the pizza being the stuff of myth and legend). She was weighing up whether she could summon the energy to mingle when the sofa sagged beside her. She looked across. It was Faramir. He gave her a cheerful grin.

“That was fun.”

“Thanks.”

“Bit of a change from the usual.”

“Just a bit. But I really enjoyed it. I’m glad Pippin twisted my arm.”

“And Sam, from what I heard.”

“You know Sam?” It had been puzzling her ever since she saw him in the coffee shop with Sam and his friends.

“Through Frodo – we were at school together. I was a couple of years older. But… Well, I had an accident and smashed my leg up. Things were… a bit complicated at home, so when I finally got out of hospital I ended up spending the summer with Frodo and his uncle. And of course got to know Sam pretty well. This will make you laugh, because I know you think I’m more uptight than a very uptight thing…”

“No I don’t,” she said, then honesty compelled her to add “Well, only a bit.”

“I used to play jazz with Sam and his girlfriend.”

Now the pieces fell into place. The most insanely brave thing I’ve ever seen. Frodo’s words echoed in her head. She looked at him, trying to puzzle him out. What did she actually know about him? Brilliant pianist. Uptight, but in a kind of nice way. In fact, all round nice guy. No, genuinely nice guy. For once her cynical side got firmly squashed by the better angels of her nature. (Where that phrase had come from, she wondered. God, her brain was like a junk yard.)

She realised Faramir was waiting for a reaction.

“You playing jazz. I have to hear that some time.”

“Brubeck. Take Five.”

“Of course – it had to be something complicated.”

“All jazz is complicated. Talking of complicated, how’s the Bozza going?”

Éowyn frowned. “It’s… not, really.”

“You seemed on top of the notes when we ran it.”

“I am. But I’m kind of underwhelmed by it.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. All showmanship and precious little musical content.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to work up the enthusiasm.”

“Hmm, ‘cos I had an idea. An idea which might work for both of us – do you fancy doing one of the lunchtime recitals together next term? Noldor was saying they had a couple of cancellations to fill. Because I was wondering if I could talk you into the Hindemith sonata. And Beethoven.”

“The Beethoven I know. Hindemith, heard it, never played it.”

“He wrote it for Dennis Brain.”

“I know. God, wouldn’t that be something? To have the greatest composers of your time lining up to write stuff for you?”

“Yeah, though hopefully I’d do it without the live fast, die young aspect. Anyway, what do you think? You could even do the Bozza in the middle, show off a bit, but sandwich it between some stuff that was musically more interesting.”

“What do you get out of this?”

“Another recording for my video catalogue to go with the CV. Don’t laugh, but I’m thinking of applying for the BBC’s New Generation Artist programme, and you need a huge collection of recordings of yourself in concert, playing as big a range of stuff as possible.”

Éowyn turned to face him, genuinely excited on his behalf. “No, definitely not laughing. I think that’s a brilliant idea. You’re a fabulous pianist. You should be in with a really good shout.”

It was hard to tell in the party gloom, but she was pretty sure he blushed.

“So. Recital? Are you up for it?” He paused and then added, rather earnestly, “It’s not just about my CV. I really enjoyed playing with you the other day. I’d like to work on some stuff properly with you.”

It was rare for Éowyn to react instantly, to know when something was right. When they were teenagers, Éomer used to joke that her middle name was Indecision. But for once, she was hit by an absolutely clear sense that yes, she did want to do this.

She nodded. “It’s a date.”

He didn’t say anything, simply smiled.

Barry/ Arnold: James Bond Medley, BBC Concert Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULjYEARQTrg

Barry is a fabulous film composer – I’d pick him for my desert island over John Williams any day. And that theme from OHMSS is probably my favourite bit of Bond music. (I’ve got the horn part for a brass arrangement of the main Bond theme on the music stand behind me at the moment). Film music in general is fab – of the stuff I’ve been lucky enough to play, Hans Zimmer (another genius) and Klaus Badelt’s music for Pirates of the Caribbean is a blast to play, and some of the classic older film music – Ron Goodwin’s score for Where Eagles Dare is brilliant (that opening with the snare drum). And pretty much anything by Ennio Morricone (with the music for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly top of my list). Then there’s the point where film music intersects with “serious music” and that point is William Walton and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The musical interlude in the Battle of Britain where the sound track just cuts, and you’re left with actual footage of dogfights to Walton’s score sends shivers down my spine every time, and Vaughan Williams’ music for Scott of the Antarctic which he worked up into a full symphony is stunning. Then there’s Nino Rota (the Godfather), Korngold (countless films of the 30s and 40s, plus a ravishingly gorgeous violin concerto). I could go on for ever!

Morricone: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Danish National Symphony Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga0VrD_-1rI

Klaus Badelt/ Hans Zimmer: Pirates of the Carribean, Liverpool Phil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiorwW7B-9Y

Finally, I’m guessing if you’re still with me at this point in the story, you may be a music enthusiast yourself, and if so, join me in nerding out over the Pirates of the Caribbean score and the story behind it (NB – everyone, and I mean everyone – recycles stuff: not just Zimmer but also Bach, Handel, Rossini, etc. etc.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OplfRgWZ7Q
(And if you have time, read the comments below the video – they’re a treasure-trove.)

And more nerdery – the chord progressions in the Bond themes (Radiohead’s original and ultimately unused theme for Spectre):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiesXqT1P3g
I wish they’d left it to Radiohead – not keen on the Sam Smith theme (typical Sam Smith whinge-fest) that made the final cut, personally.

Chapter Text

The moment had arrived. Breakfast with Lottie. Éomer’s new – whatever she was, Éowyn wasn’t sure – anyway, whatever she was, she had come back to theirs after Durin’s party. Éowyn's worst fears were realised: she was not just Tigger in the morning, she was Tigger-on-speed. Éowyn made herself another black coffee. Such was Lottie’s ebullience that she contemplated “hair of the dog” in the form of adding a shot of whisky to the coffee by way of a coping mechanism, but decided that way madness lay.

Suddenly there was a ring at the door. Éowyn staggered up from the table and went to open it. It was Arwen and Disa.

“We’re here for the shopping trip.”

“Shopping trip?” Éowyn repeated, muzzily. It wasn’t precisely a hangover. She’d only had one bottle of beer. But repeated late nights and long days had taken their toll anyway. Bugger it, she might as well have taken full advantage of Pippin and Sam’s beer. Her head couldn’t have been worse.

“Yes, you, and us, and Lottie,” said Arwen, as if she should have known this.

“What?” She still sounded blurry. For that matter, she felt blurry.

From behind her, Lottie said, “We’re staging an intervention. We’ve had enough of that baggy man’s shirt and shapeless polyester school trousers that you call ‘concert gear.’”

“What? No. No way.”

“Yes way,” said Arwen, stepping past her. Disa followed, looking slightly sheepish. Éowyn caught her eye.

“Et tu Brute?”

“Hey…” She held up her hands in supplication. “I’m on your side. You know these two are going to try to pour you into some sort of backless black satin slinky thing with sequins that looks like it’s been painted on. I’m here to make sure we get you something you’ll be comfortable wearing.”

“I already have something I’m comfortable with. The black trousers and shirt,” said Éowyn, firmly.

“No, you haven’t. You really haven’t.”

Éowyn rolled her eyes. Disa shrugged, an almost Gallic gesture.

“Yeah, I am on your side. For the most part. Trust me on this. But – to be absolutely honest – I’m mainly here because… They’re right. Your concert stuff does look like shit.”

“So? It’s the regulation black. It keeps me warm. It covers all the bits polite society says ought to be covered. All the functions of clothing are ticked off. It does the job. I’m there to make a nice noise, not look like the cover of Vogue.”

“Bollocks. In the immortal words of Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music, that stuff looks like you got it from the heap the charity shop rejected.” Disa was quite firm.

“We’ll be gentle,” said Arwen.

“But we will win,” added Lothíriel. You might as well admit defeat and surrender to your fate.”

“Éomer? Help.”

“Hey, I’m not getting in to this." Éomer took a slurp of coffee and slathered another layer of marmalade on his toast. "Besides which, right now, I have more to gain from being in Lottie’s good books than being in yours.”

By the time they had gone all the way down King Street, along Deansgate and back up through the arcade into St. Anne’s Square, Éowyn was knackered. And bad tempered.

“Can’t we just go into the Arndale Centre and get something cheap and cheerful? Please?” She couldn’t keep the pleading note out of her voice. “If I have to face another snotty cow in another fancy boutique I swear I’ll punch someone.”

Arwen relented slightly. “Let’s grab a coffee.”

“Well, clearly not here. I don’t want to blow my whole student loan.” They retreated back onto Deansgate and found somewhere a bit more in Éowyn's price range.

The four of them huddled round a table. Éowyn felt quite deflated. Disa had proved to be prophetic – Arwen and Lothíriel seemed on a mission to get her into something quite ridiculous. The high – or low – point (depending on one’s point of view) had been the designer shop where Lottie had forced her into a Dolce e Gabbana number. Éowyn had taken one look in the mirror and burst out laughing, before striking an attitude and saying “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn this way.”

And, in fairness, she had to credit the designer’s artistry. Broad backed and with small breasts, Éowyn had always been aware that (to quote her brother, at a point in her teens where this had earned him a left hook) she went “straight up and down.” But whatever magic had taken place on the cutting table, this dress gave her curves. Like Jessica Rabbit. It also left her with the uncomfortable feeling that, since they were merely borrowed and not her own, someone might inadvertently pull some hidden rip cord leaving her deflating visibly in a public place.

She had declined to buy the dress on the grounds that it cost more than some countries’ national debts, and also that the only social occasion for which she felt it was appropriate was the funeral of one’s much older Mafia husband. A funeral which took place somewhere near the opening of a spy thriller, in between snogging James Bond and being shot by assassins for committing the cardinal crime of being the first act Bond girl rather than the third and fourth act Bond girl.

“Are you okay?” Disa asked Arwen.

Éowyn realised Arwen was also strangely quiet, stirring her sugar into her coffee with an odd single-mindedness.

“Just tired. Ara’s all strung out about this business with Mairon, and I’m living with the uncertainty – does he want to stick with music, does he want to go back to law? I’ve already uprooted myself once to come up here when he got the place here. I had to organising transferring my masters too. Now it looks like I’m going to being back again. Or maybe not.”

“It’s a bugger, isn’t it, trying to juggle two careers?” said Disa.

Her voice was sympathetic, but Éowyn was sure she’d caught an eye roll when Arwen mentioned Aragorn’s indecision, and a frown when she mentioned having to uproot herself. So – trouble in paradise. Éowyn wasn’t sure how she felt about this. She was trying very hard to feel suitably sympathetic, and stamp on the annoying, unworthy ember of hope that flickered deep in some dark corner of her psyche. But it was a hell of an effort. She reminded herself that Arwen was genuinely nice, and immediately felt like a prize shit for harbouring even that small ember. God, this trip had been a mistake.

“So, where next?” asked Lottie, brightly. The atmosphere, at least in Éowyn's mind, lightened slightly. Maybe Tigger-on-speed had her uses.

“Well,” said Disa, “There’s a place between Deansgate and the river, down the backstreets, which has some interesting stuff.”

It had been a set up, Éowyn realised. Disa walked into the shop and greeted the woman behind the counter – a striking, tall woman with impeccable braids and cheekbones to die for – with a hug. In fact, Disa admitted as much later: “I just let Lottie and Arwen exhaust themselves showing you stuff you’d hate, and while you were in the changing rooms, texted Haleth with some ideas.”

Disa’s ideas turned out to be spot on. Éowyn found herself with a feminine version of a man’s dinner jacket – black dupion, with just a touch of glamour in the form of black satin lapels and a thin stripe of satin down the elegant trousers, which gave them a slightly military swagger. The jacket was long enough to flatter, and shaped enough to look good. In fact, in its understated way, it did a better job of making the most of her skinny frame than the Dolce e Gabbana. She was a little nervous about the front – a fairly deep cleavage framed by those satin lapels – and said as much, adding that she supposed it would be all right if she wore a black camisole underneath.

“You ruin the line of that suit with a camisole and I will personally shove your mute where the sun don’t shine,” Disa said, in a voice that brooked no objection.

But the big surprise was that Disa had been thinking ahead.

“You’re doing Strauss 1 in a few weeks time.”

“Well, I can wear this…” Éowyn held up her new threads.

“No, you can’t. The soloist is supposed to stand out and look glamorous.”

“I think I’ve got something that might work,” said Haleth. Again with the set-up. Éowyn sighed.

The “something” turned out to be a jumpsuit in a deep bottle green. A boat neck, which Éowyn agreed was not too revealing and she could probably live with.

“Yeah, well,” said Disa with a laugh.

“Shoulders and collar bone to die for. Remember, less is more… Love, you look gorgeous,” said Haleth.

Éowyn looked in the mirror. It was as if her hair glowed against the deep green. The outfit had been designed with chiffon sleeves and a kind of chiffon tunic with an asymmetric hem which swept down to about knee length. It sounded improbable; in reality, it looked… Gorgeous. That was the right word. She stared at her reflection. It was still her, and she thought she could live with it, because it wasn’t too outrageous. But it also looked… Good.

Éowyn wasn’t quite sure how she felt about looking good. She liked looking invisible.

“I don’t think I can afford both,” she said, realising she had a get-out clause no fellow student could argue with.

“Ah, well, maybe you can…” Lottie handed her an envelope.

She opened it. It was a card and some bank notes. She read the scrawl on the card. “Little Blister – it’s your birthday coming up. Spend this on something that doesn’t look like a black bin bag, for fuck’s sake. Love, Éomer. XXX”

Unexpectedly, Éowyn got that “playing Bach” feeling and felt her eyes fill with tears. She blinked them away quickly before anyone noticed.

Una donna a quindici anni, Eiran James as Despina, with Amanda Roocroft and Rosa Mannion as the sisters, Fiordiligi and Dorabella
https://youtu.be/MXCEuYL1pBU?t=5683

And where would we be without Cecilia Bartoli, again?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PXz3ilXrxs

Chapter Text

Éowyn had woken early that morning, with one of those uneasy feelings. Everything felt a bit off, somehow. She had a sense that it was going to be one of those days where the world conspired not to work quite as she wanted, which was compounded by the non-arrival of her bus. She also had a curious feeling it was going to be one of those days of intrusive thoughts; she had them from time to time. Less so than in the immediate aftermath of the attack, though they’d ramped up after the crap-fest of a court case. She damped them down for the most part by throwing herself into work – practice and rehearsals. Even so, some days, she knew the world just wasn’t going to be on her side.

Despite the bus, she arrived a bit early for the period orchestra session, and found Disa sitting outside the rehearsal hall, chatting to Faramir, of all people. For a moment, Éowyn came to a halt behind them, waiting for a suitable gap in the conversation.

“Only three weeks till the end of term. So, what are you doing for Christmas?”

“Going to Lottie’s. We don’t know yet if my brother will get leave, though.”

“Leave?” Disa asked.

“He’s in the army. Kind of a big family tradition – in fact I’m named after an ancestor who was at the Battle of Balaclava. I’m something of an oddball in the family for not going into the military.”

“Balaclava? That rings a bell.”

“Glad it does for someone.” Éowyn sat down beside Disa.

Faramir gave the smile of someone who has had this conversation before.

“The charge of the Light Brigade, and all that.”

“Your ancestor was in the charge of the Light Brigade? Wow.” Disa sounded genuinely impressed. “We did that in school. Canons to the right of them, canons to the left of them, into the valley of death rode the six hundred.”

“Well, sort of. But no, he wasn’t in the charge, he got shot by a Russian rifleman the day before. It turns out to be singularly inglorious as such stories go. Back in the 1980s another family member who fancied himself as an amateur military historian went and dug out as many contemporaneous records as he could. He found a letter from one of the other cavalrymen to his sweetheart back home: it seems Faramir the first got shot while on the latrine.”

Éowyn gave a snort of laughter, then clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”

“No, it is pretty funny.” Faramir smiled at her. “For my sins, I’m named after the guy who didn’t die in the Charge of the Light Brigade because he got shot the day before while having a crap. It’s basically something out of Horrible Histories’ Stupid Deaths.”

Disa started to sing the Stupid Deaths song. Faramir joined in. Then all three of them dissolved into helpless laughter.

Disa checked the time. “C’mon, we’d better head off. Or do you want to be late for King?”

Éowyn got up, and picked up her case. She was just about to set off when Faramir chipped in.

“You’re doing a concert this week, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Strauss 1.”

“I’ll be there,” he said with a smile.

As they walked off, Disa dug her in the ribs.

“What?” said Éowyn.

“He’s coming to your Strauss,” said Disa, in a faintly sing song voice.

“So?”

“Are you blind, woman?”

“Oh, give over,” said Éowyn, and dug her in the ribs in return.

Éowyn had a new strategy for King’s classes. Cold professionalism. Whatever he asked, she did. If he then did a u-turn and asked for the opposite, she did that. If he changed his mind again – for the hell of it – she went back to the first way of playing it. If he tried to wind her up by saying “What are you, a robot? Don’t you have an opinion of your own?” she would calmly reply by saying “I can see merits to both – which is why I’d leave it to the conductor.”

Whatever he tried, she stone-walled. It was effective – eventually, after realising she wasn’t playing ball, he moved onto an easier target. But god, it was exhausting. Like keeping your guard up for three rounds against someone who hit hard and went in below the belt the moment he was on the ref’s blind side.

She staggered out and almost collided with Miriel. She hadn’t seen the pianist for several weeks. Miriel had decided she’d had enough of King and had replaced his module with a rather bold move – a dissertation on Florence Price and the intersection between African American popular music of the early 20th century and Price’s classical compositions. Bold, because it was late in the year to switch to writing a dissertation. Most students who chose to write an extended dissertation spent the summer before the final year started haunting the library. As with Hama, Miriel was playing catch-up. And all because of King. Everyone’s life made harder, less enjoyable, and in Hama and Miriel’s case, probably costing them valuable marks in their final year.

Éowyn gave Miriel a watery smile, the best she could manage. As she did so, she realised she felt utterly drained and exhausted. And in desperate need of a break.

Miriel smiled in return.

“Are you going to the recital?”

She gestured up the sweeping staircase from the foyer. Éowyn caught sight of a crowd milling about outside the main auditorium. Of course, it was lunchtime recital time. Now there was a thought. She could slip into the back of the auditorium and spend an hour unwinding, just listening to other people play. She nodded.

“See you in there. Just got to pick up a couple of books first,” Miriel said, then disappeared down the corridor which led to the library.

On autopilot, Éowyn climbed the stairs.

The crowd consisted mostly of people in middle age – academics from the university next door taking advantage of the free recital series to have their own mid-day break from the stresses of work. Unnoticed, she slipped into the back row of seats.

The stage was set up with a grand piano, its lid partially open, and two chairs with stands – the chair to the right had a cellist’s spike rest attached to the chair legs. So – a piano trio. She could live with that.

What came as a bit more of a surprise was when the musicians walked onto the stage – Beregond, his friend Damrod, and Faramir. She slumped down in her seat. For some reason she didn’t want him to think she was following him around.

The first piece was an early Mozart piano trio, which washed over her, gently unfurling around her. The main piece, though, was a Schubert piano trio, and as she listened to the first movement expand outwards into ever growing complexity, in a delicate allegro, almost dance-like in places, she was reminded that while brass players had the most fun in film music, pianists and string players had all the best chamber music cornered. Sure, there was some good stuff for the horn. But the truly sublime stuff, the works of genius in the chamber music world, were for strings. She let the music flow over her, and it worked its magic. She could feel her breathing and heart-rate slow, feel the tension seep out of her shoulders. She listened in delight as the violin and cello swapped themes while Faramir played rippling arpeggios, like a stream babbling through a summer meadow.

There was a brief pause as they gathered themselves for the second movement. Then Faramir opened with a subtle rhythm, picked out in understated chords. And Beregond came in with a tune so sublime, so beautiful, that she lost it entirely.

It was as if a dam had broken. Everything – the trial, the attack, the unhappiness, the mood swings, the craziness, the strung out desire to excel, the awfulness of King’s classes, the insane crush on Walker – it all came flooding out. Even the long buried feelings surrounding her mum. The pent up emotion flowed down her cheeks in hot trails of tears. She leaned forward and buried her face in her hands, trying not to make any noise, all the while shaking with emotion. Beregond came to the end of the tune, but then it was picked up seamlessly by Faramir in the piano part, and she found there was no respite in the flood of emotion the music had unleashed.

At the end of the movement, an elderly woman with greying hair leaned across from the next seat but one and offered her a packet of hankies. Éowyn accepted gratefully. She wanted above all things to escape, but that would only draw attention to herself. She settled instead for trying to breath slowly in and out, trying to recapture the calm from the first movement. The scherzo was a delicate dance-like tune, yet filled with intricate exchanges between the instruments, the parts weaving in and out of one another, and gradually the lighter mood began to soothe Éowyn and she started to regain control of herself.

The final movement was one of those delightful tunes which Schubert seemed to conjure an endless supply of, with a counter-melody starting in the minor before modulating into a triumphant major key. When the gorgeous theme of the slow movement returned for a reprise, she managed to hold it together this time, finding she could cope with it in its place between the other melodies. Finally the trio came to an end. As the hall filled with warm applause, Éowyn leaned over to the older woman and thanked her for the hankies, then slipped out of the back of the hall.

Some time later, she sat in one of the practice rooms, running through technical exercises. The focus on technique without the emotional impact of the music of any of the pieces she was working on, soothed her.

There was a soft knock at the door. She looked up towards the glass pane. Faramir’s face was framed by the small window. She gestured for him to come in.

He looked at her slightly hesitantly, then said “Miriel told me she’d seen you in the audience for our lunchtime recital, and you seemed really upset, so… I thought… I wanted to check you were okay.”

Éowyn tried to frame a reply. Part of her wanted to burst into tears again, but something held her back. Pride, she supposed. She really didn’t want his pity.

“God, sorry. I’d hoped I’d managed to sneak out without anyone seeing. It’s… it’s been a sod of a term with King, and I had a sod of a summer with… stuff, and all sorts of shit just seemed to come bubbling to the surface. I’m fine now.” She tried for a smile, but it came out a bit wonky. “I blame it on your beautiful playing – well, mainly Beregond’s beautiful playing. Anyway, all under control now.”

Faramir looked at her with that piercing gaze he seemed to be able to conjure up. She got the feeling he wasn’t in the slightest bit fooled. But she hadn’t been kidding when she said she didn’t want pity. Right now, pity made her want to punch someone.

“Anyway,” Éowyn waved her hand. “It’s not your fault.”

“But I hate to see you looking so… bereft.”

“No, really, the last thing I want is people feeling sorry for me.” Éowyn struggled to explain how she felt. “Think of it. I dunno. As music as catharsis or something.”

Faramir gave her a sad smile and began to recite: “Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,/ For he tames it, that fetters it in verse. / But when I have done so,/ Some man, his art and voice to show, / Doth set and sing my pain; / And, by delighting many, frees again.”

“You’re as bad as Frodo for remembering poetry.”

“At least I remember good poetry. Frodo’s party trick, if I remember, is bad poetry.”

Éowyn felt a slight weight lift. The conversation seemed to have lightened a bit. She tried to match the shift in mood.

“I don’t think I ever did anything as clever as tie up my feelings in verse. More shoved it in a back room of my mind, slammed the door and threw the key away. But I think it’s all seeped underneath the bottom of the door.”

“That sounds healthy and well-balanced.” He raised an eyebrow. “Sure there isn’t anything I can do?”

“You could lift the sandbags and help me stack them against the bottom of the door. Unless of course you’ve got any better ideas… ‘Cos I haven’t.”

Faramir leaned against the wall and slid down it till he came to a sitting position.

“Like I said to you – takes one to know one. I am happy to listen, but I don’t think you want to talk. Or go with whatever it is you want to do.”

“Sometimes, I just wish I could get away from everything. Have a break from playing, and from people, and from holding it together. Just do something completely different.”

“I can do that too. How about a walk in the country?”

“It’s the end of November.”

“So, it would be a cold walk in the country…”

Éowyn sat silently for a while.

“When are you free?” she asked, eventually.

“How about this Saturday?”

“Okay, Saturday it is. You come up with a plan, I’ll dig my walking boots out.”

Katy’s let me steal a bit of her head-canon. Canonically, the first Faramir, son of Ondohir, last king of the southern line of Kings of Gondor, is killed (along with his father and brother) at the battle north of the Morannon. Katy’s head-canon is that Faramir the first was a bit useless in battle.

Schubert - Piano trio no. 2 in E flat major, Trio Cleonice.
https://youtu.be/LFjkIrRjZZU
(It’s perhaps a fraction faster than I’d take it – it puts the “moto” in andante con moto – but the cantabile playing is gorgeous). Back when I got the chance to play chamber music regularly (a halcyon period of my life labelled “pre children”) I used to struggle with this because I would keep getting so absorbed in that gorgeous, gorgeous cello tune, I’d lose count and miss my entry.

If you want to see what’s involved in rehearsing this and getting the musicianship right, here’s Alfred Brendel (one of my heroes) taking a masterclass with a young trio in Prague (the discussion of the slow movement starts at about 1:02).
https://youtu.be/pZI31Uo17to?t=3178

If masterclasses float your boat, this one is absolutely marvellous:
Lang Lang being coached by Daniel Barenboim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NYfrht6TU8
(I almost tried to build a chapter round this, but I decided it was a distraction from where I’m taking the plot. But there’s another Beethoven sonata later on, put to a slightly surprising use.)

Finally – Stupid Deaths, for those in the UK (or with a VPN):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlIe1Ixtgo0
and (hopefully) for those outside the UK, Stupid Deaths at the Horrible Histories Prom:
https://youtu.be/wJqBSSXl-2Y?t=2107
(Worth watching the whole thing… Apart from anything else it has the Four Georges in the style of a boy band. I basically pay my licence fee for Horrible Histories and the BBC orchestras.)

Chapter Text

Disa and Éowyn worked steadily through the horn flourishes of Per pietà one after another, weaving the harmonies together until they were second nature. The more they played together, the more Éowyn found she enjoyed it. It was as if she were reading Disa like a book; she could tell when Disa was about to breathe, when she wanted to stretch a phrase out, when she wanted to inject a feeling of urgency.

None of this quite made up for the fact that right at that moment they were missing something – or rather, someone – rather crucial: the soprano.

It was twenty minutes after the start of the allotted rehearsal time that the door finally swung open. Éowyn looked in surprise as Arwen came in. Not cool, calm collected Arwen, perfectly put together, not a hair out of place Arwen. But distracted, ruffled-looking Arwen, hair piled up into a messy bun held with an inexpertly applied clip. Even the label on the back of her jumper was visible.

“What gives?” Disa demanded.

“Oh God.” Arwen dumped her bag on the floor and sagged into the spare chair. “Let’s just get on with the rehearsal. You don’t want to hear my crap.”

“That depends,” said Disa. “On whether you can actually focus on rehearsing in the state you’re in.”

“Ara’s going back to law,” Arwen blurted out.

“Oh,” said Disa. There was a moment’s silence, and Éowyn wracked her brain as to how she could fill it. The only thing that kept her from saying something was the memory of babbling like a fool the first time she’d met Arwen.

“Sorry. I already had a big whinge to my family. I shouldn’t dump on you too.” She paused, and managed a weak smile. “My brothers are ready to come and thump him – and they really like him. And my dad is seriously pissed off. He’s terrified that having upped sticks to come here with Aragorn I’ve screwed up all the musical contacts I made in London and if I go back it’ll be too late to reforge them.”

“You’ve only been away, what, two months?” said Disa.

“People have short memories.”

“I think I might be on your dad’s side,” said Éowyn. For a moment she paused. Was this her being wretchedly, horribly hopeful again? No. She wasn’t trying to stir trouble for her own gain. She was – she realised, to her surprise – genuinely angry with Aragorn. Angry on Arwen’s behalf… She couldn’t imagine how she’d feel about a boyfriend who wanted to fuck up her career. No, that wasn’t fair either. Didn’t want exactly. Was simply prepared to forge ahead regardless of cost.

But whatever the intention, the end result was the same. Carelessness, selfishness, malice, pursuit of a noble cause, or what he perceived as a noble cause. Whatever. The bottom line was Arwen was getting screwed over here.

“So he’s going off tilting at windmills and you’re supposed to, what, follow him around the country as his whim and noble conscience takes him?” It was more of a statement than a question.

“Being the dutiful wifey,” added Disa.

“Yeah, my dad kind of joked ‘Well, I’d just about see it as forgivable if he ended up as PM, but short of that…’ Bit of a black sense of humour, my dad.”

Éowyn realised her hands had balled into fists and she was imagining a nice combination landing on Aragorn’s beautifully sculpted jaw.

Disa, as ever, was being practical. She cradled her horn with one hand and cupped her chin with the other, frowning in concentration.

“No,” she said, looking at Arwen as if she’d come to a realisation. “My first instinct was right I think. It’s only two months. Presumably you’ve got lots of contacts down there still - former teachers, musical directors of operas you’ve done at the RCM, other singers you’ve worked on duets with, conductors you’ve done oratorios with.”

Arwen nodded.

“So forget Aragorn’s role in this. He does whatever it is he does for his own reasons. You need to do your thing for your reasons. Make up your mind you are going to see out this year, get the best mark you can possibly get on this master’s course. Get glowing references from your tutors, do as many recitals and public concerts as you can. Aim to get the lead role in the end of year opera performance - the one the college puts up on YouTube in its entirety. Get yourself lined up to go on the competition circuit next year. Then back to London in July, go through the contact list in your phone and get in touch with ever single last one of them. ‘I’ve decided I’ll be back in London as of next year. I really enjoyed working with, singing with, whatever with you in the past. Are you interested in a joint project next year?’ Or ‘Have you got any openings for projects you’d consider me for?’ Put yourself out there, girl. Think of it as ‘Operation rebuild contacts and restart your career’.”

“And Aragorn?”

“Screw Aragorn. I mean, I’m sure he’s fighting the good fight and all that. Everything I’ve read in the paper suggests Mairon’s a twat. But you need to do your thing, and if what he’s doing fits with that, fair enough. If not, and it all goes tits up because you can’t juggle two careers, at least you still have your singing at the end of it.”

“But… I’ve been with Ara for years. I don’t want to flush that down the toilet. He genuinely is a great guy. And him wanting to fight for what’s right is part of why I love him.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to be here this time next year saying ‘Coulda, woulda, shoulda.’ Trail around after him and fuck yourself over and you could end up so pissed off with the whole situation the relationship goes tits up anyway. This way, well, if it’s a strong enough relationship it’ll take a bit of being in different places, pursuing different things. And like I said, if it doesn’t survive, at least you haven’t lost music as well as the relationship.”

“Have you been comparing notes with my dad?” Arwen looked at Disa suspiciously. “Because that’s what he said. More or less. In rather more circumspect language.”

Disa grinned. “No, just two sensible people independently giving you the same brilliant – if I say so myself – advice.”

“Éowyn?”

Éowyn started. She really didn’t feel like she had enough emotional distance to comment.

“Uh, what she said…” That seemed reasonably safe.

“So - Per pietà? Or sack it off and go get a coffee?” Disa asked.

“Well… In the light of what you’ve just said. ‘Operation restart.’ Let’s do this.” Arwen put her score on the music stand.

As Éowyn and Disa walked back towards the main auditorium, Éowyn reflected that she’d seen so much of her own emotions on Arwen’s face. She didn’t know what the aria was about, word-for-word, but Disa had filled her in on the gist of it a couple of days ago. She knew Arwen was singing about being faithful (despite being pursued by a handsome new suitor) to her original love who’d gone off to war. And she also knew that Arwen’s Italian was fluent, so she did understand the words.

In other words, just the sort of piece you wanted to have to go through when you were having trouble with your own love life.

So she’d watched as Arwen struggled through something that obviously brought feelings to the surface, feelings which were way too close-up and personal. But pushed on regardless, by an effort of sheer will-power. A struggle that felt all too familiar.

Disa’s voice cut through her train of thought.

“So, still got the hots for Mr. Designer-Stubble-I’m-Going-To-Screw-With-My-Girlfriend’s-Career?”

Éowyn paused just for a moment. She waited for that familiar lurch of the stomach, that stab of sadness at the word “girlfriend”, that dreaded feeling of yearning. But nothing came. Just an empty neutrality. And a feeling of annoyance, almost as if directed at an inanimate object. A stone you’d stubbed your toe on. A door frame you’d knocked your elbow against. You felt a momentary pang of irritation at the object, then you got a grip and realised it wasn’t part of your life.

“Do you know what? I honestly think the answer is ‘No.’”

“Fuck me sideways. About bloody time.”

Rogers and Hart – Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, as sung by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald (with a huge shout-out for her pianist, drummer and guitarist – magnificent).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x83ffKWldY

The song my mum made me listen to (“All the way to the end…” she insisted) when I finally got over the bastard in my life. (Note to younger self: your mum always knows what's going down, even when you think you've done a really, really excellent job of hiding what you're up to and with whom). All while my “Big Blister” lurked in the background laughing at her “Little Blister.”

Chapter Text

The bus from New Mills finally decanted them in the centre of Hayfield, round about midday, and several hours later than they’d intended (given that it was December and the sun went down at about 4 pm).

First Éowyn's bus had been late, then the first train to New Mills had been cancelled, then the next one had been late so they missed the connecting bus. But they were finally here.

“We’d better get going then.”

Faramir gave her a smile.

“It’s up this road here. If I’ve got it right, we should pass the village cricket ground on our right, then walk past some terraces up the hill, then bear round to the left as we head for the reservoir.”

They set off in the opposite direction from the road they’d come along.

“Kinder Road – that’s a bit of a giveaway,” said Éowyn.

“Do you doubt my map reading?” Faramir asked, with a raised eyebrow.

Éowyn grinned. “You strike me as the kind of guy who was reading maps in Scouts at the age of eight.”

“Cadet Corps at twelve, but yes, essentially. The masters were very keen on that sort of thing at my school.”

This time, she laughed. “You know Gamling christened you ‘Posh Boy’.”

“I’m wounded. Wounded to the quick.” But he smiled back at her.

They walked up the hill in companionable silence. He strode out at a fair pace, but she noticed he glanced at her now and then – she thought, assessing whether she was comfortable with the speed. She was – she’d grown up on a sheep farm after all, spending days yomping across the hills above Galashiels – but she supposed he wasn’t to know this.

They left the road and started along the path that led up towards the open moorland.

“This walk was the route of the mass trespass,” said Faramir.

Éowyn gave him a quizzical look.

“Way back in the 1930s a working class ramblers’ association staged a mass trespass in pursuit of the right to roam. A group of them got sent to prison for it, but the public outcry eventually led to the Peak District becoming a national park – though that took another twenty years.”

“Hmm, you English, you’re weird. We don’t have a law of trespass.” Éowyn exaggerated her borders burr to make a point. “Anyway, aren’t you genetically predisposed to be on the side of the landowners, or something?” she added, cheekily.

“I am a disgrace to both my ancestry and my class, as my father never tired of reminding me.”

“Sounds charming,” Éowyn said. Then added, hastily, “Forget that. I have no filter between my mouth and my brain sometimes.”

“No, you’re right. He could of course be charming, when it was of strategic importance to be so. But mostly, no. And particularly not with me. I think I was a disappointment as I grew older.”

“God, sorry, I’ve opened a right can of worms.”

Faramir waved his hand in a vaguely dismissive gesture. “It is what it is. I made my peace with it a while back. Well, mostly. In fairness, he was a remarkable man in many ways. And we were close when I was a child. He used to spend hours reading children’s history books to me, and teaching me to play chess. We started to drift apart when I started to read the history books for myself, more so when I moved on to more grown up ones, with more nuanced interpretations of the past. I suppose I started to question some of the shibboleths of my father’s class and background, and he wasn’t comfortable with that.”

“You talk about him in the past tense.”

“He died a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It’s shit, isn’t it? I lost both my parents when I was quite small. Dad – it’s weird, your family having this military history, coincidence or what. Anyway, Dad was in the army and died on duty in Afghanistan. IED.”

“Shit, sorry.”

“And mum died of breast cancer about six months later.”

“I don’t really remember my mum at all. I was very young. Sepsis, from what I’ve been told.”

“So.” Éowyn looked at him. “We’re both orphans. What’re the odds?”

“Do you find it puts you, I don’t know, on the outside looking in.”

“All the bloody time.”

He nodded. Eowyn didn’t know quite how to follow this up – this weird feeling of unwished for, unwanted camaraderie over events that one wouldn’t wish on one’s worst enemy. As a result, they walked on in silence again, but this time it seemed less companionable than before; a heavy mood had, unsurprisingly, settled on both of them. Almost as if the gods, or fates or whatever, had sensed this, it started to rain, a cold, penetrating drizzle.

After about twenty minutes, they reached the reservoir. The track skirted along its left hand side. As the vista opened up, so too Éowyn's mood lightened slightly. She searched for a new topic of conversation.

“Lottie seems to be getting on better with the new role. Despina in Cosi seems more up her street than Julius Caesar.”

Faramir laughed. “Yes, I can see that playing the cheeky servant would play to her strengths rather better than being dictator of the newly formed Roman Empire.”

“Is your cousin really a fighter pilot?”

“One of them, yes. There’s another one who’s a captain on a frigate, and a third who’s a captain in the marines.”

“Christ.”

“No, he’s not one of my cousins.”

“Ha ha, very funny.”

“My side of the family’s always done army rather than navy. My brother’s a major. I suspect, though he doesn’t talk about it much, in military intelligence.”

“So, if your family’s big on the military, how come you didn’t join up?”

“It became fairly obvious I’d fail the medical. You know I smashed my leg up?”

“Yes, Frodo told me about it. Well he told me about it happening to someone – it was only later I worked out that someone was you.”

“My dad was furious. He had always assumed both his sons would follow the family tradition and go into the army. A degree, then Sandhurst. But I crocked my leg before things could even get started. Smashed it in a canoeing accident.”

Éowyn noticed that he didn’t mention the fact that it was the other guy who’d had the accident, nor the fact that he himself had, quite deliberately and calculatedly – and (according to Frodo) insanely bravely – jumped in after him.

“Initially Dad threatened to sue the school. I was not long out of hospital, still limping around on crutches. We had a huge row, which is how I ended up at Frodo’s that summer. My dad was just too angry to have me around.”

“God, that’s crap. Just when you needed him most, I guess.”

“In fairness, by that point I was fairly used to the idea that one had to be emotionally self-sufficient. Like I said, my father wasn’t exactly the most affable of men.”

There was another moment of silence. This time it was Faramir who broke it, taking refuge in the time-honoured British gap-filler of talking about the weather.

“It’s going to be cold up top.” Faramir tugged his hood forward.

“I grew up in the Scottish borders. I’m sure I’ll cope.”

“It’s me I’m worried about. Soft southern posh boy and all that.”

“Gamling was only kidding. I think he liked you.”

“Really? I barely said a word to the man.”

“Exactly. The silent type. Just what he likes in his gym. He always says ‘You want chit-chat and celebrity gossip magazines on a coffee table in reception? Go and join David bloody Lloyd.’”

Faramir laughed.

Éowyn couldn’t resist adding a bit more of Gamling’s characteristic outlook on the world to her story. “You should hear the way he says ‘coffee table.’ Like their mere existence is a personal insult to his manhood.”

Faramir was right though – the wind was sharp. She dug into the pocket of her pack and pulled out a pair of gloves. They seemed even more inadequate now than they had first thing in the morning – an ordinary pair of knitted gloves you could pick up from any cheap clothes shop, just about good to keep your hands warm while waiting for the bus with your hands in your pocket. Not really meant for a day like this. Unaccountably, she felt an urge to pre-empt the critical look she felt sure Faramir was about to give her.

“Éomer's bloody gone and loaned my decent gloves to Lottie – without asking.”

“Ah. Those aren’t going to do the job.” He paused and looked at her anxiously. “Do you want to swap?”

“And freeze the hands of the best pianist in our year? Don’t be daft. I’ll be fine. I’ll stuff my hands in my pockets.”

“I think the other pianists might argue with you.” He gave another of those small, unreadable smiles. “And I’m made of sterner stuff than you might think at first glance.”

“Me too.” Éowyn tilted her chin slightly, daring him to argue. He gave another faint smile, and nodded.

They had reached the end of the reservoir. The path now started up a narrow defile beside the stream. Faramir looked on the map.

“William’s Clough. This will take us up onto the shoulder of the hill, then it’s a steep slog up to the summit plateau. We skirt along the top of the cliffs and do a circuit, then drop off the end and back down to the village.”

William’s Clough offered a bit more shelter, and they started to chat again now they were out of the wind.

“Boxing. What made you get into boxing?”

Éowyn took a deep breath. Did she trust this man or not? It seemed like she did – she’d taken him to Gamling’s gym, played music with him, joked with him down the pub. And now she was in the middle of bloody nowhere with him, in shitty weather.

“Do you want the public consumption story or the real story?”

Faramir turned to look at her. Once again, she found herself caught beneath the gaze of those intense grey eyes. He seemed to be trying to read her face. Eventually he spoke.

“Tell me as much or as little as you feel comfortable with. The real story if you think it would help you. But – if you don’t mind – not the public consumption story, if, by public consumption, you mean something that isn’t true, just to spare the listener’s feelings. I’d sooner you told me honestly that it was none of my business. Which… it isn’t really. I mean, I am curious. But I don’t want to pry. And I certainly don’t want to pry if it’s going to hurt you.”

She stared down at her boots for a moment, then at the stream rushing and roiling over the boulders in the bottom of the narrow scar. He was too bloody perceptive by half.

“Sorry. That was much too wordy. And too intrusive.” He turned to face uphill, his posture poised to stride out along the path once more.

Suddenly Éowyn felt very tired. Tired of coping. Tired of covering up and failing – people read her as a hard bitch. Tired of trying to open up and failing – that probably made them read her as a hard bitch too. Tired of forced cheerfulness – so as not to look like a hard bitch. Tired of the moments when the cheerfulness failed utterly – mostly when she was alone and no-one could pass any judgement at all.

She looked at his back, turned from her, ready to give her the space she needed. The space she demanded, most of the time. Ready to let her put all the walls back up. He wasn’t going to force her to talk. She could turn the conversation to anything she wanted.

She could talk about music. Or about his weird military family. Or the shitty weather. Or the terrible public transport. Or…

“I was raped.”

The words hung in the air for a moment, before the wind snatched them away.

Faramir’s posture stiffened, then he sat down heavily on a boulder beside the track. He looked back at her, his face unreadable.

“Shit. God, I’m sorry. And… I’m sorry I asked. I shouldn’t have pressed you.”

“You didn’t. And… well, it was a long time ago now. Four years. Lot of water under the bridge since then. It’s just… well, it finally came to trial this summer. Reopened a lot of wounds. Then the bastard was found not guilty.”

Faramir rubbed his hand across his face. “That’s… crap. Really crap.”

“Yeah, no two ways about it. Very definitely really crap. But it is getting better. I’m getting on with stuff. Music’s going well.”

“Even so…”

“Look, it’s not like it’s scarred me for life or anything. I’ve dated men since. Quite a few of them. Possibly too many.” She gave a laugh which, to her own ears, sounded slightly forced.

It felt to her like Faramir picked up on the underlying desperation, the feeling of only just staying in the world of the sane, because he quipped back, “Well, according to Professor Stone, I’ve dated too few. Women, that is. In my case. So maybe between us we’re just about hitting the national average.”

It wasn’t a particularly funny joke, but Éowyn appreciated him trying. “God, Stone in that rehearsal. I felt so sorry for you. And I’m sorry I laughed. Honestly, it wasn’t so much what you said as the delivery. I’m just a sucker for self-deprecating humour.”

Faramir gave an ironic bow. “My speciality, m’lady.”

“And… Don’t worry about asking. If I hadn’t wanted to say anything, I would have stonewalled. Trust me, I have a lot of practice at stonewalling. Almost as much…” She gestured at one of the many incongruous dry stone walls which seemed to go from nowhere to nowhere, dividing nowhere from nowhere, for no apparent reason. “Almost as much as the local farmers.”

“I just wish I could say something useful. But anything I can think of just feels… insulting. Or trite. Or useless.”

“Which is why, I suppose, I’ve worked out over the last few years that the only thing I can really do is just get on with things. I mean, they tried me on CBT – three whole sessions, after a year’s waiting list. About as much use as a chocolate teapot. Boxing did more for me than CBT. It started as a desire for at least some hint of self-defence, but then it turned into… Well, it’s almost meditative, when you get into the right frame of mind. Sequences of physical movements you can lose yourself in.”

“Yes, I get that. Before I fucked my leg, outdoors stuff – canoeing, climbing, skiing – used to do that for me. Now all I’ve got left is walking. Physio’s orders.”

Éowyn looked up at the path winding up the narrow cut in the landscape. “Talking of walking, shall we get going again?”

Faramir got up from the boulder. “The sooner we get to the top, the sooner we can get down somewhere warm.” He gestured for her to take the lead, and she strode out, keeping the pace hard enough that she felt slightly breathless. After about half an hour, they emerged from the top of the clough onto the shoulder of the hill.

Heather and peat bogs stretched out in all directions, but up to their right the hill rose steeply towards the high plateau of moorland. The path zig-zagged upwards, skirting round large gritstone boulders which some ancient glacier had left stewn across the landscape, as if giants had played bowls with them in the mists of history. Éowyn tugged her zip up under her chin, pulled her sleeves down so they covered almost all of her hands in the now sodden gloves, and set off up the steep scarp, Faramir just behind her.

When they reached the plateau, the wind hit them full on. The rain had turned to sleet and felt like icy needles against Éowyn’s cheeks.

“Maybe this wasn’t my best idea,” Faramir said, sheepishly.

Éowyn drew the drawstrings on her hood tighter and turned her back on the wind for a moment to answer him.

“You mean you didn’t put in an order on Amazon for decent weather? How could you have forgotten?”

“We can turn round if you want,” he said, anxiously.

“Hell no.”

He grinned.

“C’mon then, let’s get this over with.”

The broad path skirted the top of the scarp slope, huge boulders and occasional glimpses of the low cliffs to their right. Every step felt like a battle. Éowyn began to feel maybe this was a mistake; her gloves were soaked through. She stuffed her hands in her pocket to protect them from the wind. They were still cold, but not as icy as they had been. She trudged onwards, glumly. Maybe she should have taken him up on the offer to turn back.

Eventually they reached Kinder Downfall.

Except that it should, Éowyn reflected, be renamed Kinder Upfall, because the water was blowing backward, up and over the moorland to their left. She could see the path taking an almost right angle turn beyond, as the line of low cliffs and tumbled rocks abruptly changed direction and headed south. She gave a slight start as Faramir took her hand then realised he was pulling her into a cleft in some rocks which offered a moment’s respite from the wind.

He took his pack off and dug out a thermos flask.

“What is it?”

“Mix of coffee and hot chocolate – no milk I’m afraid, because that just goes horrible in a flask.” He proffered the cup. Éowyn took a cautious sip, then a larger mouthful.

“Not bad. And it’s warm.”

“Drink all of that cup. There’s enough for me left in the flask.” He unzipped the top pocket and produced a Mars Bar, which he handed to her.

“Thanks,” she said, tearing the wrapper and taking a large bite. “Mmm. Best thing ever.” She couldn’t resist adding, “Healthy eating, I see.”

“Calories are healthy eating up here in this weather.”

“Fair point.” She took another bite, then finished off the hot drink. She handed him the empty cup. He refilled it and leaned against the rocks behind, drinking in silence. The silence stretched out for a minute or so. Eventually Éowyn broke it.

“Thanks. Earlier. For listening.”

“Any time. It can’t be easy, talking about it.” He ate a bit more of his own Mars Bar. “I’ve never found it easy to talk about stuff.”

She looked at him, trying to decide whether his words were an invitation.

“What’s not easy for you to talk about?”

“Lots of things. I suppose top of the list would be my dad, and school.”

“I thought your school was okay. At least, that’s what Frodo says. Didn’t you get things sorted out after the summer at Frodo’s?”

“Well, it felt like that at first. But…” His voice tailed off.

Éowyn waited to see if he’d volunteer any more information. Searching for something to fill the silence, she dug in her pack and produced a packet of jaffa cakes. Faramir took his gloves off and reached out to take a couple.

“I see you’ve gone down the healthy eating route too.”

“Orange jelly. Counts as one of your five a day,” Éowyn replied, deadpan. Faramir stuffed them in his mouth, then swallowed.

“After that summer at Frodo’s, my uncle Imrahil – Lottie’s dad – intervened and persuaded him to let me go back to school. I had to restart lower sixth, I’d missed about seven months of the previous year. Things were sort of going alright. Then they got derailed. I only found out the backstory later, from one of my uncle’s friends.”

Éowyn offered him another jaffa cake. He demolished it in one bite.

“You don’t have to listen to this, you know.”

“Well, I don’t want to pry. But if you want to tell me…”

“It seems right, given you’ve trusted me, that I should open up to you a bit. But I don’t want to burden you.”

“You won’t. But it’s not a contest. Only tell me if you want to.”

“I know.” He reached for another jaffa cake. “The next bit of the story goes better with a spike in blood sugar. Anyway, my dad was member of a London club – you know the sort, if only because they’re a staple of a certain sort of TV detective story or spy thriller. Leather armchairs and butlers bringing round decanters of sherry, and fine dining, and remembering to pass the port in the right direction. Every bit as cliched as you might think. With exactly the stereotypes you’d expect – brought to life. And a library.” With this last phrase, his tone of voice changed from a worldly cynicism to an almost wistful tone.

Then his face went cold. “My dad had been a member for years. So was Halbrand Mairon.”

Éowyn stiffened. She remembered the incident in the canteen where it felt like half the college was freaking out over the mention of this guy on the front page of the paper.

“My dad told Mairon about how his dreams – his dreams, note, not mine – for my glittering career had been shattered, and Mairon persuaded him his initial instincts had been right and he should pull me out of school and sue their arses off. My dad came to collect me.

“It was a cold day in late December, snow on the ground, ice on the roads. My dad loaded me into the car – his pride and joy, a vintage Jag. Beautiful car, but of course it predated disk brakes and traction control and all the stuff cars have these days. Just outside the school gates, he lost control of it on some ice on a bend. Crashed into a tree.

“I don’t remember much – no air bags either. I was knocked unconscious. After the event I got told about it. There was a cross-country run, the fifth formers. They heard the crash. Beregond dragged me clear. Went back to try to get my dad, but by that stage the car had caught fire. He tried to open the door – that’s how he got those burns on his arms. But the flames got worse, and started to get to the petrol tank. The PE teacher arrived – he’d been acting as rear marker on the run. He dragged Beregond back to safety. The whole car went up.”

Éowyn stared at him. She didn’t know what to say. She reached out her hand and rested it on his shoulder. He brought a mittened hand up and placed it on top of hers, just for a moment, then moved it away.

“Jesus…” That was the best she could manage.

“Yeah, when I came to in hospital. Fuck. That was a dreadful conversation. I ended up at my uncle’s for the next couple of months. Then he suggested a complete change – go and stay with my Aunt Ivriniel in Rome, do the IB at the international school there.”

“Hence the Italian.”

“Yes, hence the Italian. Plus I got to study with Riccardo Giarola. I think, in retrospect, it was the right thing. At the time, part of me was angry – I felt like I was just a parcel to be shunted round the various rellies. But to be honest, I’d have been angry with anyone. My ‘five stages’ were pretty heavy on the anger stage. I was a mess, but once I got to Italy there was enough different stuff going on – learning the language, playing piano, immersing myself in the city – I didn’t get a chance to dwell on stuff.”

“Hmm.” Éowyn helped herself to another jaffa cake. “You can only bottle stuff up for so long.”

“Yup. Way back when I first met you I told you it takes one to know one. So it doesn’t really surprise me that you can read me as well. I fell apart completely in my second year of undergrad. Ended up going back to Rome for six months and repeating the year the next September. All I did for those six months was play the piano. Riccardo was brilliant. He took all the pressure off me. Basically let me treat the piano like therapy. Weirdly, I probably made more progress that six months than at any other time.”

“And now,” mumbled Éowyn round another jaffa cake.

“Let me have one before you eat the rest,” Faramir said, holding a hand out. “I’m pretty okay these days. I’ll never be the person I might have been if none of this had happened, but, well, it did happen, and it’s up to me what I do with the rest of life, I suppose. It still gets to me some times – like when I saw that headline about fucking Mairon. But mostly, I’m pretty content with how things are going these days.”

He glanced up at the grey clouds scudding across the sky. The sun was hidden, but the light had begun to take on that fading quality characteristic of a late winter’s afternoon.

“We’d better get going or we’ll end up floundering around by torchlight.”

They finally reached the end of the line of low cliffs that bordered the arc of steep scarp slope above the bowl around the distant reservoir, and at last the rain eased. Another mile or so brought them to the trig point which marked the turn in the path down towards Edale Cross and the route back to Hayfield. The lowering clouds, the colour of gunmetal, still clung to their place overhead, but along the western horizon they thinned. The winter sun, low in the sky, sent shafts of light sparkling through the low wisps of mist, stripes of light fanning out towards the ground, like a child’s drawing against the hillside and moorland. The western horizon glowed golden. Then the sun itself, dropping below the clouds, appeared as a golden disk.

Faramir turned and smiled at her.

“We should just make it back before it gets dark.”

He checked his watch. Éowyn smiled. Who still wore a watch these days? Then she turned and looked out over the countryside, dropping down to the village and beyond, the Pennines giving way to the lower hills and farmland that nestled in the band of countryside between the high moors and the city. The golden light, the last crepuscular rays of a setting sun, the stark contrast with the grey clouds – it was breathtaking. She turned back to her companion.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” She rubbed her hands, in their thin mittens, together to try to kindle some sort of warmth. Faramir reached out and placed his hands either side, wrapping hers between them, and smiled. To her surprise, Éowyn felt an answering lift in her mood.

“When I look at a view like this, I can’t believe the shit in the world will go on indefinitely,” Éowyn said, her voice dropping almost to a whisper. “It can’t stay dark and wet and miserable and cold forever. The clouds eventually break, the dawn eventually comes.”

Faramir looked out over her shoulder, across the vista spread out before them, the shining gold rays of the setting sun. His face was set in the thoughtful, gentle expression she realised she’d become so familiar with. “You’re right. You, me, we’ll be all right in the end. You’ll get through King’s course and go on to great things as a performer. I’ll somehow turn my weird upbringing into just a story that informs how I play – informs it for the better. Éowyn…” The tone of his voice – it was almost as though the shape of her name on his lips had somehow caught him unawares. “Éowyn. I don’t believe the darkness can endure either.”

She laughed.

“I’m not sure that sunset’s saying all that to me. More ‘get a move on before it gets dark.’” Reluctantly, she pulled her hands free from his, and they set off down the hill, striding out down the easy gradient.

Apologies, this chapter turned into a bit of a monster-sized epic. But it didn't feel like it could be cut in two.

Delius – North Country Sketches, Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera, Mackerras
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U42P_GaJhzs

While Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams wrote a wealth of music centred around Shropshire, Wenlock Edge and north into the Malvern Hills, and to a lesser extent, music inspired by Somerset, there’s surprisingly little music inspired by the landscape of the North of England. One exception is Delius’s work here, recalling his native Yorkshire. (Of course Kinder Scout is in Derbyshire, but… details, details.)

Eowyn, naturally, gets Scotland’s answer to Ma Vlast, Land of the Mountain and the Flood by Hamish MacCunn (Gibson and the Scottish National Orchestra).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjyTHvxodFU

The walk they’ve just done:
https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/en_GB/short-routes/walk-way-day-walk-49-kinder-scout-hayfield/
Having written this chapter from memory, I'm most amused to find the official walk description agrees in almost every detail, including the Downfall blowing upwards. A staple of my childhood – though in summer it was evens as to whether we’d end up doing the walk or just get distracted by a village cricket match.

I've even found a rather nice picture of the Downfall failing to go down.
https://www.ukhiddengems.co.uk/post/kinder-downfall-waterfall

And thanks to andintheend for nudging me to get this up in time for the arrival of Storm Éowyn this weekend. Fingers crossed everyone stays safely wrapped up inside and she doesn’t do too much damage.

Chapter Text

They got back down to Hayfield just as the sky started to go a midnight blue, reaching the glow of the street lights before it got dark enough that they had to dig torches out. They arrived, drenched, at the bus-stop to find they’d just missed the bus to New Mills. They pored over the timetable, encased in its plastic display case.

“There are buses every hour to Stockport – we can pick up buses to Manchester from there,” said Éowyn.

“The 192. Runs every ten minutes.”

“How the hell do you know that? Please tell me you’re not some sort of weird bus timetable nerd.”

Faramir looked at her, an expression of focus and seriousness on his face.

“Well, now you come to mention it…”

She felt a wave of terror, then realised he was watching intently for her reaction. Then the dead-pan expression began to falter. The corner of his mouth twitched and he cracked up laughing.

“No, you’ll be relieved to know I am not now, and have never been, a bus-spotter. Just... I did some work in Stockport, accompanying kids at the grammar school sitting their Associated Board Exams.”

Éowyn released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Bastard. You really had me for a moment there.”

“Allow me to make amends by buying you something to eat – there’s a pub over there.”

Éowyn felt her cheeks flush, and hoped it wasn’t visible in the street lights. She was on a shoe-string, trying not to get into worse debt than she had to. And she hated feeling beholden to anyone. Specially if she couldn’t stand her shout next time round.

“No, really. I couldn’t let you. Bag of crisps and get the next bus.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I am cold and hungry, and I don’t want to eat alone. I’m sure I can spring for a bowl of soup.” Her hesitation must have shown on her face, for he continued, “And if you want to keep things even, you can always make me dinner some time.”

“Trust me, you’d prefer it if I repaid you by not making you dinner.

“Really?” He smiled at her.

“Well, I suppose if forced I could go for my signature dish.”

He looked at her expectantly.

“Your choice of pizza from the Fallowfield Co-op and a bag of pre-washed salad from the chill cabinet.”

“I’ll hold you to that – I’ll bring the wine.”

She had a peculiar feeling she’d just committed herself to something without realising.

He led the way over to the pub across the road from the bus stop, then, when they reached it, held the door open for her. It was such an old-fashioned, charming gesture. Maybe from someone else it would have made her bristle. But from him… It was natural somehow and just… nice.

The pub was very busy, busier than Éowyn would have expected on such a miserable day. They made their way up to the bar. Éowyn pulled off her sodden gloves and stuffed them in her pockets, then took the menu Faramir offered to her.

Faramir looked up at the blackboard. “Soup of the day is tomato and roasted pepper – is that okay.”

“So long as it’s hot it’ll be lovely.”

“Cup of hot coffee as well? We can have beer after we’ve thawed out a bit.”

Éowyn nodded.

“You see if you can find somewhere to sit, and I’ll order.”

There wasn’t anywhere to sit. Éowyn looked around helplessly, wondering if there was even somewhere they could stand and perch their bowls of soup.

“Here, love,” said a voice from behind her. To her ear, the woman sounded a bit like Victoria Wood. She turned.

A table of four, two men, two women, greying hair, the men with greying beards. One of the women smiled up at her. “We can squeeze up, love, fit you in on the bench seat.”

Éowyn sat down, wondering where Faramir could sit, but feeling too awkward to be able to broach the subject.

“Been out on the moors? You must be perishing,” one of the men said.

“It’s pretty windy up there, but I’m feeling better now I’m in here,” Éowyn said, politely.

Before any of the established denizens of the table could respond, Faramir arrived with a couple of cups of coffee. The woman next to Éowyn nudged her husband.

“Andy, go and see if you can find a stool, and I’ll budge up so the nice young man can sit next to his girlfriend.”

“No, we’re not…”

“No, we’re just friends…”

They both spoke simultaneously. Éowyn felt a wave of relief that they were, apparently, on the same page on this one. Though she couldn’t help notice how rapidly he’d answered. Almost as rapidly as she had.

Faramir set the cups down on the table and slid in beside her. She wriggled out of her cagoule and started to reach to drape it over the back of the bench, then remembered the sodden gloves in the pockets. She handed them to Faramir.

“Do you think you could drape these somewhere near the fire to see if they’ll dry?”

“Jesus, your hands are like ice.” He spread the gloves over one of the logs beside the hearth, then half turned to her and took her hands in his, completely enveloping them in his own and starting to rub them gently to see if he could get some circulation back into them.

Éowyn stared down at their two pairs of hands; she couldn’t look him in the face for some reason. Even though she knew his intent was purely practical, it all felt a bit weirdly intimate. But nice, though. Comforting.

Their soup arrived. He let go of her hands.

“Thank you,” Faramir said with a smile, taking the bowls from the waitress.

The soup was home-made, hot and tasty, with crusty bread warm enough to melt the butter. Éowyn could feel the heat spreading through her stomach and into the rest of her body, bringing with it a sense of contentment and well-earned rest.

“Been up on the tops?” asked the man who sat opposite them. He’d be about 60, Éowyn guessed, balding, plump, with twinkling eyes.

“Yes,” said Faramir between mouthfuls. “We’ve been round the loop – up William’s Clough, past Kinder Downfall, then down again.”

“Ah, it’s a lovely walk in summer but you’re brave to be up there in this weather,” the man replied.

“Daft rather than brave, I’d say,” said Faramir, with one of those little self-deprecating smiles Éowyn was coming to realise he resorted to when he was in a new situation and feeling his way into the conversation.

“I prefer Lyme Park for a winter day. Save the Peaks for the summer” The woman who’d called her “love” turned to Éowyn with a sympathetic smile.

“Oh, it was all right,” said Éowyn. “I grew up on a farm in the Scottish Borders. I’m used to being out in all weathers.”

“So, are you out from Manchester for the day?”

“Yes, we’re students there,” said Faramir.

“Oh, that’s nice. Good to see students out doing stuff in the country rather than just going out to pubs. What are you studying?”

“Music,” said Faramir. “I’m a pianist, Éowyn plays the horn.”

The woman beamed. “My Andy here plays the tenor horn in our local band. Third place in the Poynton championships last year.”

Her husband looked slightly embarrassed but pleased. “Ah, Sylvia, these young things don’t want to hear about the stuff we tootle around doing in our spare time.”

Éowyn grinned. “No, I love brass bands. I had a go on a friend’s tenor horn last week.” She half turned to Faramir. “Pippin’s mate, Diamond, in the college brass band.”

She turned back to Andy. “It was great fun – really lovely instrument to play fast runs and stuff on, though it was a bit weird using my right hand – I play the French horn, usually, so my right hand’s normally up the bell, and I do the keys with my left hand. In fact… I ended up cheating and using my left hand. And wow – the control over vibrato you guys have. It’s just so expressive.”

“The French horn? Everyone says that’s really hard,” Andy answered.

“I think it has that reputation just because the open notes are really close together, so it’s hard for a beginner to pitch things right. I don’t think it’s harder once you get to a kind of higher level. All of the brass instruments have their own quirks.”

“So, what do you do with a music degree?”

“Well, in an ideal world, get a job in an orchestra. But it’s very, very competitive.”

“Realistically,” said Faramir, “You’re more likely to end up teaching. But that’s not such a bad thing.”

Andy smiled. “Yes, it’s one of the joys of the brass band. Getting the youngsters involved, helping them on with their instruments.”

“Gets them off the streets and doing something useful with their spare time,” Sylvia added.

“And something that’ll be with them for life.”

Faramir nodded and took a sip of his coffee. Then he looked at his watch.

“Do you want to catch the next bus or stay and have a pint?” he asked.

Eowyn mulled this over. It was her round, after all. She did the sums for the coming week and decided if she was sensible, she could probably manage a couple of pints.

“I’ll go to the bar.”

He gave her a smile. “They had Doombar on draught.”

“Doombar it is, then.”

Éowyn lay snuggled in her bed, wrapped up in her duvet. The best possible place for a Sunday morning. She’d ventured out far enough to go to the loo and get a cup of coffee and a bowl of muesli. Now she was listening to some Bach on the radio, and scrolling through her phone. And reflecting that her legs ached from the walk. For all that she felt very comfortable, and (an unusual feeling) content. The C sharp major prelude and fugue unwound joyously towards its conclusion. Maybe it was the fact that it was keyboard music, but she found herself mulling over the previous evening.

Her phone buzzed.

How’re you after the walk?

My thighs hurt

From the walk? Or have you been up to things you need to tell your Auntie Disa about?

Piss off!

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

We went for a walk, we had something to eat.

We went home – separately. The end.

There’s none as blind as those who will not see.

Eowyn rolled her eyes, and went back to trying to do the Sunday quick crossword on her phone.

It buzzed again.

Seriously, though, do you fancy brunch?

Where? Also, is it cheap?

Spent more than I meant to on beer last night.

Daisy Cafe, 11.30? Beans and a pint of tea at builders’ prices.

Trying to get him drunk and take advantage of him?

Fuck off

Love you too.

Seriously. Only coming if you promise not to invent an imaginary love life for me.

I promise not to invent anything imaginary. XXX

See you there.

Great.

BTW I make no promises about things I can see with my own eyes.

Piss off. Again.

See with own eyes = hallucination.

Mwah mwah mwah, you love me really.

The beans and tea were as cheap as Disa had promised, and Éowyn tucked in, feeling very hungry all of a sudden.

“So how was the walk? I mean, really?” Disa leant forward in a conspiratorial way. She rested her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. “Spill the tea.”

Éowyn gave a snort of irritation.

“Long. Cold. Wet. Non-romantic.”

“Sounds great. Why exactly did you do it?”

“I dunno. Just a chance to get out. Get away from Manchester. From college. It’s all feeling a bit claustrophobic by this point in the term.” She paused. “Actually, for all it was cold and wet, I enjoyed it. He’s a nice guy and good company.”

Disa shot her a look. Éowyn rolled her eyes.

“As a friend.”

“Does he know that?”

“Yes, of course, don’t be daft.”

“You wouldn’t, by any chance, be friend-zoning a really nice guy who also happens to be really good looking and obviously fancies you?”

“For the last time. He does not fancy me. In fact he pretty much said so last night.”

Disa raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, right. Anyway, crush on Mr Designer-Stubble aside, when was the last time you saw any action in that department?”

“End of last year. I got a paid gig, three nights of playing with an amateur opera group in Poynton. They weren’t very good, but the money was standard union rates, and it was sort of fun in a weird way. I got got off with the trombonist down the pub after the closing party.”

“Ooh, get you, you dark horse,” said Disa with a wink. “Was he any good?”

Éowyn shrugged. “Fair to middling. Didn’t bother keeping his number, though.”

“Fair dos. He was a trombonist after all.”

Éowyn shrugged and ate some beans.”

“So, trombonists, unavailable men… Any decent ones in the mix?”

“Not really. One night stands, bastards, men who aren’t available. All a speciality of mine.”

“No nice ones?”

“I make friends with the nice ones. They’re too good to waste on sex.”

“You can do both, you know.”

“No… You can do both. I don’t have the knack.”

“So all those nice men in your life get consigned to the ‘friend zone’. Yours is the face that has probably unwittingly launched a thousand men into their mum’s basements and lasting relationships with their right hand. And burnt the topless towers of a hundred and one imaginary cities in video games at 3.00 am.”

“You make it sound like I’m single-handedly responsible for the Manosphere.” Éowyn drew air quotes round the word.

“No, just trying to gauge what would happen if you came across a nice man for once.”

Éowyn sighed. If she let herself think about it, which she generally tried her best not to, there was clearly a reason for her preference for keeping an emotional distance. Mind you, she’d told Faramir yesterday. Well, obviously not told him about emotional distance. But told him about what had happened. Why couldn’t she tell Disa? Maybe…

“Look, things haven’t always gone well in that department. There’s some pretty dark shit that I’m trying not to think about. Hence not really wanting anything that isn’t casual – or is unattainable. Not so much that I don’t want to. I can’t. And…” She suddenly realised one conversation was her limit for the weekend. Scratch that. Probably for the whole damn term. She’d used up her entire ration of openness in one go yesterday.

“I’m sorry. I know I ought to open up to you. But I can’t – can’t do it, can’t talk about it.”

Disa reached out and put her hand on top of Éowyn's.

“Hey, there’s no ‘ought’ about it. What are we? Fourteen? ‘I’ll show you my diary if you’ll show me yours?’ Nope. Not the way it works any more. Your business is your business. Lemme finish my tea, then we’ll go and browse some of the second hand clothes shops. Or rather, I’ll browse, you put up with watching me browse. Unless of course they have any black school trousers, then I’ll be holding you back. I know you’ve got a thing for black crimplene.”

Elgar Howarth, giant of the brass band world, died this week at the age of 89. You will have heard him play, even if you don’t know it, because he was one of the trumpeters who worked with the Beatles in the 60s and appeared on their recordings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YYisiP3xKo Jeanie with the light brown hair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFEMP-5opVY Cornet concerto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMoQ4jDxtuU Fireworks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_m8YH-EZi4 Grimethorpe Colliery’s tribute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4lQK-6V7YU RNCM brass band playing Music from an Elizabethan Court

And in honour of the bus/ trainspotters of the world, here’s Arthur Honneger’s Pacific 231, played here by the Czech Philharmonic Youth Orchestra:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncUnEs39fqc

Chapter Text

Disa poked her head round the door.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be. It’s sitting through the overture that’s always the hard part.”

Éowyn was standing in the band room, which, as ever prior to a concert, was a complete cacophony. She stood out from everyone else in their concert black, wearing the deep green jumpsuit Disa had talked her into. She felt slightly self-conscious – still, it was something to worry about other than the opening fanfare of the Strauss.

“You’ll be fine. In fact, better than fine. You’ll be brilliant.”

Disa came over to her and put an arm round her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze.

“Break a leg. I’m going to find the others. I’m hoping they’ve bagged good seats, with a good view of you.”

Éowyn smiled, and went back to her warm-up. They’d already topped-and-tailed the concerto in rehearsal, so it was more a case of waking her lip up a bit. Then the leader got Merry to play a quick blast on the trumpet to get everyone’s attention, and the orchestra filtered out on stage, leaving her all alone.

She sat down on one of the chairs. She could hear the distant sound of the orchestra tuning, then applause as Noldor took to the stage. Then Egmont. She felt slightly left out. The horns didn’t do much beyond fill in the chords in most of the overture, but Beethoven more than made up for it with the final twenty bars or so, where the horns got to come blasting in over the top of the orchestra with high Gs.

Every so often, she blew down the instrument to keep it warm, and sat, idly stroking the valve-caps. Her birthday horn. She’d turned sixteen. Her mum had left a stack of cards and letters to be handed out at each birthday and Christmas, a bittersweet experience which simultaneously made her feel loved and bereft every year. On balance, she was glad her mum had taken the time (and considerable effort, given how ill she must have been) to do it, but it still got her, every year. But sixteen was different. The letter came with a bank account number – her mum had left her some money.

By sixteen I’m guessing you may have some idea of what you’re passionate about. Spend this however you want – or save it for something important. I wonder what will have caught your interest? A set of really nice paints ? I love to watch you paint pictures. As I write this you’re only eight, but you still love to draw, and you spend hours drawing the animals on the farm.

And sometimes you dance round the room with me and your granny, to your granny’s records. Maybe by the time you open this, you’ve fallen in love with ballet and get through an endless supply of shoes – though given that you mostly like following your brother up trees that are too hard for you to climb at the moment, this seems unlikely.

Maybe you want to travel round Europe. All I ask is you spend it on whatever matters most to you, whatever makes you feel most alive. And remember that I love you to bits, and want you to love life every bit as much, and embrace it with as much love and enthusiasm, as I’ve embraced being your mum.

So she had spent the money on a horn, a second hand Alexander in almost perfect condition. The horn that still felt like a connection to her mum. The memory of that letter always made her tear up, but also made her feel a warm bubble of love inside, almost as if her mum could still look out for her, look down on her, watch her progress. She wiped the corner of her eye, and despite the bittersweet memory, smiled to herself. Everything would be fine.

Faintly, in the distance, she heard the final arpeggios in the horn parts from Egmont, calling out, ending on that high held note. Then, under cover of the audience applause, she made her way to the door to the side of the stage, where the stage manager gave her a smile. He was watching front of house on a small TV monitor, and opened the door just as Noldor reached it.

“Ready, Éowyn?” she asked.

Éowyn nodded.

“Give it a moment for the first violins to move back slightly.” The stage manager watched his TV.

Éowyn smiled at this; Valandil, on the front desk of firsts, had actually stopped the rehearsal a couple of dozen bars in, complaining that he couldn’t handle the volume of sound. She couldn’t say she blamed him. He must have been about two feet away from her bell, directly in line with it. The solution had been to shift the violins slightly so she was no longer inflicting lasting damage on anyone’s hearing.

“Okay, ready to go now.” He opened the door.

Noldor ushered her through the door, following behind her as the audience applauded. She made her way to the front of the stage, just to the side of Noldor’s rostrum, and bowed. She couldn’t help herself. She smiled on seeing her friends in a line in about the third row of the audience.

The applause died away and the hall went silent. Noldor gave her a sideways look to check she was ready; she gave a very faint nod in return, and raised her instrument to her lips. Noldor raised her baton. An upbeat, the opening chord from the orchestra then…

The opening fanfare – just as she’d wanted it to. Clean, clear, ringing out round the hall. Then the orchestral bridge led into the gorgeous, lyrical, legato first theme. Somehow it just worked, the slurs across big intervals falling into place perfectly, leaving her able to sing out the phrases over the lush orchestration. In fact at times it did feel almost as if she were singing rather than playing, the horn an extension of her own body.

The first movement unfolded, in the langurous way that only Strauss could manage, with the development of the opening fanfare, this time augmented by fast runs. Then the music relaxed back into the lyrical theme before moving into rapid triplet arpeggios as it built towards its climax, a bold, brassy, fortissimo reprise of the opening.

The orchestra then toyed with an echo of the theme, shifting it into the minor key and slowing until the strings were playing delicate arpeggios.

Éowyn took a breath, set her embouchure, tightened her abs and came in as quietly as she dared, soaring over the orchestra with a slow, quiet, heart-breakingly sad theme. The second time it came in, it involved a duet with the woodwind, clarinet and bassoon, then oboe and flute echoing her part. Then the mood shifted dramatically – still slow, but a shift into the major key, and a triumphal fortissimo.

Then the violas, led by Isildur, drew the music back back into the minor. This time Éowyn aimed for a whisper that was barely there, sighing through the octave leaps, allowing herself to swell slightly through the phrase and drop back – then capture the one last loud fanfare, a fanfare which felt like it was going to be the triumph of earlier, but abruptly shifted back into the minor and faded back to nothing.

Then the orchestra picked up the final movement. Éowyn could let rip with an almost hunting-horn like theme, triplets galloping. But it wasn’t the jolly sound of a hunt on horseback, but something which always made her think of hunters in the wooded foothills of the Bavarian Alps, calling across immense spaces to one another, while the strings conjured a mountain landscape and the flutes brought the birds in the trees to life.

Just for a moment, the orchestra reprised the minor theme of the slow movement, but translated to a new, rapid tempo, then Éowyn launched into the final reprise of the hunting theme, before the soaring clarion calls, and finally the presto, virtuoso finish. Somehow she, Noldor and the orchestra committed to the new tempo in perfect ensemble, and the concerto came to its end with a final, brassy flourish.

There was a moment’s silence, the silence of rapt concentration, before the audience erupted into applause. The next few minutes passed in a blur, as she was called back for several bows. She could see her friends’ faces – Disa, Durin, Sam, Pippin, Faramir – and smiled at them with the elated feeling of a job done supremely well.

Still on a high, she drifted back stage, and put her horn back into its case. The applause finally died away, and the orchestra started to trickle back into the rehearsal room. Merry was one of the first there, and threw his arm round her.

“Fucking A!”

Noldor came up behind him.

“Not sure that’s the language Strauss would have used, Merry, but well done Éowyn. I don’t think I’ve often heard it played that well, even by professionals who’ve been in the job for years. Terrific performance.” She gave a broad smile.

Rather formally, she shook Éowyn's hand.

After various members of the orchestra had had their chance to congratulate her, she finally managed to make her way out front of house to find her friends.

Disa was the first to greet her, wrapping her in a hug.

“That was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.” By her side, Durin stood, a solid, grounded presence, smiling at both of them.

Then… “That was incredible. One of the best performances I’ve ever heard.” Faramir’s face was alight with enthusiasm. “The way you handled all the changes in mood, the way you made it all sound utterly effortless so that all that came through was the music.” He took her hands and smiled at her. “Just fantastic.”

She found herself grinning from ear to ear.

“Are you going to come to the pub with us after the symphony.”

Suddenly he looked sad, and let her hands drop. “I can’t. I have to dash off. Got a train to catch.” He checked his watch. “In fact, I’d better run – like literally run, otherwise I’ll miss it.” He raised his hand and briefly rested it on her arm. “Like I said, though, fantastic. I’ll catch you later in the week.” And he turned and headed down the stairs, two at a time.

Éowyn was left watching his back, then watching the space where he had been, the empty space in the entrance to the college. She felt… utterly deflated. One moment she’d been on top of the world with the performance, now… What the hell was the matter with her?

She caught Disa looking at her, a sidelong glance, and plastered a smile back onto her face. Disa patted her arm. The same place Faramir had rested his hand. For some reason the presence of Disa’s hand felt more like an absence.

“That was a bit… sudden,” Disa said.

“I…” She tried to make light of how she felt. She managed a rueful grin. “You know we were talking at the weekend? Well, clearly it’s a case of the biter bit. I think I’ve just been friend-zoned.”

Disa looked at her and shook her head.

“Hmm. Or maybe… just maybe… he genuinely has a train to catch?”

Richard Strauss: Horn concerto 1, Stefan Dohr, Okayama Symphony Orchestra, Schellenberger.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQH0C5yB6JI
Those of you who’ve been following the YouTube links may recognise him as the first horn of the Berlin Phil (last seen in the background wandering past Sarah Willis’s Wagner tuba-playing while wearing snorkelling kit and flippers).

Back when I was a teenager, I could play Strauss 1. I dug the music out the other night, and I can still get round bits of it, but the fast runs and arpeggios… no, not any more. I have also (as an orchestral violinist) sat where Valandil is sitting, and I can confirm that it was one of the most painful experiences ever. I don’t think I’ve ever been exposed to such a loud noise before or since, including things like passing pneumatic drills in the street. I’m so glad pro orchestras now take things like acoustic screens seriously. As an amateur, the best I could do was plead with the conductor to shuffle round the positioning of the soloist a bit so he was at least a bit further away from me.

The “now for something completely different moment”: someone left an unattended comedian, Rainer Hersch, alone in the Albert Hall with the Philharmonia Orchestra, and this was the result:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLXwpGCn2KQ
And – following up from a point in the comments ages back – why do orchestras have a conductor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta9OYOVlTHM
And finally, make yourself an instant Beethoven expert: all 9 symphonies in 4 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V-enWrJR_Y

Chapter Text

Tuesday wasn’t too bad. Éowyn was moderately grumpy, or so she thought. Moderately, but not overly so. Except it seemed she was probably worse company than she thought she was.

Even Éomer commented on it, as she clattered round the kitchen. That would be Éomer, who was normally about as sensitive to other people’s moods as a brick.

She should, she felt, have still been on a high from the Strauss. But somehow, Faramir’s sudden departure had (as her granny would have put it) taken the icing off the gingerbread. She was – okay, time to be honest with herself – cross with him for disappearing so abruptly. Which meant, by extension, she was cross with herself for caring. And grumpy from the sheer effort that went into stopping herself thinking too deeply about she was so cross about all of this.

It was a dry day, so she set off half an hour early and walked into college to save the bus fare. At least the walk cleared her head a bit and gave her a little bit of perspective. By the time she’d spent an hour and a half on a couple of Gallay Études and some repertoire work, she could feel her equilibrium returning a bit.

Her lesson with Elfhelm put her in a better mood. She was really beginning to see the point of playing a natural horn. He got her to play all the big horn solos in the Brahms symphonies.

“Remember we have Brahms’ written instructions – he explicitly says he wants them played on a natural horn, and even tells his horn players that they mustn’t try to pick the instrument up and wing it on the night; they’ve got to set aside at least two weeks to practise in preparation for a performance.”

He put a sheet of music on her stand. The opening of Brahms’ second piano concerto.

“Piece of piss on a horn with valves. See what it sounds like on a natural horn. It’s written for B flat basso, so I think you’ll have to use my horn – the horn you have on loan doesn’t have enough crooks.”

He handed the horn over, without its mouthpiece. Eowyn put her own in place, then raised the horn to her lips, and played through the opening bars.

“Okay, what do you notice about it immediately?”

“Every note’s an open note apart from that written F.”

“And what does the fact that it’s stopped force you to do?”

“Change the tone a bit on that group of triplets…”

“Because?”

“Because they’re less important.”

“And the other thing?”

“Well, it’s bloody hard work sustaining the tone with a B flat basso crook in there.”

“Yup, effectively it’s now twice as long as your modern full-double played on the B flat side – because that’s a B flat alto. But more importantly, what sort of tone are you getting out of it?”

“Really dark, almost muffled.

“Right, so when you go back to your shiny Alexander in repertoire sessions, remember that. Don’t overdo the triplets, take them back a notch to capture what Brahms had in mind. And also, make sure you play it on the F side and keep the tone nice and dark. There’s a temptation to go ‘Ooh, solo,’ and aim for a really bright sound that carries. But that’s not what’s going on here.”

“I suppose it gives the pianist a chance to come in really quietly, almost out of nowhere. One of those magic Brahms moments.”

“Exactly.”

Éowyn played through it again. To her surprise Elfhelm sat down at the piano.

“Now, listen to me as you play it – I’ll be picking up the piano part (insofar as I can) in the second bar. So that first crotchet. Give me a bit of space. Most pianists take a bit of space there. Almost like they’re breathing.”

They tried it again, with Elfhelm picking out the piano part.

“Okay, that’s good.” He popped another sheet of music on the stand. “Slow movement of Brahms 2. That well known bastard on a modern horn, because the part is for horn in B, not B flat.”

“Oh god, I came across it first time in the Edinburgh youth orchestra. Transpose an augmented 4th in my head? What am I, a mathematical genius?”

Elfhelm grinned. “This one’s even more complex to tackle on a natural horn.”

Éowyn had a go. It was a complete train wreck. Elfhelm smiled.

“Not easy, is it? But the take home message is that the notes you think are important on a modern horn – the long held ones – are mostly stopped and come out much more muffled than you think.”

The session with Elfhelm cheered Éowyn up, and she went to lunch feeling really quite cheerful. She’d brought sandwiches – major economy drive at the end of term. So she was quite envious when Disa sat down next to her with a plate of hot food.

“You still good for doing the door this evening?”

“Yup – 6.30 onwards, yes?”

“That’s right. Everything should be set up from the rehearsal in the afternoon.”

“I hear it’s an open rehearsal.”

“Yes, Arondir had the absolutely genius idea of going round local schools in Moss Side doing music BTEC and asking if they wanted to bring year 10 and 11 pupils along.”

“Cool. I’d have loved to get the chance to watch a good orchestra rehearse when I was a school kid – maybe younger than they are, because by that age I was in the NYO.”

“Well, that’s kind of the point. Open things up to kids who didn’t grow up with the chances we had.”

Éowyn nodded enthusiastically.

“The BTEC focuses on contemporary music and pop, and the technical side of recording. My guess it’ll be the first time a lot of them have heard much classical music, much less classical music by black composers, played by predominantly black musicians.”

“This is going to be the ultimate up-yours to King.”

Disa gave Éowyn a sharp look.

“I think it’s grown way beyond that – it’s become a really good project in its own right.”

Éowyn suddenly felt as though she was having one of those gestalt switch moments. What had seemed to her to be the big issue – King being a prick – was in fact only a minor irritation in terms of the much bigger picture to Disa. She felt a bit of an idiot. She was also aware that any attempt to admit to being an idiot ran the danger of making it about her and her feelings. She settled for keeping things simple.

“Sorry. Yeah. So, doors at 6.30.”

Disa nodded.

“What’s the running order?”

“Samuel ColeridgeTaylor and Joseph de Bologne in the first half, Florence Price and William Grant Still in the second.”

“That’s a packed programme.”

“Isn’t it just? Loads of great stuff.” Then Disa grinned and went for one of her characteristically abrupt changes of subject.

“So, have you got over being friend-zoned yet?”

“Ha ha, very funny. I am quite comfortable in the friend zone, as I’ve explained. And he’s quite comfortable in the friend zone. So that’s where we’ll both stay.”

“One train journey. That’s all it took. Rejected on the basis of catching a train.” Disa put the back of her hand to her forehead in a theatrical, ‘woe-is-me’ gesture.

“God, do you have an off switch?” Éowyn asked. Then looked up at the clock above the counter. “Shit, I’m going to be late for piano. I have the fun prospect of running through all the piano accompaniments for grade 5 horn. How exciting is that?”

“Thrilling...”

Valandil and his mates had done a great job of the publicity, Éowyn reflected as she sold yet another pair of tickets. They’d leafleted everywhere they could think of – not just the college and university, but everywhere they could think of in the city centre, from coffee shops to art galleries. And community centres and pubs and even corner shops.

Not only did it look like they might fill the venue, but (when she contrasted this crowd with the lunchtime concert the week before) it couldn’t be different from the sea of neatly dressed, middle class, grey-haired lecturers. Not that there was anything wrong with that – she thought back to the kindness of the unknown woman with her packet of hankies, and Sylvia and Andy and their friends making room for her in the pub. But it was nice to see a wider cross-section of people.

She felt obliged to stay on the door through the overture, just in case of any late comers. The sound carried well enough, though, so she was able to let the sound world of Coleridge Taylor wash over her. She found it fascinating – at the time, he must have been amazingly innovative. She knew he was more-or-less contemporary with Elgar and Mahler, and yet here he was conjuring a lush string sound and rhythms which the likes of Korngold would bring from Vienna to Hollywood 35 years later. She had heard the piece before, but on the radio, only half paying attention; now, hearing it live, she was blown away by it.

She slipped into the back of the church in time for Arondir and Valandil’s performance of the Symphonie Concertante. Again she was fascinated to hear it; this was the piece which King had vetoed, the piece that had given Arondir, Valandil and Miriel the idea for the concert. It was typically mid 18th century, but Valandil and Arondir played with an exuberance and panache that brought it alive.

But for her, the absolute highlight came in the second half, with Miriel’s performance of Price’s concerto in one movement. She’d slipped quietly into her seat at the back of the church. From the opening brass motifs – trumpet, then horn, each one echoed by the woodwind, she sat transfixed. Then Miriel came in with that combination of lyricism and power she remembered from the slow movement of the Tchaikovsky. Sequences of chords which reverberated round the church alternated with rippling passages of fluid movement, Miriel’s fingers blurring across the keys, before the orchestra picked up the main theme again. The mood of the music changed – triumphal chords in the piano with a trumpet fanfare, picked up by the rest of the orchestra, before the music wound round to echoes of the main theme. Gradually, the dynamic picked up until the dramatic conclusion.

The performance ended to rapturous applause. After the third call back to the stage, Miriel sat down at the piano once more and gave the audience what they wanted; an encore.

She stood for a moment, hand resting on the lid of the piano. “This is ‘The Bells,’ by Margaret Bonds, a Chicago born and trained African-American composer and pupil of Florence Price.”

The encore was evocative, the chords sounding like the promised bells, the tune of the spiritual floating above, weaving in and out.

Then came the symphony, and once more Éowyn was transported to another time and place. From the plangent opening solo of the cor anglais she was hooked. There was something wonderful about the blending of blues and traditional symphonic sounds, lush strings, driving rhythms, muted brass. It made her think a little bit of Gershwin, but this had its own originality. It was somehow deeply grounded in its musical roots. She shut her eyes and let herself float on away on a river of sounds into another world, a world of blues clubs and Hollywood movies of the 30s. The slow movement swept her along through the unifying thread of the cor anglais once more, this time playing with a solo violin and clarinet. Then the scherzo – a movement fittingly named ‘Humour’ – took her by surprise, she found herself smiling with delight at the inclusion of a banjo introducing the light-hearted dance that the rest of the orchestra took on. The last movement took her on a journey through so many emotions – hope, mourning, longing and eventually back to hope.

It occurred to her as she joined in the applause at the end that, although she’d heard all the composers except Margaret Bonds before, she’d never really put them all in context before. She felt a certain shame at the gap in her musical knowledge, but also an excitement at the thought of so much to discover.

She didn’t have long to wait. At the after concert party (Disa and Durin’s flat, again), she got chatting to Miriel in the kitchen, and Miriel positively glowed with excitement that someone wanted to know about her dissertation. Miriel combined a passion for the music, a deep understanding of its performance, and a detailed knowledge of the history surrounding it, particularly the social and political history. Éowyn sat, chin cupped in hands, listening with rapt attention, asking the occasional question, and expressing horror at the level of racism that had just been part of the everyday fabric of society. Naively, she had thought of racism as mainly a southern problem, but it was woven into the fabric of university and professional life even in a northern city like Chicago. Miriel’s face drew into a frown.

“All this wonderful, wonderful music, then you read up on some of what the composers had to go through.”

Disa, it turned out, had been listening to the conversation too.

“You see, that’s why Wykeham King is just a symptom of the problem, not the whole problem. He’s particularly in-your-face, in a way that many of us hoped had died out in the 70s. But as my gran says, in an odd sort of way, at least you knew where you were with 70s racism. It was so overt you could see it, everyone could see it, no-one could deny it was happening. But now… pfft. Under-the-radar. You know it’s happening, but the actual words are kept just the right side of plausible deniabilty. Your boss, your friend when you tell them afterwards, your… director of studies. When you repeat the words back to them, they can’t see it.”

Éowyn winced. That conversation with Galadriel Noldor she’d overheard. Yup, that was the one. And… shit. Was she that friend? She hoped not. She could at least see that King was a prick. But then again, as Disa said, King was particularly in-your-face. Maybe she missed loads of other, subtler stuff.

Disa patted her on the shoulder and smiled at Miriel. “This is a bit heavy. We should be telling Miriel how fucking fabulous her playing was.”

“It was, it really was. I’ve loved your playing since I heard you tackle the slow movement of the Tchaikovsky in repertoire.”

Miriel beamed. “I’m doing a couple of recitals next term – Price, Bonds, and another Chicago composer, Betty Jackson King. I think you’ll love her Four Seasonal Sketches.”

On the late bus home, Éowyn's mind drifted back to that Tchaikovsky rehearsal. The other day on the moors, she’d jokingly described Faramir as the best pianist in his year, but she recalled that in that first rehearsal, Miriel had made more of an impression on her. Well, more of a musical impression; in terms of comedy humiliation of one’s fellow students, Thorin Stone’s dig was pretty unforgettable.

Then she felt slightly cross with herself again. Why was she wasting headspace on mentally comparing Miriel and Faramir playing Tchaikovsky, rather than just remembering Miriel do a fantastic job of playing Price?

I asked ElrondsScribe, whose story inspired this fic, for suggestions, and she asked for piano pieces by black female composers so I built this chapter round Florence Price’s concerto (with a bonus encore by Margaret Bonds), then it kind of grew to encompass the Chicago school as a whole including William Grant Still’s 1st Symphony (and a generation later, conductor Paul Freeman’s recording).

And of course, Valandil and Arondir wanted to play the Joseph de Bologne (how could I say no? I never say no to my characters), and I love Samuel Coleridge Taylor, so he got the overture.

Florence Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement, Karen Walwyn (piano), New Black Music Repertory Ensemble, Leslie Dunner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=189GH0gUBd4
In addition to being a fabulous pianist, as a musicologist, Karen Walwyn has made it her life’s work to research Florence Price’s piano music and bring it to a wider audience.

The Bells, Margaret Bonds, Samantha Ege (piano)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xt7XP8HJ8c
Samantha Ege similarly has a huge catalogue of fantastic recordings, some of which are on YouTube. Here she is, playing Betty Jackson King’s Four Seasonal Sketches
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc1_OSzT3CA

Samuel Coleridge Taylor – Hiawatha Overture, London Phil, Joshua Weilerstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GElaTfvFnxU
(Those of you coming at this from an Eng lit background – Coleridge Taylor’s mum was a big fan of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and, since her surname was Taylor, thought it would be cool to just switch the names round a bit. Just to put him in context, as a student he massively impressed the major established English composer of the time, one Edward Elgar!)

Joseph de Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George, Symphonie Concertante in G Major, Simiso Radebe, Kabelo Monnathebe (violins), Buskaid Soweto.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRBUA5rgaLs
I linked to this a few chapters back. I’ve listened to quite a few performances of this, and I do love the enthusiasm a good youth orchestra brings to playing, plus I like the sound they make (even better in this performance of Rameau: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8V9DahE6gA).

William Grant Still, Symphony no. 1 (Afro-American Symphony), LSO, Paul Freeman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9iGFLpO5Nk
And Paul Freeman talking about a chance encounter with Martin Luther King – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svkssrlv41Q.

Meanwhile, back with the horn section…

Brahms 2nd piano concerto, Daniil Trifonov, Berlin Phil, Kirill Petrenko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChBknUk8Z5o

Brahms 2nd symphony, start of the horn solo in the 2nd movement, Leipzig Gewandhaus and Kurt Masur
https://youtu.be/nrdXhhbUGDc?t=1057

And my discovery of the week, a fantastic London-based hornist who specialises in historical horn, Isaac Shieh. Here he is, playing the first movement solo from Brahms 2 on a natural horn – watch his right hand!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6rRnqmmfrY
and playing one of the Gallay Etudes – with the music along the bottom of the video, so you can see which notes sound and which ones are muffled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9C97OfQU9g
Despite the key changes, he’s doing the whole lot on an F crook (as Gallay suggests in the manuscript) – so if you’re good enough you can get pretty close to playing all 12 tones of the chromatic scale on a natural horn. I am totally blown away by this, btw. I can’t play it on an instrument with valves.

(Oh god, I am such a nerd. I also looked at one of the clips of him playing a modern horn – the Prokofiev clip – and thought “ah, interesting, a Paxman”… and dammit, I was right. Okay, so I have an advantage maybe, I do have a Paxman myself though mine is a seriously ancient knackered one… Both the sound and valve design are very characteristic. The Schumann Fantasiestücke, he’s playing an Alexander, and again, really distinctive sound. )

Finally, Shieh playing the horn quartet from Coleridge-Taylor’s A minor symphony
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Tr-Gb9pZiVY
(You can see him playing the first horn part, I presume he’s pre-recorded the other three parts. Sadly no nerdy details of the horn, but I would guess late 19th century French from the design and piston valves – in other words, absolutely in period for when Coleridge-Taylor was writing. The typical German design with keys and rotary valves that we’re now familiar with didn’t really make its way into the English-speaking music world until Dennis Brain popularised it in the 1940s – Anneke Scott is good on the history of this.)

With thanks to Katy for giving this chapter a once-over before I posted it.

Chapter Text

Wednesday, Éowyn decided, was going to be much better. Buoyed by memories of the previous night’s concert, she wandered round the kitchen humming to herself. She checked her timetable for the day – the period orchestra session was annotated “strings only” and she punched the air.

“Yessss!”

Éomer looked up from his cornflakes. “Huh?”

“I don’t have that arsehole King today.”

“Lottie does,” said Éomer. “That’s why she didn’t stay over. She’s in a panic about everything being just right.”

“Text her and say that it’s King, not her, that’s the problem.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Seriously. You could be the best singer or player in the world and he’d still find some way of putting the boot in. Just because the guy’s a wanker.”

Éowyn spent part of the morning working on Strauss 2 for her next lesson with Erkenbrand. Then, just for a bit of fun, decided to compare and contrast trying to play Gallay’s first Étude on her Alexander and on a hand horn. To say it wasn’t successful as an experiment would be an understatement. She was just about ready to launch the hand horn out the window and into the path of a passing bus when the door to the room flew open.

Disa poked her head in.

“King’s changed the schedule. He wants the full orchestra, not just strings.”

“As of when?”

“About five minutes ago.” Disa looked at the hand horn in Éowyn's grasp. “At least you’ve got the right instrument. Théomund’s just had to borrow someone’s bike to cycle home to get his.”

“King can’t just do that!”

“He can, and he has.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. My best guess is just to piss everyone off.”

Éowyn's mood sank like a stone.

The rehearsal was brutal. First, King tore a strip off Théomund for being late. Then when Théomund tried to defend himself by saying he’d had to cycle home to get his natural horn, King kicked him out of the rehearsal.

The unexpected change of plan turned out to be a sudden read-through of Haydn’s creation. Pedagogical in intention, Éowyn wondered? Or driven by the fact that King was down to perform this in Lucerne in January, and wanted a chance to try out some edits he’d put in based on textual variants in an early edition in the Bodleian collection in Oxford? She guessed this was so he could check out how they sounded without having to waste time with his professional orchestra later. (This nugget of information came from Valandil who’d overheard King talking to Noldor about it.)

King’s next trick was to turn his attention to the chorus, reducing two of the altos to tears. He then berated Haldir on his German pronunciation. He shouted at Arwen for her intonation (which sounded spot-on to Éowyn). He tried to have a go at Éowyn and Disa. Éowyn maintained her approach of implacable politeness. And in fairness, Haydn didn’t offer much an opening for King – the horn parts were pretty straightforward, largely there for orchestral colour.

It was annoying: “Es war licht…” should have been one of those utterly magical moments of joy in music. And upsetting – the way he bullied the choir in particular was way over the line. Instead of the Heavens telling the glory of God (whether or not one believed, Éowyn thought, the music was sublime), they had King being a prick, as per usual.

He was particularly vile when it came to the edits. The edits were on sheaves of loose paper, the existence of which he would announce on the fly, then raise his baton while his orchestra and singers were still thumbing through handfuls of paper, desperately trying to find the right one, then shout at them when they weren’t ready a millisecond later. At one point Éowyn found that the horn parts had got swapped with the bassoon parts; it could have been an oversight on King’s part, but she wouldn’t have put it past him doing it deliberately.

After several hours of hell she made her way out. The huge glass wall between her and Oxford Road was inky black in the early December evening, streaks of rain picked out by the orange streetlights and shafts of light from the passing traffic. She shouldered her instrument case and headed down stairs. At the foot of the stairs, she caught a glimpse of a retreating figure pushing through the double doors towards the teaching rooms… A now familiar figure, unruly dark hair, broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs.

The bastard. He was back from whatever supposedly desperately urgent trip had called him away on Monday, and he hadn’t told her. He’d said he’d see her later in the week, but clearly that was just talk. He hadn’t actually meant it. (A tiny corner of her mind reminded her that he was just a friend, and it was only Wednesday, and maybe ‘seeing her later in the week’ had simply meant bumping into her, as they tended to do, not actively seeking her out. A bigger part of her mind decided, resolutely, to embrace the wash of anger and hurt.)

She stomped off to the bus stop, the rain perfectly in keeping with her mood.

Thursday, she didn’t even try to deny it. She was in a hell of a bad mood. Éomer took one look at her, carefully balanced the two coffee cups on top of a plate laden with toast for himself and Lothíriel, and retreated back into his bedroom.

A morning of music theory and composition classes did nothing to help. Nor did lunch – a choice of overcooked spaghetti or undercooked oven chips and pasty didn’t inspire her, and the sandwich she eventually chose was dry as the Sahara in the mouth, and somehow managed at one and the same time to be insubstantial yet sit like lead in her stomach.

Repertoire rolled round. Disa was there, modern horn on her lap, ready to bump Éowyn's first horn part. Éowyn had a feeling she’d need it; Noldor had an all-Strauss programme lined up for them, some of the most brutal pieces in the repertoire.

While they waited for everyone to settle in position and tune, Disa chatted about the usual things. Éowyn responded on autopilot. If you’d asked her, she wouldn’t even have been able to tell you what she’d just said.

The first piece was not too bad. Or rather, it was bad, in terms of sheer technical difficulty, but that very difficulty was a welcome distraction for Éowyn in her present mood. The infamous opening of Till Eulenspiegel, the Merry Joker, was absolutely notorious for the demands it placed on the horn player – accidentals, chromatic passages, odd tied notes across the bar and across the stresses in the music, an accelerando which had to fit in with the rest of the orchestra, then, to cap it all, a brutal descending arpeggio from the upper register through two and a half octaves down to a pedal C, which had to work smoothly without any obvious adjustments of embouchure, the bottom notes ringing out with just as much power as the top A she’d started on.

Almost absent-mindedly she absolutely nailed it.

Then, two bars later, she had to do it all again. Somehow second time was always easier. The worst of the pressure was off. Then it was intense focus and concentration – all those weird rhythms, now transferred to the woodwind, cutting across bar lines made counting incredibly hard, with each subsequent entry requiring total precision and clarity of tone.

“You cow,” Disa whispered. Except it came out as “You cah…” Disa was doing her comedy Sarf London accent, hamming things up for effect. “You’re in a filthy mood, you’re hardly even paying attention, and you can still play like that. It’s not fair.”

“Sorry,” Eowyn said. “I dunno what’s got into me. I’m just in a shitty mood.”

Disa shook her head. “I could take a guess if you wanted.” Her words were a mumble, but Éowyn still caught them and rolled her eyes.

No rest for the wicked, or even the chronically grumpy. Noldor announced that they were going straight into the prelude from Rosenkavalier. She looked over at the horn section.

“I see you’ve got a bump today – take a moment or two to decide who’s doing what.”

Disa and Éowyn quickly went through the first horn part, deciding who would play what. Then Éowyn raised her horn to her lips. Another infamous opening – the first flourish was quite literally her, all on her own. Fortunately within a couple of bars the rest of the orchestra joined in, meaning the brutally difficult triplets – almost grace-notes – were simply part of the overall orchestral texture.

Ironically, the rest of Rosenkavalier went a bit pear-shaped largely because it was easier. Éowyn's focus kept drifting off. It was only the fact that Disa was on the same part that kept her going.

“Letter D,” Disa hissed.

Éowyn gave a start. She realised she only had two bars’ rest.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Disa said, as they put their instruments away. “I can’t cope with you in this mood. There’s only one solution. Alcohol. Pub. Now. First drink’s on me.”

“But it’s a school night.”

“I’m past caring. You get drunk, you either cheer up or pass out. Either way – a result!”

She pulled her phone out her pocket. Thumbs dancing, she wrote a message.

“Who’re you texting.”

“Durin. Telling him to round up Sam and Pippin too.”

She looked at Éowyn, who looked back at her, still glum and grumpy. Almost as an afterthought, she dashed off a second text.

“And that one?”

“Durin again.” Disa hesitated just for a second. “Letting him know where we’re going.”

Haydn – The Creation, Dasch, Strehl, Quasthoff, Austro-Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic Orchestra, Wiener Kammerchor, Grohotolsky, Fischer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIpSNMQZH9M
Nerd alert – watch out for the French horn and Vienna horn side-by-side in the horn section.

Strauss – Till Eulenspiegel, LSO, Roth
https://youtu.be/y_0o28Tm7MI?t=177

Strauss – Der Rosenkavalier (Prelude), Met Opera, Rattle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEKd3cFAcn4

A “bump” is an extra horn player, doubling the first part, used in particularly high and demanding pieces of music. The principal horn still plays the really showy stuff and solos, the bump usually plays the top part in the ensemble writing for two or all four horns (or eight if it’s Mahler, Bruckner, Wagner, Shostakovich, one of those guys). Even in a little orchestra like the one I play in, occasionally we’ll sacrifice one of the other parts so I can give our first horn a bit of extra oomph where needed (we only have 3 of us, so I usually produce a “Frankenpart” by combining the 2nd and 4th horn parts – which reminds me, I need to do that with Egmont).

Chapter Text

Disa was true to her word. She plonked Éowyn and the two horn cases at a table, then went to the bar and returned with two large glasses of red wine.

“Wine?” said Éowyn.

“Yeah, we’re not wussing around with beer. 13%, baby. Go large or go home.”

“Going home is always an option.”

“No it’s not, because I’m holding your Alex hostage.” Disa picked up the horn case and cradled it to her.

Éowyn stuck her tongue out at Disa, then took a swig from her glass. Disa returned the horn to its resting place and sat down.

“So, girl, what is it with you? You’ve been really grumpy for days now. I’d have thought you’d be on a high after the Strauss concerto. By the way, is it my imagination, or is the opening of Rosenkavalier harder than the concerto?”

Éowyn shrugged. “Just… Stuff. Y’know. But yeah, that opening of Rosenkavalier probably is harder.”

Disa started to say something, but was interrupted by Durin leaning over her from behind. He put his arms round her and kissed her cheek. Éowyn looked over his shoulder and saw Sam and Frodo walk into the bar, followed closely by… Faramir. Oh bugger. She glanced suspiciously in Disa’s direction – had that been what the second text was about? Then looked down hastily and tried to pretend she was fascinated by her glass. To no avail. She felt the cushion on the bench sag beside her.

“Wine rather than beer?” Faramir’s voice sounded perfectly casual. Like he hadn’t been away at all. Like she definitely hadn’t spent three days trying to second-guess his motives.

Friend-zoned.

She looked up at him reluctantly. He frowned, looking puzzled.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. It’s been a sod of a week. Downhill all the way since the Strauss. King is still a bastard.”

“Ah.” He paused. “I’m really sorry I had to rush off. My brother phoned mid-afternoon to say he’d just landed at Brize Norton, would be home overnight – we still have my dad’s old London flat – then on the eleven am flight, Heathrow to Washington. I haven’t seen him in about ten months, so I thought I’d grab the opportunity to catch up with him. Sorry, really should have said.”

This was a new experience. She was used to belligerence as a response to her bad moods. Not a simple apology. Somehow, it took the wind out of her sails. Éowyn's – well, all of the complicated basket of emotions that she wasn’t giving a name to – anyway, whatever they were, they drained away. Shit, was it really that straightforward? What the fuck was wrong with her, that she’d tied herself up in knots for three days, because a friend had gone off to see his brother? All that seemed to be left was embarrassment. And a sudden wave of exhaustion. She managed to pull herself together and speak.

“Shit, you should have said. You could have skipped the concert, got an earlier train.”

“No, I said I was coming to your Strauss – which was fantastic, by the way. Anyway, Boromir was going to be jet-lagged to fuck come what may, so we just stayed up chatting till god knows when. He probably slept on the flight. I definitely slept on the train back to Manchester.”

“Oh,” was about all Éowyn could manage. She felt a right plonker. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Disa, shaking her head, like a chorus to the unspoken admonition.

“Do you want another? What are you on?”

Éowyn felt a moment of puzzlement. He’d already noticed – and commented on – her drink. Then the penny dropped. He meant ‘What sort of red wine?’ not ‘Wine or beer?’ For a moment she was tempted to channel Sean Connery as Bond and ask for a Chateau Pretentious, 1963 and three-quarters, just to take the piss. She bit her tongue.

“House red is fine.”

Faramir got up and walked to the bar. She watched him as he went, long legs and rangy stride. That was another thing she hadn’t really been allowing herself to think about. She still didn’t think it was safe to let herself think about it.

The table gave a little shake under her elbows. She looked up to discover Éomer and Lothíriel had arrived. Clearly Disa had cast her text messages far and wide. Lothíriel had some sort of elaborate cocktail; Éomer had a pint and a very large bowl of nachos which he set down in the middle of the table. He gave a kind of vague ‘help yourself’ gesture, and Éowyn grabbed a couple.

“Drinking on a Thursday,” he said.

“It was Disa’s idea,” said Éowyn. All a ruse, she didn’t add, centring round that second, hurried text. She now had a pretty good idea that the second text hadn’t been to Durin at all. She wasn’t sure whether she was annoyed, amused or… Oh fuck, she couldn’t get her head in gear at all.

“Ach, it’s not like I mind the idea.” Éomer's voice interrupted her train of thought.

Faramir returned and put a bottle and two glasses on the table. The label looked fancy. Definitely not house red, then. Éomer looked at it in surprise.

“Are you trying to get my sister pissed?” Éomer was doing his over-protective brother act; Éowyn knew it was an act, but she wasn’t sure if Faramir did. However, Faramir appeared completely unruffled.

“No. I can assure you my motives are irreproachable. It’s merely that I had two hours of Professor Thorin Stone this afternoon. Thorin Stone and Liszt’s Transcendental Études. For two sodding hours. I am trying to get myself pissed. Your sister may end up as collateral damage, but I leave that to her discretion, or lack thereof.”

Éowyn burst out laughing, while Éomer looked puzzled.

“I have, in fact, realised,” Faramir added, affecting a morose air, “That the expression ‘Brahms and Liszt’ is not, as is commonly believed, Cockney rhyming slang; it is merely descriptive of the impact Liszt in large doses has on the average pianist.”

Éowyn managed to control her laughter long enough to reach out and pour them both a generous sized glass of wine.

“Thanks,” she said, raising her glass.

The conversation ranged far and wide. Disa and Durin sat snuggled up on the bench at the far end of the table. Éomer and Lothíriel chatted for a bit, until Lottie challenged Éomer to a game of pool. Sam and Frodo chatted about films for a while, then Sam got into a long and obviously quite involved discussion with Disa.

Éowyn thought she heard the phrase “No, the tech isn’t nearly as hard as you think it is. All that should be perfectly possible, even working on your own. I’ll show you how at the weekend if you want…”

Meanwhile, Frodo engaged Faramir in a long discussion about Roman history. Éowyn was content to let it all wash over her. After the peculiarly emotionally charged week she’d had, she wasn’t sure if she could really hold down a conversation. She worked on the wine instead, half aware that Faramir seemed to be matching, if not outstripping her.

Faramir poured Frodo a large glass too – fair enough, he’d bought it. Then he realised the bottle was empty. Éowyn's heart sank. A bottle at pub prices, and it was her shout. But Faramir just stood up and went to the bar before she had a chance to say anything.

Frodo looked at her sympathetically. “I wouldn’t let it worry you. It’s not often Faramir lets his hair down – if he wants to buy nice wine in order to do so, let him.” Then Frodo too got absorbed into the conversation with Disa and Sam.

Éowyn stared into space. She realised she was tired. Very tired. Tired of feeling like she was on a roller coaster – up one moment, playing Strauss, down the next watching Faramir disappear, up again nailing Till Eulenspiegel, then down, nearly forgetting where she was in Rosenkavalier. And – to continue the roller coaster metaphor – puking her guts up under the malign influence of King. What the hell did she want out of all this? Would she get an orchestral job at the end, or would she end up teaching? She remembered the elderly chap in Hayfield – like he said, there were worse things that introducing a new generation to the music you loved. But, was that enough? And where did other stuff fit in? How did you hold down a job as a musician and a normal life? And why was she even worrying about a normal life – she, the complete fuck-up, who lurched from hopeless boyfriend to one night stand to unattainable crush? And who the hell had an existential crisis and tried to decide where her whole life was going, mid-week, in the pub, already half-pissed? (A little voice in her head, which sounded uncannily like Disa, said “Everyone, that’s who...’)

A few minutes later, Faramir returned. He put the second bottle on the table and refilled both their glasses.

“So. Half a bottle in, you have the look of a woman who is pondering matters of great importance.”

Éowyn shot Faramir a look. “You are annoying.”

“Me? Annoying? Surely not.” He took a sip of his own wine. “Truthfully, you’re not the first person to say that. My brother. In a good natured way. My father – usually more pointedly. Most of my schoolmasters. My Aunt on occasion – remember, she had to share an apartment with me.”

Éowyn picked up her glass and swigged a healthy amount.

“So what have I done to annoy you?” Faramir twirled the glass in his hand contemplatively.

“It’s the way you seem to be able to read my moods so accurately. It’s like you’ve wandered into my head, walked around for a bit, you know, looking at my bookshelves, politely not noticing the laundry in the corner, assessed my taste in pictures, settled down like you were sitting on the couch in my flat. Made yourself at home.”

Faramir gave a rueful laugh. “Not intentionally, but I do care when you’re worried about something. And I get the feeling you are thinking about something that matters to you.”

Éowyn took another large slug of wine.

“Steady on, I’ll be carrying you to the taxi rank at this rate.”

“’Steady on’? Who the fuck says ‘Steady on’ any more?” Éowyn had a feeling she was beginning to slur her words very slightly.

“I do, clearly.”

“You know, you really are stupidly posh.”

Faramir raised his glass in salute. “Guilty as charged, m’lady. I blame it on the mater and pater.”

Éowyn rested her chin on her hand, picked a nacho out of the bowl and waved it in front of her, emphasising her words.

“I always thought I’d be trying for one of the major symphony orchestras. You know, Mahler, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Brahms – all the big horn parts. But…”

Faramir waited in silence, looking at her steadily, giving her the time and space to fill with the words she found so hard to frame.

“There was a line in a book I read once. Can’t even remember the context, but I think it was a character having a revelation that the fame and glory she wanted when she was young wasn’t all that. Something along the lines of ‘Lo, I will vie with the great riders no more.’”

Éomer leant over from somewhere to her left, suddenly, annoyingly reminding her that she and Faramir weren’t the only people in the pub. “Jilly Cooper, Riders, wasn’t it?”

Éowyn threw the nacho at him. It bounced off his nose.

Lothíriel arrived back from the bar and took in the scene in a glance. She gave a slight frown. “C’mon, Éomer, help me choose something on the jukebox.” She grabbed him by the hand and towed him across the room.

“So, not Jilly Cooper,” Faramir guessed.

“No. Though I can’t remember exactly where it came from. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. But we were rehearsing La ci darem la mano earlier. The horn doesn’t do a whole lot. But every note matters. All it’s doing really is adding colour, but just the right amount of colour at just the right times.”

“So?”

“So, I think I could be happy seeing the bigger picture, making music with people rather than doing all the flashy stuff.”

“Can’t you do the flashy stuff too? I mean, I can’t imagine you not doing the flashy stuff. You’re good at it.”

“Aw, shucks.” Éowyn took another healthy sip of the wine.

“No, I’m serious.”

“You can’t get serious when I’m drunk. ‘S not fair.”

“In vino veritas.” Again, that hand raised in salute. He continued, “And you get flashy stuff in opera. Verdi? Wagner? C’mon, I can see you as a Valkyrie.”

This time Éowyn threw a nacho at Faramir.

“Complete with horns on your helmet. The horns would be so you.”

“Horns for the horn player.” Éowyn definitely stumbled a little over the words this time.

“And armour. Shiny armour. And a sword and shield.”

“Huh.”

“You’d look brilliant in shiny armour. A breastplate and mail shirt and shiny riding boots.”

He gazed into the middle distance, a faint smile on his face. Éowyn suddenly realised that he was possibly almost as drunk as she was.

“Are you sure this is opera, and not some weird kinky fantasy you’ve got going?” She turned on the banquette so she was facing him, looking into his face in a desperate attempt to read the thoughts behind his words..

He met her gaze for a moment, swallowed hard, then looked over towards the bar, trying for a light-hearted tone of voice. “We’ve talked about this before; they’re one and the same thing. Opera is at least 50% weird kinky fantasy.”

“Pervert.” She swayed slightly, leaning on his shoulder for an instant. “You’re trying to invade my lovely operas with your weird kinky stuff.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Apart from anything else, I wouldn’t dare. You’ve got a sword, remember.”

“And boob plate armour.”

“Hey, your words, not mine. I said breastplate. Cuirass, if you want it in French.” He’d turned back round to face her.

“Your lips say cuirass, but your mind’s thinking boob plate.” She reached out and tapped the side of his head.

“A gentleman doesn’t admit to that sort of thought process.” He managed to sound almost prim, despite the flush on his cheeks. His gaze slid downwards, just for a millisecond, then snapped back up to her face. The flush darkened. She wasn’t sure if it was the booze or her boobs.

“So what are you thinking? Honestly?”

“Honestly?” He laughed and looked down at his glass. “If you’re going to force me to be honest… yeah, now you’ve started my mind down this direction, I do quite like the thought of you in armour, nice shaped armour. And also… More importantly… The main thing I’m thinking… Well, wondering, really.” Now he looked up at her, those grey eyes of his piercing straight into her. “I’m wondering whether I could get away with kissing you.”

For an instant she forgot how to breathe. Then…

“Just stop fucking talking, will you?”

And she grabbed the front of his jumper and pulled him towards her.

She could see the changes in expression flicker across his face at lightning speed – surprise, happiness, then something that looked very much like a certain triumphant self confidence. Then his arms snaked round her back, and he pulled her in tight, and he was kissing her like the end of the world was nigh. And god, it turned out he was good at it. Very good at it. His lips tugging at hers, his hand tangling in her hair, pulling her head gently towards him, his tongue stroking along her lips, then teasingly touching her own. And oh god… She let out a sigh. How embarrassing was that? She’d actually sighed. God, she was drunk. And lost in the sensation of his lips, his hands on her back, at her waist. His leg brushing against hers. She gripped his jumper in clenched fists, pulling him even closer.

They pulled apart, coming up for air. Éowyn realised the world was swimming alarmingly. Hypoxia or alcohol? She wasn’t sure. Maybe both. About the only fixed point in the rather rapidly rotating room was Faramir’s face, bearing an insanely happy grin, his hand reaching up to stroke her cheek.

The last thing she heard before she passed out was Disa’s voice saying, “About bloody time.”

Mozart – La ci darem la mano, Christine Schäfer, Simon Keenlyside, Berliner Philharmoniker, Claudio Abbado
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfti-KQoxXM

And another performance because I love Renee Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iZHwbxLBO0

Bonus Hvorotovsky performance – his winning entry in Cardiff Singer of the Year,1989, Handel’s Ombra mai fù (he has to be one of the best baritones ever)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL9cJON4Hj8
To put this into context – he beat Bryn Terfel into second place. Also, fun historical fact (if you’re my son’s age… for me, this isn’t history, it’s just my twenties), the little intro section (no subtitles on the Russian, sadly) talks about interviewing him in the USSR. Within a few months, the USSR had ceased to exist.

For comparison - Bryn Terfel, with Hei-Kyung Hong as Zerlina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqPcb1nKZYg

And now, way out in left field, Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson in It Happened in Brooklyn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPzHYiiRgxA
The things you find out on YouTube - I had no idea Frank Sinatra had done a version of this. I am dying laughing at the idea. Good plan for a meet cute... who would do something that cheesy these days, though?

Liszt – Transcendental Études, Daniil Trifonov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD4T-rNklsY

And another composer from the Chicago school to look up – Irene Britton Smith. If you’re in the UK, her violin sonata was on the Breakfast programme on 7th Feb (available for about a month), about 20 minutes into the programme). Here’s a link to a performance on youtube, played by Caitlin Edwards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR-PyotW_Z0

Chapter Text

Éowyn woke up with a mouth stuffed with cotton wool and a thumping headache, and a sense that… her surroundings weren’t quite right. She opened her eyes cautiously against the light coming through the crack in the blinds. Blinds, not curtains. It was a narrow, cell-like room. She was in the narrow bed – clearly not her own bed – on one side, and against the wall opposite was a piano.

Faramir’s room!

On the floor there was a roll-mat, sleeping bag and pillow. And a note on the pillow.

Blearily, she sat up, cursing as a stab of pain shot through her head. She reached out and picked up the note.

Hi Éowyn, Don’t worry, nothing happened. I slept on the floor as you can see. I had an early morning tutorial and you were snoring so I headed into college. The kitchen’s at the end of the corridor, my locker is number 7, help yourself to tea bags and cereal. My milk’s in the fridge with my name on it. See you later – drop me a text when you’re up and about. F x

PS. When I say nothing, there may have been a snog, but that’s all, and I promise I will never mention it again if that’s what you want. F xx

Her eyes slid over the words without really taking them in. The phrase “nothing happened” registered, to her relief, then the rest of the note danced blurrily beneath her hung-over gaze. She decided to forego tea in favour of a can of proper sugary coke and a bag of crisps from the vending machine. She looked round the room. Her jeans – oh God, she’d taken her jeans off – were draped over the desk chair, along with her hoodie. Her leather jacket was hanging from a hook on the door. Her horn was tucked neatly next to the piano. Somehow that was very Faramir; taking care of her instrument as if it was his own. That little detail seemed to bring the world into a sharper focus, and suddenly the text of the note stopped swimming.

“A snog…”

Oh, bloody hell, she hadn’t, had she?

Fragments of the previous evening were coming back to her. Faramir pulling her leg outrageously until she decided only drastic action would do. She had a dim memory of saying “Just stop fucking talking,” grabbing him by the front of his jumper and pulling him to her, then kissing him, just because she’d run out of arguments.

She had an equally dim, but even more embarrassing memory of having very much enjoyed it. She thought (though she wasn’t quite sure) that she remembered Faramir’s initial shock, then him returning the kiss with interest. She had just been getting into her stride when someone – the god of drunkenness – had come along and pulled her legs from under her. At least, that’s what it had felt like. She’d sagged into Faramir’s arms like one of those kid’s toys where you pressed the base of the stand, the elastic went loose, and the figure collapsed.

After that things were a blur.

About the only phrases she remembered were Sam’s voice saying “No, Éomer's left… with Lothíriel,” and a bit later, outside, she guessed, Faramir’s voice saying (she didn’t know who he was talking to) “No. I don’t like the look of that mini-cab driver.” Then weaving her way across the road with Faramir holding her up.

The final memories were of reaching up, trying to pull him down onto the narrow bed on top of her, and him laughing, untangling her arms from round his neck, and pulling the duvet over her, then kissing her forehead as if she was a toddler. Then of a wave of regret as she saw him crawl into the sleeping bag on the floor. Then she really had passed out.

She was conscious now, though. The thumping pain in her head left her in no doubt about that.

Pushing her hair back from her face, she got up and made her way to the tiny bathroom, aided in her progress by a hand on the piano. Thank god for the piano. She would have face-planted without its help. From now on, she would make sure that every morning after the night before came equipped with a piano. They were just the right height to lean on.

She felt better after a pee and splashing cold water on her face. She squirted a bit of toothpaste onto her finger and rubbed it over her teeth as best she could. Then on the spur of the moment, she decided to have a very quick shower. The hot water did more than the face wash had done, and now that her headache had subsided from “volcanic eruption” to a mere “belted over the head with a Medieval mace,” she hauled on her jeans, pulled her hoodie on, then slung her horn case and jacket over her shoulder and headed out to face the world.

And nearly collided with Merry.

“The walk of shame,” he crowed.

“Shut up.” Then, through gritted teeth, “Faramir slept on the floor.”

“More fool the both of youse,” Merry replied.

“Haven’t you got somewhere you should be?” she asked, tetchily. She left him staring at her back as she stalked angrily across the road and through the doors into the college.

Noise everywhere. Like daggers being shoved into her skull. So many people. People everywhere. The foyer – full of people. The broad staircase – full of people. The landing above – full of people. And the bastards were all talking. Loudly. And in the distance, some other bastards were playing music. Also loudly. Bastards. They were all fucking bastards.

At this point she started to see the funny side of her own mood. Angry that there were people with the effrontery to be playing bloody music, in a bloody music college, when she was hung over. Still, she’d have killed for a pair of sunglasses. Those bloody windows – floor to very high ceiling. And bloody Manchester. It had picked today of all days to stop raining. Brilliant sunshine attacked her eyeballs like a fusillade of needles.

Then she saw him – on the large landing outside the concert hall, at the top of the sweeping flight of stairs. Checking his phone. Oh God – he’d said to text him. And she’d forgotten. She set off up the stairs. Well, stomped up the stairs, more like. Whatever you called it.

Just as she got to the final two or three steps, he turned and saw her, and a huge grin spread across his face.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like shit. Why couldn’t you just have put a pillow over my face and put me out of my misery?”

“Did you find the tea?”

“No.”

“Did you find the note?” His grin faded, and he looked anxious all of a sudden. He pushed his dark hair out of his eyes, and she realised just how familiar that particular gesture had become.

“Yes. Just didn’t fancy the tea.”

He looked down at her with those intense grey eyes of his. How had she never really noticed just how tall he was? Except she had, but somehow it hadn’t registered. Not in the way it was now. Or how his rangy figure was somehow quite commanding? Except, again, she sort of had. She’d definitely noticed that day on the moors. But filed it away in that corner of her mind marked “do not open.” But the lock seemed to have broken on that particular door, and now the door was wide and swinging in the wind. And he was tall, and fit, and handsome and…

“Nothing happened.”

“I know. Your note said. And I remember bits of last night.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I made a bit of a tit of myself. I don’t know what came over me.”

His expression changed again. Not anxiety. More… sadness?

“No harm done. You were very drunk. So was I, for that matter.”

“Yeah. Sorry. About that…”

“Yes?”

“Why? Why didn’t we do anything?” She blurted this out before her brain could slam the brakes on. Some part of her brain sensed the catastrophe she was headed for. Unfortunately, it didn’t manage to connect with her lips. “Oh, forget I said that. I guess you… I’m not your type… I mean, I’m not exactly the pretty, feminine type.” She was wittering now, all control over her tongue completely lost. She just wanted to bolt back down the stairs. But instead she stood, rooted to the spot, her eyes unable to look away from him.

Then his face changed again. What was that look? Hope? A flicker of something that looked very like… happiness?

Suddenly he reached out and caught her hands in his.

“Éowyn. If you’d just let me get a word in edgeways... You are the most desirable woman I have ever met. The most fascinating woman. And I very much wanted to… But you were paralytically drunk, so it would have been wrong.”

She looked at him, stunned into silence. Then took just a small step towards him.

“But it isn’t wrong now…” Suddenly she’d found her voice.

“No, it isn’t.”

He paused, just for a moment. If she had to describe his face, it would have been equal parts hope and a slight reserve. Self defence. She knew that look from her own reactions to people. The hope seemed to be winning, just. He murmured, “That is, if that’s what you want.”

She gave just the tiniest of nods, feeling as though time had stopped somehow, and moved, or rather swayed, just a tiny movement, in his direction. And he pulled her gently, the rest of the way towards him, then put his arms round her and kissed her, a long, slow kiss, as if this was the central pivot point of their whole lives. His lips against hers, warm slightly rough, one hand in the small of her back, pulling her flush against him, the other wrapped round her shoulder.

Almost of their own volition, her hands found their way to his back. She kissed him back, swept up in the moment, her lips parting. His tongue touched hers, teasingly, temptingly, a promise of things to come. Last night had been some sort of drunken instinct; this was still instinct, but she felt as if she was being tumbled and tossed by a wave of emotions she wasn’t entirely sure she could name. Need, lust, desire – a warmth spreading through her whole body, making her cling to him. But also a need to… Just to be with him. Close to him. The warm bubble in her chest wasn’t simply lust, it was something else. That happy, warm, fuzzy Bach feeling again. And somehow, wrapped up in it all, a kindness, a gentleness that she hadn’t really thought could go alongside passion and desire. Then she let go and just gave in to the moment, revelling in the physical sensations – his lips, his tongue, his arms around her.

When, finally, he let go of her, she became dimly aware of a wolf whistle from the foyer below, and caught sight of Merry and Pippin, applauding like some sort of crazy, two-person standing ovation. Then realised the whole bloody crowd of people seemed to have stopped whatever they were doing to watch. Including Disa, who gave her a thumbs up. She was mortified. God, she needed the ground to swallow her up. Then – oh god, it got worse – Prof. Noldor was watching, with a look of quiet amusement; Prof Stone, by her side, was openly laughing.

On the plus side, at least the bastards had all stopped fucking talking so loudly.

Cole Porter – Well, Did You Evah! Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x65-nLCBouE

“Was I so unattractive? Quite the contrary, but you were also drunk, and there are rules.”
Paraphrased from the Philadelphia Story. The musical number is from its remake, High Society – My personal opinion is that PS is the better film by far (who can resist the incredible chemistry between Katherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, not to mention Cary Grant’s hilarious dead-pan humour?), but HS has some catchy numbers, of which this is my favourite.

The Philadelphia Story: the morning after the night before – Katherine Hepburn, James Stewart and Cary Grant on absolutely top form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpE3kI1HOWQ

Chapter Text

Blimey, that moved fast. Not that she hadn’t done this in the past, in her wild child phase. Moved faster, even. But not with someone she liked. Not with a friend. Not stone cold sober.

But it seemed like hardly any time at all since she’d emerged from the rehearsal rooms into the foyer, and found Faramir waiting for her, looking slightly nervous. His nerves hadn’t lasted long – the moment he’d seen her, his whole face had lit up. Still, there had been something almost shy about the way he’d taken her hand, suggested they put her horn safely in his room and then decide what to do with the evening. Her hand in his… just the sensation had made her feel as though her whole body was alight with little sparks of excitement. She hadn’t known holding someone’s hand could do that. Could make you want to lean in to them, touch every inch of them.

He’d led her across the road… And now.

Faramir lay on top of her like a hot, heavy, slightly sweaty blanket. A beautiful, desirable, heavy, sublimely sexy blanket. His head rested on her shoulder. She threaded her fingers through his beautiful dark hair – how had she not realised until now how beautiful it was? Or how much she wanted to run her hands through it. She could hear his breathing coming in rapid gasps. Come to think of it, hers wasn’t exactly steady. She could still feel every nerve ending. If she shut her eyes, still see sparks behind her eyelids.

From where she lay, she could see the rest of the room. Her horn, neatly stowed under the piano as before. Probably the last controlled action either of them had managed. Her sweatshirt (t-shirt still entangled, partially inside out) strewn half over the horn case, half over the piano stool. She had a vague recollection of it being flung in that general direction and sliding, as if in slow motion, off the shiny cover of the keyboard to reach its eventual resting place. Faramir’s shirt was where it had landed, dangling from the desk lamp. Her jeans lay in a crumpled concertina just inside the door, his a pace or two further into the room. Their lust-driven path to the bed was written in a single sentence made up of a greying sports bra, utilitarian pair of knickers and a rather nicer pair of boxer shorts, with crumpled socks sprinkled like crazy punctuation marks.

She couldn’t remember the last time sex had been this good. If it had ever been this good. Or this feeling of comfort afterwards. Though, like all good things, the comfort couldn’t last for ever.

“I’m getting pins and needles.”

“Sorry.” He rolled off her, propping himself on one elbow. “God, you’re gorgeous.”

She shifted slightly and kissed him.

“That was… good.”

He looked a little crestfallen.

“I mean, very good. Really good. Oh hell, I’m no good at talking at times like this.” She wasn’t. She wanted to tell him it had been better than good, better than she was any good at putting into words. Scarily good. Maybe not tell him that bit. The sort of good she wanted over and over again. Definitely not that bit. What if he didn’t want this again?

He reached out and stroked her cheek, his eyes sparkling. “Doing’s better than talking, anyway.” He kissed her where his fingers had been.

“Says the most articulate man I know.”

He laughed, quietly, warmly, and wrapped his arms around her. She snuggled up to him, then gave an involuntary shiver at the cool air playing across her damp skin.

“What happened to the duvet?”

“I think we may have kicked it off the end of the bed.”

He sat up and reached for it. Éowyn admired the muscles of his back playing beneath his skin as he stretched. He was… beautiful. He pulled it over them, and drew Éowyn close again. She had the most wonderful feeling of being completely safe, cocooned in a little world of their own, warm, self-contained, far from the real world. She rested her head on his shoulder and let her hand drift onto his chest, with its comforting dusting of dark hair. She could smell him: a mix of soap and a scent of recent exertion. She could live on this smell for the rest of her life – who needed food?

Not just him: she could smell them; the heady, feral, animal smell of sex and desire. She breathed in, and found herself smiling against his skin. His hands resumed their comforting circles on her shoulders and waist, and she cast her leg over his, wanting to get as close to him as she possibly could.

He moved his hand and started to stroke her hair gently.

“So beautiful. It’s like sunlight you can touch.”

Éowyn gave a giggle. “Are you always so poetic?”

“I think that comes under the heading ‘bad poetry,’ but you’ll have to forgive me – it’s the best I can do in the heat of the moment. Unless I quote some of someone else’s good poetry. Which feels a bit like cheating.”

She tilted her head and tried to kiss him on the cheek, but given where her head was nestled, the angle of his jaw was as far as she could reach. His skin felt rough and stubbly under her lips. Nicely so. He hummed a happy noise, and tightened his grip on her. She buried her nose against his neck, snuggling up and breathing in more of the lovely warm smell of him.

She ran through the events of the previous night in her mind – as well as she could, at any rate, for the drunken second half of the evening was still a bit hazy. She did remember the important bits – most especially kissing him.

“What made you suddenly decide to kiss me last night?”

“What makes you think it was sudden?”

“Well, it’s not like you’d been coming on to me before then.”

Faramir laughed gently, and she felt his chest shaking under his hand.

“What you mean is you didn’t notice me coming on to you. Not quite the same thing.”

“What? It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“No.” Another comforting rumble of laughter.

“Disa said she thought you fancied me.”

“Disa is a wise woman. You should listen to her more.”

Éowyn went quiet for a while. She started to mull over the events of the term, and it was as if a cloud had crossed over the sun.

“So – playing the Bozza, going for a walk… that was because you fancied me?”

Faramir gently disentangled himself and rolled onto his side so he could look at her. He lifted his hand to her cheek.

“I wanted to be your friend first and foremost, because you are brilliant. And… you fascinate me. Of course I wanted to be with you, and kiss you, and take you to bed, and… well, here we are. But even if you hadn’t wanted this, I would still have wanted to be your friend.” He moved slightly and kissed her, very, very gently. Then drew back and gazed at her, as if trying to read her face.

Éowyn looked straight back at him, following every line of his features. The shape of his mouth, his eyes. She saw an openness, a truthfulness, concern, hope, so many things written right there on the surface for her to read if she cared to. And she had a sudden realisation: He’s guarded with most people – but not with me, not here, not now. He won’t lie. He won’t hide.

On impulse she leaned into him and kissed him, as lightly and gently as he had moments earlier. Then suddenly he was pulling her close and showering her with kisses – kisses freely given, making no demands, just giving. Affection. Reassurance. She was wrapped up in the moment, but an odd extra feeling came to her. She felt safe.

And carefree. Lighthearted even. Had she ever lain in bed with someone sharing affectionate kisses, just for the sake of it? Just because you liked each other? Not as a step on the way to sex. Not as part of a desperate performance to prove that this was what passion looked like.

Just because you liked the person you were with.

Eventually she said “You still haven’t told me when you first wanted to kiss me.”

Another of those happy rumbles of laughter.

“You’ll think I’m mad.”

“No I won’t. Promise.”

“That Tchaikovsky rehearsal. I heard a woman laughing at me ‘fessing up to my romantic ineptitude. And I turned round. And it was you. The beautiful woman who’d blown me away in the Shostakovich the week before.”

“Oh.” Éowyn suddenly felt sad. “Sorry. I know I’ve said this before, but I shouldn’t have laughed at you.”

He smiled. “It’s okay. You explained. It was my deadpan delivery.”

“Mmm hmm.” She mumbled because he was kissing her again.

He pulled away for a moment. “Make light of the crap in your life by turning it into a joke.”

Then he was kissing her again. Kissing her over and over again until finally they had to stop to breathe.

“Only suddenly life doesn’t feel so crap,” Éowyn said. And realised with a shock that she meant it.

His face broke into a broad grin. Suddenly his hands were at her hips and he lifted her – effortlessly – so she came to rest on top of him. He threaded his hand into her hair as she dipped her head down to kiss him again.

And this time, it was about sex. Definitely about sex. Oh god. All about sex. Like a bolt of fire had shot through her whole body. Here she was, lying on top of him, wrapped around him, pressed against hard muscles, hot skin, strong arms holding her.

More than that, she could feel him, hard against her. There was no mistaking the effect she had on him. What took her by surprise, though, was the strength of her response. She felt overwhelmed by a wave of desire. An aching emptiness which she needed him to fill, right now, right bloody now.

He must have felt the same, because his other hand slid down her back to her arse, pulling her into him. His tongue explored her lips, touching her own gently, teeth tugging gently on her lower lip. She shifted her hips against him, and got a sigh from him in response.

Then she was kissing him back, with a ferocity she hadn’t known she had in her. Her teeth this time, grazing his lips, her tongue in his mouth, not gentle, but desperate, holding his head against hers with fingers tangled in his hair. She shifted slightly in his arms, trying to rub against him. She could feel his muscles flex, feel the iron in his thighs as she straddled them. Her breasts dragged across his chest. She felt this almost feral need to fuck him, hard and fast.

The inside of her thigh pressed against his cock, hard as steel against her skin. He made a kind of strangled noise.

“Condom…” His hand reached out to the tiny bedside table, and groped in the drawer.

She sat up, arse resting on his legs, looking down at him. His cock was absolutely rigid, standing to attention. She dragged her hands slowly across his chest, then took the condom from him, ripping the packet open. Slowly, deliberately, watching his face as she did so, she rolled it down over him.

“Oh god, I think I could come just from the feel of you doing that,” he said, his voice a low whisper.

“I think I could come from watching your face as you did.”

He stretched out and pulled her down on top of him, pulled her into his embrace, dragging her into another long, lingering, searing kiss, rolling over so he could press against her. She came to rest on her side, and found Faramir could now run his hand down the length of her body, from her shoulder, over her breast (oh god, that sensation, like an electric current running through her whole body), then downwards, across her belly. She gave a faint mewling sound of loss as his palm dragged across her nipple then left it bereft. In some past life, she would have been embarrassed at the sound, but she was way past caring.

His hand was gone for an instant before his mouth closed round her nipple. His hot, clever mouth, licking and sucking, as his hand slid downwards, over her hip, then back up the inside of her thigh – then a long, firm stroke, gathering moisture and passing slick and dexterous over her. Almost of their own volition, her hips jerked, flexing into his fingers, and he circled slowly, deliberately, agonisingly, wonderfully.

“Fuuuuuck.” The sound that escaped her lips was part moan, part word, part inarticulate need. How had he got her from nowhere to the very brink with only a few touches?
His tongue swiped across her nipple again, then he lifted his head, leaving her skin moist and tingling in the cold air of the room.

“Do you want me to?” His voice was low, hoarse, on the verge of cracking. The tip of his cock pressed against her entrance, leaving her in no doubt what he wanted. She could see in his face that he was as desperate for this as she was. She didn’t think she’d ever seen anything even close to that look of naked desire before this moment.

“Hell yes.” And her hands took on a life of their own, sliding down over his arse, rolling him on top of her. For a moment he pressed against her, then paused, tantalisingly, teasingly.

“Show me how…” His voice was low, seductive.

She reached down and took him in hand – God, how perfectly he fitted within her grasp - and guided him into her. Beneath her left palm, the muscles in his arse flexed as he slid within her. She canted her hips up to meet him, digging her fingers into his skin as he filled her, balls brushing against her skin as he pushed all the way. He pressed himself up slightly so he could look at her, then dipped his head and kissed her cheek, the line of her jaw, the side of her neck.

Then he pulled back, and she felt the loss, but a wonderful friction at the same time. She was dimly aware of the sound of a shuddered moan, but hers, his, she couldn’t have told which. Then he was back inside her, buried to the hilt, balls brushing her skin. For a few strokes, he kept a slow, deliberate rhythm. She was pretty sure the noises were coming from both of them.

Her hands roamed across his skin, such nails as she had scraping his back, his flanks, most of all his arse. His pace picked up, and she moved with him, flexing her hips, feeling each thrust into her, deep into her, bring her body up to meet his. The silence was filled with the slap of skin against skin, the most glorious, debauched of noises. He managed to ease his hand between their bodies, stroking, teasing, then pressing against her with a rhythm faster even than his thrusts.

She was close, so close. So was he. He held most of his weight now on one arm, his face above hers, and she could see him now, biting his lower lip, brows drawn into a frown, dark hair hanging about them like a curtain. His eyes were shut, long, dark lashes fluttering against pale skin. She knew he was trying to hold back. She didn’t want him to – she wanted to see him lose it.

“Come for me. Fuck me…” Her words were ragged, her breathing uneven, a succession of gasps.

She dug her fingers just that little bit harder, and in response, his thumb pressed against her, speeding up its circling, spreading liquid fire through the whole of her.

“Fuck…” His voice was cracking now, barely articulate. Then he thrust into her, deep and hard, every muscle taut like twisted rope.

And there she was, over the edge, tumbling into the hot, red, velvet darkness, diving into the hot liquid desire which was all encompassing, clinging to him.

He finally let himself go, hips driving into her, hands holding her hard against him. Again, the wave of red velvet darkness – a second wave, then a third. She felt herself tumbled head over heels by the breaking hot darkness around her, like a swimmer caught in a breaking wave. She swore she could feel him him pulse within her. Then he almost fell against her. She felt the final ripples of the receding tide still shuddering through her body, breasts against his chest, cheek against his cheek, desperate gasps of air taking on a synchronicity as they both came back to the surface and the real world.

Faramir was the first to move. He put his hands on her cheeks and drew her in for another kiss, a kiss that was an acknowledgement. Of something. She wasn’t sure she knew what. Whatever. She couldn’t put a name to it. But she felt good. She felt… happy.

ABBA – Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEjLoHdbVeE

Confession and public apology time: I was the most appalling musical snob in my teens. Never mind pop, I even looked down my nose at “pop” classics like J. Strauss. One of my schoolmates, Sarah, loved ABBA and I sneered at her taste.

And boy was I wrong. ABBA are fucking brilliant. Great music is great music, regardless of genre or tradition. And pissing up the wall contests are pointless.

Also, this is possibly one of the best songs ever written about female sexual desire.

Also – by a weird coincidence, Radio 3’s Essential Classics has as album of the week “Dancing Queen – Rameau to ABBA”, a collaboration between a period music group and saxophonist. (It’s weird, but quite fun. Think I prefer them separately, personally).

There are obviously lots of fabulously sexy scenes in opera – Fiordiligi and Ferrando in Cosi, Siegmund and Sieglinde in the Ring Cycle, Octavian and the Marschalin in Rosenkavalier, Tristan and Isolde, multiple parts of Don Giovanni, Poppea and Nero in L’Incoronazione di Poppea, multiple parts of Carmen, Mimi and Rodolfo in La Boheme. But there is one thing they all have in common: opera sex is not happy sex. It almost always happens in emotionally and morally fraught circumstances and ends really badly for the characters (especially the female characters). The only exception to this I can think of is Papageno and Papagena in the Magic Flute, which is played for laughs. So if you want happy, psychologically well-adjusted sex, I don’t think you can beat the 3 ½ minute pop single. (Of course strictly speaking, this one is about yearning rather than consumation, but I am working on the assumption that the yearning is answered PDQ.)

So – lucky Éowyn – someone did hear her prayer.

And – Sarah – sorry. You were right. I was wrong.

PS – sorry, cocked up the links in the last chapter and forgot to include the link to the “morning after the night before” scene in the Philadelphia Story – it’s now in there, if you want to go back and watch it.

Chapter Text

They were in the tiny kitchen at the end of the corridor in the hall of residence. Faramir put a couple of mugs of coffee on the table. Éowyn poured milk on her cornflakes, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

It was amazing what a difference 48 hours made. She found herself making an inventory. In no particular order – shoulders, broad, arms, surprisingly muscular. (Muscles put to good effect – she could still remember the way he was able to lift her effortlessly. Bloody hell, that thought on its own did extraordinary things to her.) Narrow hips. (Again, surprisingly muscular arse… Oh god! The way those muscles felt under her hands when he was inside her. Not to mention the way he felt inside her.) Long legs. Nice thighs – very nice thighs, in fact. Forearms – he had his sleeves shoved up to his elbows. She watched the play of muscle and sinew underneath the tanned skin on his forearms, skin with just the right amount of dark hair on it. And of course… Her eyes flickered downwards, to the crotch of his jeans. He was… She felt herself smiling. Generously proportioned? Even in jeans, now she knew what was in there, she realised she should have been able to tell that he was… Oh crap. She was borderline obsessed. How had she not noticed all of this before? How had she spent a whole term not noticing? Her whole mind seemed filled with thoughts of how his body felt, yesterday afternoon – and night – and this morning. She felt herself begin to flush.

Faramir leant back in his chair, hand casually holding his coffee, looking at her. She had the distinct impression he was doing his “wandering around inside her head, making himself at home” thing again.

Now she definitely blushed. Oh god, the curse of her schooldays. And her colouring. Pale and blonde. So pale in fact as a teen she’d felt Billy Connolly had written the “I’m not white, I’m blue” sketch for her. Except she wasn’t pale china blue now, she was bright red.

“I’m beginning to feel really quite objectified,” Faramir said, the corners of his mouth twitching in a barely suppressed smile.

“Sorry,” said Éowyn.

He laughed, a kind of cocky, self-confident laugh. “Don’t stop. I’m thoroughly enjoying it.”

Éowyn put her head in her hands and leant forward onto the table, consumed by embarrassment. And lust. Mostly lust, now she came to think about it. She wanted to drag him down the corridor and straight back to bed.

She felt his hand on her head, fingers carding through her hair. Then his fingers disappeared. There was a scraping noise, and she realised he’d moved his chair round the table next to hers. She looked up. He put his arm round her shoulders and pulled her towards him, then kissed her, slowly and very, very thoroughly.

“Christ, get a room…”

They sprang apart. Éowyn vaguely recognised the guy now rooting around in the fridge with his back to them – a violinist in second year, she thought.

Faramir looked at her, and she could see him barely managing to suppress his laughter.

“So?” he asked.

She shrugged. He leant forward so his lips were brushing her ear, and whispered, very quietly.

“There is, in fact, a room just down the corridor. As you know.”

Then he sat back, looking smug.

The violinist gave a huff of annoyance, gathered up his mug of tea and toast, and beat a hasty retreat. Éowyn took a deep breath and tried to stick to her earlier resolution, the one formed in the afterglow of… Well, it was one of the nicer ways to bridge the gap between sleep and wakefulness. The one which had formed when she was feeling cosy and satiated, rather than the current feeling of being ready, in fact, almost desperate for another round. Her voice didn’t sound entirely convincing even to her.

“No, I… Later? I really do have to go across the road and do some practice. You know the old adage about horn playing?”

“Probably not. Being a pianist and all that,” he said. Somehow his facial expression managed to convey both disappointment and amusement at the same time.

“One day and you notice. Two days and your colleagues notice. Three days and the audience notices.”

He shook his head sadly. “That’s a new one on me. Though it pains me to say it, you’re probably right. I need to practise too – I’m down as one of Stone’s sacrificial victims this week. Rachmaninov Paganini variations.”

“Well, so long as he’s not hoping for a sacrificial virgin.”

“That ship sailed a while back.”

“Yeah, I think I may just have realised it wasn’t your first time.”

“Only just?” He raised a dark eyebrow at her.

She felt herself smirk. “Okay, more than ‘just’.” She felt a huge wave of lust wash over her as she remembered how very much more than ‘just’ his performance had been. She slid from her chair over towards him, and straddled his lap, then kissed him just as thoroughly as he had her, a few moments earlier. She moved slightly to bring herself closer. Bloody hell. That was one hell of a hard-on. And all for her.

She gave him one last lingering kiss, then stood up, pulling him to his feet.

“How about a compromise? I go off to practise in about half an hour’s time?”

He bent down and kissed her, first on the lips then along the jawline and down the side of her neck. “I like that idea.”

It was probably more like an hour later when she floated across the road, horn case slung over her shoulder, and made her way into college. She headed for the practice rooms, buoyed up on a bubble of post coital endorphins. Surprisingly (or maybe not: it was the weekend after all) she found a room with ease, and got her horn out.

Some time later she realised just how scrambled her brain was when it dawned on her that she’d just played the whole Farkas warm-up and a Gallay Étude on autopilot: she couldn’t remember a single note she’d played. Instead, her brain had decided on pretty much re-living every moment of the last 12 hours or so. In fairness, it was a very nice set of memories to be thinking about. Culminating in the particularly vivid memory of the return to his room, before she left for college. Kneeling astride him, riding him, fucking him into oblivion.

But it definitely wasn’t helping her playing. Which is what she should have been thinking about.

She looked at the music in front of her. As sets of studies went, the Gallay Études were quite nice. But they clearly weren’t doing it for her today. (She knew what was doing it for her. Really doing it for her. No. Not going to go down that route. But… Oh god, that route was so tempting. And just over the road, in the college’s halls of residence.)

She decided to cut her losses and pulled up the folder she had of orchestral repertoire. If she was stuck in this current moon-struck mood, she might as well work with it as against it. She might as well just go through the slushiest, most romantic moments she could think of. She wiled away a happy hour or so with Brahms and Strauss and Rachmaninov and Wagner, imagining she was playing all of the pieces to Faramir. In various situations and various states of undress. Horn practice as sexual fantasy. Who knew? At least it did almost count as practice – the fantasy element meant she was completely focused on producing the most beautiful, seductive sound she could.

Eventually, she felt she’d earned some lunch. She headed down the stairs. Her phone pinged. It was Éomer.

R U still alive? Not seen U for 2 days. Not stepped under bus?

Another ping.

Kidnapped?

Seduced by cad with piano?

Alive. Not a cad.

Yes to totally seduced.

TMI

Shouldn’t have asked, then.

Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk. Cradle snatcher.

R U gonna be home?

Probably back later. Need clean undies.

Definitely TMI

Éowyn found a middle finger emoji from among the add-ons Merry had put on her phone.

She got to the foot of the stairs. Her phone pinged yet again.

Lunch?

This time it was Disa.

Need deets.

Fuck off.

Bet you didn’t say that to Faramir.

More like fuck yes please is my guess.

Or should that be yes please fuck me?

A gentlewoman never tells...

Which would work if you were one...

The middle finger emoji was conveniently still in the ‘most frequently used’ list.

Daisy cafe. Don’t worry, 3rd degree won’t last long. Meeting Sam to go through recording software options.

For want of anything better to do (she’d promised Faramir six uninterrupted hours of practice time; she knew how demanding Stone was going to be next week) she headed off towards the Daisy Cafe.

Disa was already at a table, tucking into a full English. Éowyn, conscious of the need to buy her train ticket home next weekend, ordered beans on toast. She slid into the seat beside Disa and cradled her mug of tea.

“So?” Disa asked, voice slightly muffled by a piece of toast.

“So, what?”

“So, Juliet, how’s Romeo? Or perhaps…” Disa’s eyes lit up with a wicked twinkle, “You’re more Papagena to his Papageno...”

Éowyn gave an exasperated huff. “You were right, I was wrong, what else do you want me to say?”

“Did the earth move?”

“Oh fuck off…”

Disa looked at her, expectantly, staring her down.

“Oh, bugger it. Okay, it was good. Still not going into the details though.”

“Good?” said Disa. “Girl, you’re positively glowing.”

“Okay, very good.” She made a gesture as if zipping her lips. “It’s nice. Weird but nice.”

“Weird? You have a hot man who’s great in bed and clearly thinks you’re wonderful. What’s weird about that?”

“I dunno…” Éowyn's voice trailed off as she realised that yes, in fact, she did not know. Did not have a sodding clue. “I’m just not used to nice guys.”

Disa raised her eyebrows, and speared a lump of sausage, carefully dunking it in her ketchup. And waited. Stretching out the silence until Éowyn broke.

“He likes kissing.”

“Yeah, I kind of saw that. Down the pub. Then in the foyer of the college. At the top of the stairs. In front of everyone. Talk about the grand romantic gesture. Unexpectedly flamboyant. But then again, it’s always the quiet ones.” Disa grinned.

“No, I mean after. After sex.”

“What the fuck?” said Disa. She looked both deeply puzzled and somewhat upset. Éowyn hastened to explain.

“I mean, I thought kissing was something blokes only bothered with while they were trying to get your knickers off. But he seems to want to cuddle and stuff afterwards.”

Her explanation – which she’d assumed would be met by a nod of knowing agreement as to the disappointing behaviour of blokes post coitus – seemed instead to have done nothing to reduce Disa’s look of shock. Her friend stared at her, slack jawed, for several moments. Eventually she managed to speak.

“Jesus H. Christ, just how low was your bar? Have you really only shagged complete arseholes in the past?”

“I guess,” said Éowyn, staring down into her tea. She swallowed as she contemplated one of those odd, world-seen-upside-down moments. The mismatch between how she saw her life and how someone else, looking in, saw her life. She paused, trying to process this new information.

“Disa, I’m fucking terrified.”

Disa shoved her plate to one side, reached out and took her hands.

“I don’t know how to do this. Either I’m going to panic and get all distant and drive him away, or I’m going to come on too strong. I honestly don’t have a fucking clue. Not least because I don’t even know what I’m feeling. It’s like it’s all so much a fuse has blown in my brain. I’m all full of emotions and I don’t even know how to give them a name, and…”

“Honey, don’t panic. Just breathe. Enjoy it. Let him be kind to you.”

Éowyn's beans arrived.

“Talk about bathos,” said Disa with a grin. She let go of Éowyn's hands, and pulled her plate back in front of her.

They ate in silence for a bit. Eventually, beans finished, Éowyn asked “So, what’re you meeting Sam for?”

“He’s really good with IT and recording kit. I want to start my own webpage – little video shorts of me playing stuff on a range of historical horns, modern stuff, kind of anything to put myself out there.”

Éowyn nodded. It was becoming increasingly common to do this sort of self-marketing as a musician.

“Sounds like a great idea. I’m kind of aware I should get a domain name registered at the very least.”

“You certainly should,” said a voice from behind her.

Éowyn wheeled round. Sam had arrived, laptop bag over his shoulder.

“Can I get you something?” Disa asked.

“Already ordered,” said Sam with a grin, putting his mug of tea and a little printed ticket saying 57 on the table. He sat down opposite Disa. “Ready to get cracking with Sam’s patented crash course in beginner’s recording software?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. You’ll have your work cut out though. You’re talking to the woman who gets her brother to do the setup on her phone every time she gets a new one. So, hit me with the bad news first – how much kit will I need, and how much is it going to cost me?”

“Well, the great news is, not much and not as much as you think. You’ve already got a laptop and a smartphone, I presume?”

“Yes.”

Sam launched into a rapid fire description of what Disa would need.

“Well, the phone and laptop, that’s two cameras off the bat – more if you trawl around trying to get hold of someone’s old cast off old smartphone. You can probably also pick up a second hand HDMI output camera. Don’t worry about mics for the time being – we’ll use mine to start with, then talk about what you’ll need going forward...”

So far, Éowyn noted, Disa was looking a bit puzzled but relieved.

“A pair of half-way decent omni mics with XLR outputs will be the expensive bit of your kit eventually – probably about three hundred quid for the pair, plus the kit you’ll need for mounting them overhead. That’s probably where recording classical stuff differs most from jazz – we use cardioid mics for each instrument, typically. But just for you, I’ve been reading up on it. I research so you don’t have to...”

Disa’s expression had gone from a bit puzzled to definitely confused.

“When it comes to the recording and editing suite, fortunately, there’s really good public domain software out there – in other words, stuff that’s free. A lot of people these days are using OBS. That’s Open Broadcast Software.”

Éowyn watched in amusement as the look of utter confusion got replaced by a frown, which in turn got replaced by a slightly glazed look.

“You’ve already lost me… In fact you lost me several minutes ago. Round about mics with cardiac symptoms or whatever it was.”

Sam grinned. “Relax, it’s not that hard. The trick is to do it rather than listen to me giving a mini-lecture. Do you have anything you fancy trying to put together? I think we need two projects – one with multiple people playing at once, so you can see how recording from multiple camera angles simultaneously, then editing the end results works. The other one is multiple takes of you playing parts in the same piece so that you can, say, accompany yourself on the piano.”

“Oh,” said Éowyn. “Like Anneke Scott does on a lot of her videos?”

“I dunno who she is, but if she’s playing piano and horn simultaneously on her vids, then yes,” Sam said. “So, Disa, what do you reckon? Tomorrow afternoon?”

Disa turned to Éowyn. “I don’t suppose you’re free?”

“Yeah, of course. Loads of stuff for two horns.”

“And,” Disa said with a twinkle in her eye. “I don’t suppose you could get us an accompanist?”

Éowyn felt a wave of panic rising. This – whatever it was – was all so new. She didn’t want to presume. She didn’t even know if it was going to go any further, after all. Certainly, Faramir had seemed keen this morning – but then he’d had a warm, willing, naked woman in his bed. Any man would seem keen in that situation. Who knew, though… He’d had several hours to reflect on the whole thing without distractions. And then… And now she was going to start being all needy and demanding and asking him to do things...

“Stop panicking.”

Éowyn blushed. Disa seemed to be in on the Jedi mind-reading trick too.

“I’m not...”

“I can see you panicking. Don’t. He likes you. And if he’s busy, I’m sure he can say no. He’s a big boy. From the blissed-out look on your face when you came in, I’d say a very big boy.”

Éowyn felt the return of the blush. “I’ll text him.” She pulled her phone out, and put together a quick message. Moments later, it pinged.

Of course. What time?

“He’s up for it.”

“I’d gathered that… Oh, you mean playing the piano.” Disa winked. Éowyn rolled her eyes. Slightly (only very slightly) chastened, Disa added, “That’s good.”

“He wants to know when”

Sam and Disa quickly compared notes and worked out when they could both make it.

Disa says after lunch, about 1.30.

Fine

Also talking of time do you want to meet up when you’ve finished practising?

I should be done by about 4.00

Meet me?

That bubble of happiness reappeared, spreading through her chest, making her insides glow.

4 is good – front of college?

See you there. Your place or mine?

Mine. Need to go home to sort stuff.

Don’t suppose you’ve got a double bed?

The warm glow shifted downwards and took up residence somewhere in the vicinity of her groin. It also morphed from warm glow to something closer to a raging inferno…

Sadly no. Problem?

I suppose it means we’ll have to be very close to each other.

So not a problem at all

Crap. Now can’t stop thinking about being close to you. That’s my concentration fucked for at least the next twenty minutes

Have you any idea what you do to me?

Probably I can guess

If it’s anything like what you do to me.

Will tell you about how my practice went later

Concentration completely fucked here too

Like other things

Starting with me. Completely fucked. Very much hoping to be completely fucked again very soon.

Tempted to sack off afternoon practice.

You are fucking gorgeous.

You too.

“That’s a lot of texts to arrange a couple of hours of chamber music,” said Disa.

The raging inferno shifted upwards abruptly; Éowyn felt her cheeks absolutely flame red.

Disa, shameless as ever, turned to Sam. “Don’t mind my friend here – I think she’s new to this whole sexting thing, and hasn’t quite worked out the etiquette round doing it while other people are watching.”

Éowyn felt like she was going to die from embarrassment.

Gotta go. Disa is giving me hell.

See you later – at 4. XXX

XXXXX

She pointedly put her phone on the table, face down.

Disa grinned. “Now we’ve got your mind out of our pianist’s trousers…”

Éowyn flipped a V at her.

“I’ve had an idea – do you think we can rope in Hama and Théomund, have a go at the Konzertstück?”

“That’s a brilliant idea.”

“Which part do you know?”

“I’ve worked through all of them.”

“Me too – which gives us a lot more flexibility.”

A few phone calls later, and it was sorted – Disa on first (it was going to be her web page, after all), Éowyn on second, Hama and Théo on third and fourth respectively.

I thought I ought to post a bit more smooching for Valentine’s day!

Mozart – Pa... pa... pa… Papageno, Christina Gansch and Roderick Williams, Royal Opera House
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q0ZDZB-AnM

And a wonderful vintage recording from 1969, Peter Alexander and Ingeborg Hallstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqT00bBdleI

And an abridged performance for children from the Vienna State Opera House.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNWpmBzpyRo
No subtitles sadly, but great fun if you know the opera well, or speak German (or feel happy to read a synopsis and just follow along with that – though they’ve taken considerable liberties with the running order, and of course massive cuts to fit it into just over an hour – NB this is a good thing, the full opera comes in at over 3 hours and is half fairy tale, half propaganda for Free Masonry, and gets a bit draggy in places). Being for children, the German is reasonably easy to follow (my German is what I would class as “survival level”, based on a “German for Academic Purposes” course several decades back, and I could still follow bits of it).

The kids in the audience are the best thing about it – loads of children with looks of complete wonder on their faces, the little girls looking at the Queen of the Night’s maidens in their armour (behold, a new generation of shieldmaidens being inspired in real time), the little girl terrified by the queen of the night, cuddling up to her mum, the kids giggling at Papageno, the little boy (future nerd in the making, top lad) clearly more interested in the camera than the singing. They’ve taken the seats out of the stalls of the opera house (actually, I think they may have put a raised floor in there to bring everything level with the stage) and they have the kids sitting on the floor so the singers can wander around among them.

Chapter Text

“Well, this is awkward…”

Lothíriel glared across the breakfast bar at her cousin. Faramir just shrugged and helped himself to a second bowl of cereal.

“I mean, like bordering on incestuous awkward. We’re cousins, they’re brother and sister.”

“Strictly speaking,” said Faramir, round a mouthful of cornflakes, “Given that neither of us is related to the person we’re sleeping with, there is nothing in the slightest bit incestuous about it.”

“I can’t believe you’d go there knowing I was already dating Éomer.”

“I seem to remember I was happily trying to chat Éowyn up down the pub before Éomer even arrived and you got off with him, if we’re doing some sort of ridiculous ‘first dibs’ game.”

“You weren’t trying to chat her up.”

“Not all attempts at chatting people up involve sticking your tongue down their throat within five minutes of meeting them.”

Éowyn watched from over her mug of tea, glad that Éomer was having a shower. In his own way he was quite straight laced. She didn’t think he’d like to be party to this discussion. She was finding it hilarious, though – and quite revealing about the family dynamics. Though Lothíriel's next words seemed like a complete non-sequitur.

“God, it’s chess, isn’t it?”

Faramir gave a chuckle. “I couldn’t possibly say.”

Éowyn looked on, feeling completely flummoxed.

“Daddy always complains about playing chess with you. Cagey opening game. Slow, drawn out, fantastically strategic middle game where every move is calculated about half a dozen moves into the future, like a fucking supercomputer. Then… Bam! Incredibly rapid, incredibly flamboyant end game where you leave your oponent going from ‘How the hell did I end up here?’ to ‘That’s buggering checkmate’ in about three moves. Or in this case, snogging in front of the whole bloody college.”

Éowyn dissolved into helpless laughter. She wasn’t going to enlarge on the rapid-fire check mate. But her mind couldn’t help internally adding that the correct comparison would have been snogging in front of the whole bloody college to being fucked senseless in three moves. In retrospect, Lottie’s observation was so accurate it was almost painful. Faramir sat with a quietly knowing smile on his face, then helped himself to a third bowl of cornflakes.

Éomer appeared, towelling his hair. He sat down in the chair at right angles from Faramir. Without uttering a word, he reached for the cereal packet. Eowyn recognised this behaviour; he was doing his strong silent act. Eventually, he spoke.

“So you were trying to get my sister pissed.” He gave Faramir a glare which would have shrivelled most men. Éomer, Éowyn thought, was quite intimidating when he went full-on second row forward.

Faramir shrugged. “No. For your information, nothing happened that night.”

“Nothing happened? C’mon, the two of you were all over each other like a rash.”

Éowyn felt herself getting angry. She blurted out, “The key phrase being ‘the two of us’. What we both choose to get up to is none of your fucking business.”

Éomer continued to glare at Faramir, while reaching for the milk. Faramir sat there impassively, occasionally taking sips of his tea.

Éowyn decided she didn’t really have time for a pissing up the wall contest. She dropped a kiss on Faramir’s cheek as she passed him on her way to grab her turn in the shower. She shut the kitchen door behind her, which presumably was why Éomer felt it okay to say what he said next. The door was clearly flimsier than it looked.

“If you hurt her, I’ll fucking kill you. Are we clear?”

“Fair enough.” Faramir’s voice was cool, unfazed. “Though for the record, I have no intention of doing so.”

Éomer's next words were mumbled in an undertone, so Éowyn didn’t quite catch them. Faramir’s answer was calm, conciliatory, though with a hint of exasperation.

“Look, I get why you’re worried. Éowyn's told me about the stuff she had to go through in her teens. And of course you’re worried about her, and you want to look after her. But I repeat, I have no intention of doing anything which might hurt her.”

Another murmur, which again, Éowyn couldn’t make out, though she did just catch yet another repetition of the words “Are we clear on that?” Éowyn's hand was half way to the door handle, teetering on the brink of giving her brother the bollocking of his life. But Faramir spoke again, pre-empting her. His response, unlike Éomer's, was crystal clear, at least in terms of diction, though possibly not in terms of what Éomer was hoping to get out of the conversation. It was obvious Faramir had reached the end of his tether.

“What I’d really like is for you to mind your own fucking business and keep your nose out of your sister’s life. Are we clear on that one, too?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” That was Lothíriel's voice, sounding utterly exasperated. “It’s like watching a couple of stags square up to each other. No, scratch that, neither of you are that impressive. More like a couple of bantams. Give it a rest, or I’ll knock your heads together.”

“Sorry, Lottie.” Faramir sounded quite chastened.

Éomer grunted.

Éowyn decided to go and have a shower and talk to each of them separately later.

It was a dry day, so they walked into college. Faramir took her hand in his as they reached the main road. Éowyn looked up at him, wondering how to approach what she’d overheard. Typically, she went for the direct approach.

“I’m sorry about Éomer. I’ll give him hell later on. He shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”

“It’s okay. I get it. He’s very protective of you. I would be in similar circumstances. Hell, I probably am, just in a different way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, of course I want to look after you, protect you from shite, possibly take out a contract on that bastard, ideally do the job myself should opportunity ever arise… But at the same time, I realise you don’t want to be looked after. And I could probably do without a conviction for murder, come to think of it.”

“I don’t want anyone’s pity.”

“I know. And I’m not offering you pity. But I am offering you someone who’s on your side.”

Éowyn didn’t know quite what to say to that. Fortunately, she didn’t need to, because Faramir stopped, put his hand up to her cheek, and bent down and gave her a very gentle kiss.

“So,” he said, letting go of her and taking her hand again. “Tell me what you have planned for this morning?”

“An hour or so’s warm up and exercises, remind myself of some of the awkward corners in the Konzertstück, then, believe it or not, an hour in the library. I have to do some history of music, so I’m doing an essay on the natural horn.”

“I’d like to read that… What’s it called?”

“You don’t have to be polite, you know.”

“I wasn’t being. I like music, I like history – so the overlap of the two… Why wouldn’t I be interested?”

“Okay, so – working title, bit cheesy – but it’s called Holes in the Historical Narrative: The quest for authenticity versus modern audience expectations.”

“I think history papers have to have cheesy titles. Isn’t there some rule in the guidance for students somewhere that says they have to adhere to the format of ‘bad pun – colon – lengthy, wordy academic explanation’?”

Éowyn laughed.

“So go on, what’s your thesis?”

“That there’s no real evidence for tuning holes in Baroque horns (or trumpets for that matter) – they’re a deliberate anachronism to pander to modern audiences who’re used to even-tempering.”

“Interesting – how does that work, then?”

“So you know how the harmonic series goes?” She sang a series of notes, calling out their names as she got to them – tonic, fifth, octave, third, fifth… “Okay, I’ll have to jump down an octave here because my vocal range isn’t great, but imagine I’m still going up…” Octave, second, third, fifth, octave… “Only, there’s a couple of extra notes in there – a very flat fourth and sixth – they’re called ‘partials’. Now typical German horn parts – for instance Bach’s B minor Mass – quite often use those partials. So the question is, how did they get at them?”

“Hand up the bell… Even I know that.”

“Except we have considerable evidence from manuscripts intended as horn tutors that they didn’t. Not at that period. Players in the Classical period, yes, Baroque, no. The playing style was to hold the bell up. There’s maybe some evidence that a few virtuoso players did use hand-stopping, but not routinely, and that’s not how the instrument was being taught. There are instructions, though, to adjust the pitch using your embouchure.”

Faramir cut her short by kissing her. “I love your embouchure.” He gave her another kiss.

“Have you finished interrupting?”

“Sorry.” He gave her a third kiss. “I’ll behave now. So we’re adjusting pitch with your delightful embouchure…”

Éowyn rolled her eyes. “But there’s a limit to how much you can do it – it would probably still sound out-of-tune to a modern player. And to a modern audience.

“Now, what we do have is evidence that mid to late 19th century post-horns had tuning holes in them – it shifts the harmonic series by a fourth, so that some of the notes that were awkward partials now become part of the regular, albeit shifted harmonic series… Are you paying attention?”

“Sorry, drifted off into a historical fantasy moment. Post horns. Stage coaches, Highwaymen. Not sure whether I’m holding up a stagecoach with you inside it – with I might add, sparkling diamonds displayed above your very low decolletage, or I’m the foppish dandy inside, and you’re the dashing highwaywoman – all cloak and shiny boots. Either way, this fantasy is going to culminate in hot sex.”

Éowyn shook her head. “You’re an idiot, you know that? First it’s Valkyrie horns on helmets, now it’s highway robbery. And…” She took in the slightly glazed look in his eyes. “I’m going to have to buy a pair of boots, amn’t I?”

Faramir laughed and gave her another kiss. “Well obviously you don’t have to But if you’re offering. Yes please.”

Éowyn gave him a wicked grin. “Of course I do have walking boots. Very sexy, mud-covered walking boots. Kinky vibram soles.”

“Not the same thing.” He paused, and looked at her seriously. “I was just messing, you know. I’d never ask you to do anything you weren’t as keen on as I was.”

Now it was Éowyn's turn to stop and stand on tiptoes to kiss him. He obediently bowed his head so she could kiss him more thoroughly.

“Anyway, where were we? Post horns?”

“Yeah, so, round about the mid 20th century, just as the revival in playing Baroque music on period instruments kicked off, it occurred to instrument makers that they could get an ‘authentic’ sound and deal with the out-of-tune partials by putting tuning holes into facsimiles of Baroque instruments. But the originals wouldn’t have had them.”

“So if historical accuracy and getting as close to the authentic sound is the aim, why put them in?”

“Precisely. The million dollar question. And the answer is post ‘Well-Tempered Klavier’, there’s a limit to how out-of-tune an audience can cope with. Baroque audiences expected a range of different versions of even-tempering, so they weren’t totally habituated to one system, and even within any given almost-even-tempered scale, they expected brass instruments to have a few duff notes – it was treated as just part of the characteristic sound of the instrument. But modern audiences will be more inclined to think ‘That’s wrong and really horrible.’ Hence tuning holes – as much fake authenticity as the audience can cope with, without real authenticity which they wouldn’t enjoy. You get the genuine sound, but without the genuine wrong notes.”

“So a bit like the modern fashion for counter-tenors. We don’t – thank God – castrate choir boys any more, so we invent a whole range of male singers who specialise in falsetto to try to get an ‘authentic’ sound, but it isn’t really, it’s a kind of modern facsimile.”

“Exactly. Or less depressingly, like the way the actors in modern TV productions of Shakespeare have perfect teeth. And the leading man in an 18th century costume drama looks like he’s washed more frequently than some time in the last month, and doesn’t really have insects in his powdered wig. Too much authenticity and the audience recoils.”

Éowyn managed (after a lingering goodbye kiss) to get her planned practice in, and her time in the library. She even managed to do it without too much time being lost to recalling what she and Faramir had got up to in bed the previous night… and this morning.

Now she was sitting in one of the medium sized rehearsal rooms. Perched on the piano stool in fact. Squeezed onto it, next to Faramir, who had his arm round her waist. The two of them watched as Sam showed Disa the various options.

“Of course, if you just want to make a quick video – kind of TikTok or Instagram Reel sort of length, you can just prop your phone on a bookshelf or something. The trick is to think about distance from you to the phone – experiment with getting the right distance so you fill the right amount of the frame. And of course, tinker with the recording settings to switch off noise suppression…”

It felt weird, sitting like this. Nice, obviously. But… Complete compartmentalization failure. She now had a – whatever the hell it was you called a guy you were shagging who seemed to want to kiss afterwards and hang out with you outside of shagging – anyway, whatever you called that sort of bloke, that was what she had. She wasn’t going to jinx things by trying to come up with a name. The trouble was, her whatever he was had confused her life no end; he was friends with her friends, and he’d stayed over in the flat she shared with her brother, and… Fuck, this was… weird.

Over the other side of the room, Disa and Sam seemed completely oblivious to how weird things were. Apparently, Faramir’s arm round her waist was just one of those completely unremarkable facets of college life. They were more interested in the bloody recording tech.

Sam perched a phone on a shelf. “A mirror’s quite handy, because the rear camera always has better resolution, so your phone will be the wrong way round. So use the mirror to see what’s showing on the screen, and kind of set it up using your music stand as a reference. See, I’ve got the stand about two thirds of the way up shot and slightly off centre – so your head will be at the top, but we should still see your instrument, and off centre because the bell of the horn sticks out on one side. So, start the recording, then walk over and play, then come back and switch it off – you can edit out the bits of you walking around later on.”

Éowyn felt a wave of boredom. Counteracting that, she was snuggled up next to a very comforting, warm body. She could feel Faramir’s hand, stroking her hair as it flowed down her back. The sensation was nice, calming. If only she could find a way of not panicking, she thought maybe, just maybe, she could get used to this whole business of sex plus affection. That’s if she didn’t screw it up somehow and send him running for the hills.

“Have a go at setting up the shot as you think it will work, and see how it comes out.”

Disa obediently fiddled with the phone. There was a bit of swearing – the first couple of times she tried to start the recording, she nudged the phone and messed up the carefully constructed angles. Eventually, she got it started, trotted over to the music stand, picked her horn off its stand and played a bit of Schumann. Then went back to the phone and switched it off. She and Sam bent over the tiny screen, assessing the result.

“Not bad for a first go.”

“There’s a moment where the top of my head disappears out of shot. And another bit where I seem to be decapitated completely.”

“Yes, that’s the sort of thing that will happen till you’re used to it – you have to… No, better idea. You tell me what you think would fix it.”

Disa paused for a moment. “Move the stand back?”

“Yes. Oh – and it is worth splashing a bit of cash on a stand to hold your phone. Okay, now let’s set up all the rest of the kit we’ll need for when Hama and Théomund arrive…”

Faramir let go of Éowyn's waist, much to her disappointment. But it turned out he was just digging stuff out of the leather satchel he used for his music and i-pad. He popped the i-pad on the stand.

“Quick run-through of the opening?”

“With just me playing second?”

“It’ll give me a chance to get a feel for the tempo.”

Éowyn slid off the piano stool and went over to the table by the window where she’d left her horn. They ran the first twenty bars or so.

“Can you guys shut up for a mo? Disa wants to do another take.”

Éowyn rolled her eyes, then sat down next to Faramir, nudging him up the piano stool with her bum. He put his arm back round her.

The door swung open.

“Oh, so the rumours are true – you two are an item now.” Hama stood in the doorway, Théomund just behind him. Éowyn gave him the finger. Faramir, she noted, looked smug.

Things got chaotic for a few minutes as Hama and Theo warmed up, while Sam set up multiple cameras and a laptop – balanced on a stack of boxfiles on a chair to bring it to the right height to be trained on the keyboard. He set up the video camera on a proper stand arranged to view the whole room, with a further stand with a pair of mics on a boom just above head height – Éowyn began to realise why he’d arrived with such an enormous bag. Then he set up two phones – hers and Disa’s – to capture the horn players, two at a time.

Then he pottered over to Faramir, and handed him a small box.

“What? Seriously?” Faramir looked horrified. There were a couple of foam earplugs in there.

“Yes, seriously. Small room. Four bloody French horns. Bloody classical musicians. None of you pay enough attention to this stuff. You’d think you’d have learned from Beethoven, but no. We all play with them in the session orchestra…”

Faramir put the box in his pocket.

They ended up playing for a couple of hours. Disa ended up with what Sam said might make a quite reasonable take, and agreed to spend Tuesday evening round at hers showing her how to edit.

Éowyn took her horn to bits and put it in its case. She should have been buzzing – the rehearsal had been great fun. She loved playing with the others, and it was such a fun piece. But at the same time, she was painfully aware that her mind had been working overtime in the rests, and in the intervals where Disa and Sam were fiddling with the tech. Her mind had been spiralling. Panicking. What if Éomer was right and things were going too fast? What if her worries about whatever this was were right?

Her mind was coming up with all the words she used to organise her life. Boundaries. Compartments. Space. It wanted them back.

Faramir came up behind her and put his arms round her waist.

“Your place or mine?” He rested his chin on her shoulder, his cheek brushing hers.

Éowyn swallowed. “I’ve been thinking. Tomorrow’s Monday. Full day of college. Maybe we should go back to our own places tonight, get a decent night’s sleep.”

“Ah…”

She couldn’t see his face but she thought he sounded disappointed. Then he pulled himself together.

“You’re probably right. Later in the week?”

“Yes, later in the week…”

“I’ll walk you to the bus-stop.”

And he did – and kissed her as the bus drew up. And waved through the window as the bus pulled away. Éowyn felt as though she ought to have been pleased with herself. Boundary drawn. Some of her own space reclaimed. Maybe even a bit of compartmentalization re-established. And she’d avoided the trap of coming on too strong. Of seeming needy.

It felt a bit shit, though.

Schumann, Konzertstück, Matías Piñeira, Maria Teiwes, MiaSchwarzfischer, Christina Hambach, Munich Phil, Gergiev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpfJ2ghmAsI
Compulsory nerd moment: yes, another German orchestra where the horn section all play Alexanders.

And (yes, still fangirling here), our friends from the Berlin Phil, under Simon Rattle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0qBVraFZgE

I got the idea for this from watching Shieh – see notes a few chapters back – put together a recording of the horn quartet from one of Coleridge-Taylor’s symphonies, and then remembering that I knew a guy who’d done this for the Konzertstuck way back in the 1980s, using an eight-track tape recording setup. (Hey, if it was good enough for the Beatles to record Sgt. Pepper…)

My knowledge of recording software is very rudimentary, but I had to grapple with the basics during COVID lockdown, for my son’s drum lessons, and in order to record his submissions for music exams. Should you have to do this, the first step is to switch off the background noise suppression you’d typically use for Zoom/ Teams meetings, as you WANT to pick up all the detail. I’ve got a really basic mic which is actually more aimed at podcasters, but it does at least have an “omni” setting, i.e. it will pick up sound from all round the room, rather than being focussed in one direction (usually a cardioid setting). Typically for classical music, you’d tend to have a couple of omni mics suspended above head height in the middle of the room, aimed at picking up stereo from all around, whereas for a pop/ jazz gig, you’d have individual cardioid mics pointed at each performer (plus a mixing desk to adjust levels – in classical music that’s the job of the conductor).

Meanwhile – holes or no holes? I stole Éowyn's essay from Richard Seraphinoff’s blog post here:
https://www.seraphinoff.com/nodal-venting-on-the-baroque-horn
Is it plagiarism if it’s one of your characters doing it? And if you put in a clear attribution to the source? It does kind of blow the earlier clip I put in of Alison Balsam explaining tuning/ nodal holes out of the water (though come to think of it, I’m not sure she claims they’re authentic).

Meanwhile, a century or so later, players were definitely using the “hand up the bell” technique routinely: here’s Beethoven’s sonata in F for horn and piano with Anneke Scott (natural horn) and Steven Devine (fortepiano)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWEx_7hi1xI
Cor solo in F by Lucien Joseph Raoux, Paris, 1810s, grand Piano by Johann Fritz c.1815 (Richard Burnett Collection). I love the decoration on the inside of the bell. Just gorgeous.

For those of you interested in why Sam’s encouraging Faramir to use ear-plugs:
https://www.hearingconservation.org/assets/Decibel.pdf
Classical musicians rarely use ear plugs (though I have been offered them in a chorus, by the off-stage trumpeters who were next to us for a performance of Verdi’s Requiem). However, we almost certainly should – specially horn players, who are particularly at risk. I’m glad to say that these days a lot more effort now goes into stage design and baffles to stop the brass (and woodwind) deafening everyone else. One of my most painful experiences was a week in a pit orchestra sitting right in front of the trombonist (who I may or may not have copped off with at the closing night party… “a gentlewoman doesn’t tell”). I suspect I have slight hearing loss in my left ear (the one that’s closer to the violin when playing). Rather soberingly:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10334527/French-horn-players-are-most-at-risk-of-hearing-loss-in-an-orchestra.html
https://www.hornmatters.com/2008/12/hear-today-gone-tomorrow-i/
https://www.hornmatters.com/2008/12/hear-today-gone-tomorrow-ii/

Chapter Text

Éowyn woke feeling completely like crap.

They’d been so sensible last night. Or rather, she’d been so sensible last night. Sunday night. College first thing in the morning. They’d agreed to go back to their separate beds. Okay, she’d said they ought to go back to their separate beds. Get a good night’s sleep.

Fat chance. Éowyn had taken ages to get off to sleep. Which she was furious with herself about. Two nights. Two sodding nights. That’s all it had taken, it seemed, to become dependent on Faramir’s warm body in bed plus the relaxation that came from good sex. It seemed that already, in two sodding, bloody days, she was going to struggle with his absence. God, she hated being dependent on another human being. Dependency meant weakness, meant reliance, meant the pain of being left to cope on your own was doubled – both the pain of being on your own, and the pain of having been let down.

She knew more than she cared to about being let down.

When sleep had come, it had been one of those nights. She rarely had nightmares about the actual attack these days. No, most of the nightmares were about the court case. She had been on the stand, trying to explain that, barring one kiss with a cellist, she’d had no experience with boys prior to… prior to… She had known the cross-examination would be brutal. She had known she had to present herself as Caesar’s wife, above reproach. After all, she’d carefully laid out her most respectable clothes. A dark grey polo neck sweater, a pair of navy wool trousers… But when she looked down, she’d realise she was naked from the waist down. And she’d feel wildly exposed and try to think of ways of covering herself. And realise she had the walk from the witness box back to the door of the court, and had no way out. Then a further realisation: she couldn’t speak. She was doomed to silence. Unable to talk. Turning her into a passive onlooker, listening to people talking about her. Powerless to correct anything they said.

She’d woken up after that first dream and her hands had flown down to check her pants were in place. She’d got up and got a glass of water – practised now in the techniques needed to convince her she was back in the real world. At least it wasn’t the worst of her dreams. Naked from the waist down in court was bad, but not as bad as it got. She’d listened to Radio 3’s “Through the night” for an hour till her lids started to feel heavy and she’d fallen into a fitful sleep.

But now she’d found herself back on the witness stand, trying to explain that no, she hadn’t had false memories implanted by her therapist. And this time, it was the worst of her dreams, the one that really fucked her up, usually for the whole day that followed.

As the defence council had started to make a series of wild accusations, she’d realised that again, she wasn’t wearing the sensible polo neck and trousers. This time she’d been standing there in a hospital gown, hair wild, flanked by two burly male nurses. She had tried to correct the defence council’s accusations, but she’d been able to see the jury looking at her with… What? Pity. There she was, a pitiable mad thing. Then, as if from nowhere, a doctor had materialised at the defence table. He’d been wearing a white coat and stethoscope. Even in the dream – which somehow she knew was a dream but couldn’t wake up from – she’d known that this was wrong. Psychiatrists didn’t dress like that.

But the dream shrink had called out, “Clearly she’s mad and unsafe, sedate her…”

One nurse had taken her arm, the other had injected her. Her attempt to explain what had really happened had been abruptly cut off mid sentence. But it wasn’t a real sedative; she had remained fully conscious, able to listen to crazy lies being spun about her. All the injection did was deprive her of the ability to speak.

And again, when she’d woken up, it was to an empty bed. No-one to snuggle up to. No warm, safe smell of Faramir.

As a result, she went through the day on autopilot, nursing the sort of awful headache that came with a bad night’s sleep. The low point of course was the period orchestra rehearsal – she tried to grey-rock King as usual. But rather than making her invisible, this seemed to engrage him. He criticised everything she did. Intonation (she was sure she was spot on), timing (she was watching him like a hawk for every entry and anticipating his beat), attack (now he was demanding staccato when on the last try, he’d asked for legato), phrasing (now he wanted a breath three bars in, last time it had been four)…

As her granny would have said, she couldn’t do right for doing wrong. And it was a whirlwind of constantly shifting instructions and demands. If she queried it – “Last time you asked for…” - he would flatly deny having ever said anything different.

The really puzzling thing was she didn’t know why he was doing it. She thought she’d come up with a strategy in the form of cold professionalism – make herself invisible by simply doing what he asked for, quietly and without complaint. But this seemed to have enraged him, and he seemed to be deliberately goading her and trying to get her to lose her temper.

She came very, very close. In truth, it was probably only the fact that his attention was split between her and trying to bully Valandil and Isildur that gave her enough breathing space to stay under control.

Eventually she staggered out of the rehearsal, and almost collided with Elfhelm. He took one look at her face.

“Bad one?”

She nodded.

He checked the time on his phone. “I’ve got three quarters of an hour before my next lesson. Come on, let’s grab a coffee – outside of college.”

They walked along Oxford road back towards the University. Elfhelm ushered her into the first coffee shop they came to, nestled on the side of the University Green. Obviously they weren’t the only ones taking a break from the hothouse environment of the college; in front of them in the queue was Erkenbrand. Elfhelm greeted him cheerfully – to Éowyn's surprise, Erkenbrand responded with a matey slap on the other’s shoulder. She hadn’t really connected the dots and realised the faculty must have friendships (or fail to have friendships) with one another.

“Éowyn's having trouble with our mutual friend King.”

Erkenbrand muttered something in German. From the tone of voice, it wasn’t complementary. Éowyn thought she caught the word scheisse, one of the very few words she knew. And something that sounded like ash lock - she must remember to look that one up later.

“I’ve brought her here for a whinge, and a bit of a pep talk. Care to join us?”

Erkenbrand nodded, and gave Éowyn a smile.

“Don’t let the bastard get you down.”

“Why does he do it?” Éowyn asked. “I mean, I’m trying to keep my head down, keep out of his way, just do what he asks without drawing attention to myself.”

The three of them sat down at a table.

“Because he can?” Elfhelm said, speculatively.

Erkenbrand nodded. “That’s part of it. I’ve known the guy on and off for thirty years now. There are three things you need to know. Though perhaps I shouldn’t speak ill of a colleague.”

“You absolutely should,” said Elfhelm with a wicked grin.

“Ah, so.” Erkenbrand started to count on his fingers. “Erstens, he is a bully. He enjoys upsetting people for the sake of it. Zweitens, he likes toadying acolytes, not talented musicians. He feels threatened by them. Drittens He doesn’t like women.”

Éowyn frowned. “One and three I get – but why two? Everyone knows he’s one of the foremost conductors of Baroque music in the world.”

Erkenbrand shrugged. “Ja. But he doesn’t like competition. He likes to be centre of attention at all times.”

“But I’m not competition. I’m a bloody music student.”

Elfhelm and Erkenbrand exchanged a look.

“Go on,” Elfhelm said to Erkenbrand. “You’ve been teaching her far longer than I have.”

“Éowyn, Éowyn, you really have no idea, do you?”

Éowyn looked from one to the other.

“My girl, you are a once in a generation talent. You do know that, don’t you?”

Éowyn blinked. She was good, she knew that. No point in false modesty. But that good? That thought hadn’t even crossed her radar.

“Erkenbrand, it seems we’ve been falling down on the job. Has anyone talked to you about where next, after you’ve graduated?”

Éowyn shook her head. “Try to get some fill-in work with orchestras while I build up experience, do a bit of teaching on the side?”

“Nein, nein. We will help you try to get permanent jobs. Elfhelm, you and I need to put out feelers, find out which orchestras are likely to have positions opening up in the next six months to a year.”

“And here’s what you have to do to start building your profile…” Elfhelm launched into a lengthy list of tips – including Sam’s preferred option of building a website.

Éowyn's mind was still whirling when she met up with Disa later on that afternoon.

“Your friendly reminder,” said Disa, deadpan. “You’ve got a double dose of King today. Remember that lecture I talked you into coming to?”

“The history of music one in the university?”

“Yeah, well, King’s on the discussion panel.”

“Oh shit.”

Disa led the way back past the cafe she’d been to earlier, and on to the university’s humanities building, a grey, concrete masterpiece (or not, depending on your tastes) of brutalism. The lecture was booked for its the main lecture theatre.

Some ten minutes later, the only thought Éowyn was capable of was Why the fuck did I think this was a good idea?

She sat, awkwardly squashed between Disa and Arwen, listening to an academic from the music department in the university drone on about gender roles in opera. Yes, most operas came from within a patriarchal world-view. Yes, a lot of operas had boys dressing as girls and girls dressing as boys, and girls, of necessity, playing roles originally played by castrated boys. So far, so bleeding obvious. But now she had to listen to the bleeding obvious dressed up in a whole load of fancy language about standpoint epistemology and relativism and the concept of objectivity as bourgeois invention, not to mention references to people she’d never heard of and had no intention of ever reading, like Foucault and Kristeva.

The lecture was a special event, complete with panel discussion. It had to be said the panel was impressive – as promised, King, naturally (no discussion of opera which was going to include period opera would be complete without their resident expert), internationally famous soprano Luthien Gale, and finally, none other than Noldor’s husband, the opera director Celeborn Doriath, who a string of Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne productions to his name. They sat ranged round a table to the side of the stage, the lecturer (earnest, with trendy, heavy blue-framed glasses and a man bun) at the lectern centre stage.

“To project current categorisations onto the world of Monteverdi and his immediate successors is of course to make a fundamental historiographical error, almost as much of a historiographical error as if one were to project Freudian or Jungian conceptualisations of the subconscious, or archetypes, back onto Wagner’s mythos. Which is not to say they aren’t useful, vital even, as a tool of analysis after the fact…”

To her left, Disa’s face was drawn into a frown of concentration. Arwen sat, nodding in quiet agreement at some points, but more often sitting motionless, lips in a tight line when she parted company with the speaker’s analysis. Éowyn wondered if she could get away with surreptitiously texting Faramir. Probably not. Disa would be onto her in a flash.

She let her mind drift away, first to the fact that tomorrow’s symphony rehearsal was going to be a bastard (Till Eulenspiegel again, but this time with a view to working it up to performance quality). Then, with an almost irresistible inevitability, her thoughts turned to Faramir. She shut her eyes for a moment and swallowed. She’d pushed him away last night. Could she text him now without seeming needy? Oh fuck, all the stuff she’d said to Disa was coming true. She couldn’t stay on that tight-rope between too needy and too distant. She was fucking up again.

Beside her she felt Arwen stiffen. Arwen’s eyes had narrowed, her lips even tighter. Éowyn started to pay attention to the lecturer.

“...The Jungian archetype of essential femininity – woman as chaos. We see this clearly in Lucia di Lammermoor. But this theme is universal – woman as simultaneously passive vessel for male sexual desire but also as the embodiment of uncontrolled desire in her own right. Not strong enough to withstand male passion yet at the same time the Aristotelian unmoved prime mover, creator of that male passion, unwitting author of the very force that will lead to her own destruction. The female hamartia, the fatal flaw, the passivity that stirs the male storm, that leads to Carmen’s murder, or Lucia’s death, driven mad by love. And eternally capable of corrupting the men around them, no matter how heroic and strong the male in question is…”

Éowyn gave an audible snort of disgust. Disa picked up on it immediately and scribbled on her notepad “Yup, full of shite…”

Éowyn added her thoughts in a scratchy hand. “With a side order of victim blaming. Lovely.”

Arwen reached across and grabbed the pad. “Postmodernist lefty dude-bro version of Jordan Peterson. Same old same old.”

Éowyn looked at the stage and realised King was staring straight at them. He’d cottoned on to the note passing. If looks could kill…

The lecturer over-ran by ten minutes, despite the best efforts of the chair. Then it was time for the panel discussion. Éowyn almost wished she had a bingo card. She may not have understood the elaborate theoretical framework with all its name-dropping, but she was amused to find she had accurately predicted the panel member’s responses, based simply on their jobs and personalities.

Celeborn put the primacy of the production above historical accuracy. And felt there was no problem in using old music to illuminate a contemporary political or moral point. King went off on one – both about the dangers of using art as a vessel for political polemic, and on the need for historical accuracy. Gale took issue with the speaker on feminist grounds – that for all his postmodernism and relativism, the way he used (or misused) Jungian archetypes was strangely absolutist and reductive and (mistakenly) essentialist about gender roles within society. The academic, who had, interestingly, been fairly mild in his attempted rebuttals of Doriath and King, hit back against Gale as if she’d attacked him personally. He launched into an extraordinarily convoluted defence, name-dropping what felt to Éowyn like a hundred and one different obscure philosophers and psychological theorists, before accusing Gale of something he called victim feminism.

Disa scribbled on the pad. “He’s got that t-shirt on under his corduroy jacket, hasn’t he?”

“He thinks he’s a feminist, but he’s a wanker, that’s for sure.” Arwen’s beautifully elegant cursive script was at odds with her choice of words.

Back on the stage, Gale responded by saying that using sexual violence against women as a shock tactic simply to make your production edgy was not acceptable in her books. Éowyn felt that familiar clenching of her guts that she got whenever abstract, intellectual discussions got too close to real life.

“But surely if the intention is to shock, then any means is fair game? You wouldn’t want women to be off limits simply for being women? That’s not very feminist, is it?” The academic looked smug, clearly believing himself to have scored an unanswerable point.

And that, of course, was all it was to him: intellectual point-scoring. Wanker, thought Éowyn. She felt a surge of rage, felt her fists ball. She was pretty damn sure her face had flushed red. What was more worrying was that, having caught his attention earlier with the note taking, King was looking at them – or more specifically her – once again, a calculating look on his face. She knew that look. It was the look Grima used to give her, back when he was estate manager, back when she couldn’t get away from him. It was the look that said “I’ve just spotted a chink in your armour.”

Beside her, blissfully unaware of the extent to which, for Éowyn, the personal had just become the political, Arwen murmured “Surely that’s ‘House!’ on the bingo card.”

“But what about audience members who might find it triggering?” Gale continued.

“Bah. ‘Triggering.’ Bloody snowflake generation,” King interjected, with a sad predictability.

“But what’s the alternative?” said Celeborn. “Take works like the Rape of Lucretia out of the canon entirely?”

“You misunderstand,” said Gale, sounding frustrated and a bit angry herself. Unsurprisingly, really, Éowyn thought. The men seemed intent on wilfully misconstruing what she was saying. “Works which are about rape, or within which rape or coerced sex forms a central part of the dramatic tension, are not what we’re talking about here. I’m raising the issue of gratuitous background scenes of sexual violence to ‘spice things up a bit.’ That’s unacceptable. Either deal with it seriously, or not at all.”

“So, we must deal with it ‘seriously’… That’s the opening duet of Figaro out the window for starters. Playing ‘droit de seigneur for laughs’ – totally unacceptable.” King looked almost as smug as the historian.

Éowyn felt her rage on the verge of boiling over. Three blokes each with his own agenda, using a discussion of rape as an academic plaything to score points off the only woman on the panel.

She hardly took in the rest of the discussion, she was so angry. Eventually things wound up.

“I’m sorry, guys. That was a bit of a bullshit fest and typical academic circle-jerk.” Arwen put a hand on their shoulders.

“God, that shite about there being no such thing as historical accuracy,” said Disa. “Like we don’t actually have instruments of the period in museums, or instruction books written at the time on how to play them.”

“Mind you, it did at least almost drive King to an apoplectic fit,” said Arwen.

“Bizarrely, I find myself on King’s side on that one,” Éowyn reluctantly admitted. “Mr Postmodern Secret Feminist T-Shirt doesn’t think there’s such a thing as historical accuracy. For him, it’s not that it’s hard to get at, it’s that it’s not even there.”

Arwen nodded. “Anti-realism. The least favourite of my aunties.”

Disa snorted.

“And he’s a sexist wanker.”

“Yeah, that’s the bit that really made me want to hold his head down the nearest toilet while I flush it,” Disa said.

“Don’t be so coy, Disa, tell us what you really feel…” Arwen said. “And oh god, the discussion of rape as plot device.”

“I’m raging,” said Disa. She looked at Éowyn, as if waiting for a reaction.

“I’m… I don’t think I can even talk about it.”

Disa looked at Éowyn, as if solving some sort of crossword puzzle. She put her hand on Éowyn's arm for a moment and said quietly “Yes, it was shit, wasn’t it?” Then, as if deciding a change of subject was called for...

“So,” she said, “Where’s Faramir?”

Éowyn shrugged. “Dunno.”

“What – you were inseparable all weekend.”

“Yeah, well we thought we’d give it a break for a night, catch up on sleep ready for the week and all that.”

“And?”

“And what? He’s not texted if that’s what you’re asking.”

Disa looked at Éowyn, one of those sharp, assessing looks she specialised. “Lemme translate that… You said you’d give it a break, he went along with it ‘cos he’s a decent bloke and doesn’t want to crowd you, now you don’t quite know how to set about texting him…”

“No… Yeah… Sort of… Okay, yes, pretty much.”

“God, you’re an idiot. Here’s hoping he’s a patient man. He’s gonna need the patience of a saint at this rate.”

Disa pulled out her phone, and tapped out a text.

“What are you doing?” Éowyn tried to reach out for the phone.

“Finding out if Faramir’s around.”

Her phone gave a beep.

“He is. Okay, here’s what you’re going to do – cross the road, go into the hall of residence and knock on his door.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Well, that’s gonna leave me looking like a complete idiot, ‘cos I’ve already told him you’re on your way.”

Five minutes later, Éowyn knocked quietly on Faramir’s door, as if by keeping the volume down she could somehow avoid this being in any way construed as an admission of need on her part.

He opened the door, a broad smile on his face. Then he must have taken in something about her appearance – face, body language, she wasn’t sure what, because his expression changed to one of worry and concern. He pulled her into his arms and hugged her, and kissed the top of her head. She buried her face in his shoulder.

“Sorry, it’s been a shit day. And a shit night before that.”

He pulled her gently into the room and sat her down on the bed, dropping down beside her and wrapping his arms around her.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

So she did, about the dreams and the rehearsal and the lecture with the wankers, the words tumbling out in a messy stream of consciousness. Afterwards, he just held her, murmuring reassurance and stroking her hair. Eventually she calmed enough to remember that the day hadn’t been entirely shit, and told him about Erkenbrand and Elfhelm and what they’d said about her playing.

“And this surprises you why?”

“What would you know?”

“I’ve heard you play, remember. You are fucking brilliant.” He kissed her, this time on the lips. She tried to think of a response, but before she could come up with anything, her tummy gave an embarrassingly loud rumble.

Faramir laughed. “You’re in luck – I went shopping today. Pizza and pre-washed salad?” he said, with a knowing grin.

“Sounds good.”

They made their way to the tiny kitchen and Faramir shoved the pizza in the oven. Éowyn picked up the box and looked at it.

“Even ready pizza, and yours has to be M&S rather than Co-op!”

“Well, I’d hate to be a cheap date.” He gave her another kiss.

Later, Éowyn sat on Faramir’s bed, wondering what came next. Faramir emerged from the shower wearing boxers and a clean t-shirt. Éowyn raised an eyebrow.

“After the night you had last night, I didn’t want to presume. I thought you might just want cuddles and warmth and nothing more.”

Éowyn felt a tension she hadn’t known she’d been holding drain out of her.

“I dunno, wouldn’t you rather I just went home, if we’re not going to…”

Something almost akin to a flash of exasperation passed over Faramir’s face, before he got his features back under control.

“I think I need to be clear about something,” he said, and she was reminded, just for an instant, of the conversation with her brother. “This is not just about sex for me. Yes, it’s about great sex when we’re both in the mood. But outside of that…” He paused, as if wondering what the best words to choose were. “Affection, friendship, just being there to look after each other.”

He looked at her with those intense grey eyes.

“If this is just sex for you, I’m not sure… I mean, I don’t think it would be good for me. So whatever it is, just be honest with me, okay.”

Éowyn shut her eyes. She felt like she’d unaccountably been put on the spot.

Honesty. That was all he asked.”

“In all honesty, I don’t know. I know it’s more than just sex, but I’m… I’m really not sure what more than just sex means. I’ve never been here before.” Faramir sat down next to her and put his arm round her. She felt this wave of – what had his word been? - affection. She looped her arms around his waist and pulled him in against her.

Then, always one to retreat into mundane practical details as an escape tactic…

“Mind you, I’m not sure I can stay, because I don’t have a toothbrush.”

Faramir laughed.

“It may have been a bit presumptuous of me, but there was a branch of Boots next to M&S.” He opened the top drawer of the desk, and passed a toothbrush, still in its wrapper, to Éowyn.

Carmen – Finale, Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna, Opera Nationale de Paris, Mark Elder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8kT9bS1R78
CW: opera clip contains domestic violence and femicide.

Ash lock is Éowyn's phonetic rendition of Arschloch (arsehole in German).

Mongraph – Rape at the Opera by Margaret Cormier
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/166/oa_monograph/chapter/3766473
In particular about directorial decisions to rape into operas where it isn’t actually there in the libretto in order to up the dramatic ante for the audience, or conversely, downplaying sexual violence and turning rape into “seduction”. Re. the discussion of the latter, I was particularly struck by the discussion of the Zerlina/ Don Giovanni scene (“La ci darem la mano”) which is pretty standardly played as seduction. However, I have a very old RAI TV production on DVD (1960 – Mario Petri as the Don, Graziella Sciutti as Zerlina) which plays that aria absolutely straight, with no hint of seduction, no hint of “she’s saying ‘no’ out of coyness when she means ‘yes’,” and it is absolutely chilling, and the power imbalance is totally there on the surface for everyone to see.

Chapter Text

The next day had restored things to equilibrium a bit. Éowyn had had the best night’s sleep she’d had in ages, Faramir wrapped round her, the comforting sound of his breathing soothing her back to sleep every time she stirred. And the day had been much better – no King at all, and a repertoire session with Noldor which was actually enjoyable. Then – well, by the time she went back to Faramir’s (there seemed to be an unspoken agreement that with only a handful of days left till they went their separate ways for the Christmas holiday, they might as well give up the pretence of being sensible and trying to have occasional nights where they slept separately) – having gone back, the nightmares seemed to have faded sufficiently that sex was very, very definitely back on the menu. The sort of sex that was toe-curlingly good, embarrassingly noisy, and downright dangerous to the structural integrity of the bed. And afterwards, warmth and safety and another good night’s sleep.

Éowyn woke in the tiny bed in Faramir’s room. He was curled round her, arm thrown over her midriff, hand spread across her belly. He was also, she realised, hard already. Not half-hard in sleep… she had a feeling he was already very much awake. She wriggled round half onto her back. Sure enough, his eyes were open. They crinkled at the corners as he smiled at her. His mouth met hers in a long, lingering kiss. God, she could almost get off on his kisses alone. She let her hand drift down his back, then across his arse. What a way to wake up. She tugged him in tight.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she whispered into his ear.

“Almost certainly. But we have a slight technical problem – we finished the condoms last night.”

“Oh fuck!”

“Or rather, not.”

Éowyn pouted at him. He laughed, and kissed her again.

“Let’s go and have a shower and see whether we can improvise…” His hand slid up to cup her breast, brushing her nipple with his thumb.

The shower proved to be an inspired choice. She had him pressed hard against the tiles, her knee between his legs, hand wrapped round his not inconsiderable girth. Working him for all she was worth.

His head was thrown back against the wall, rivulets of water running over his head and down his face, dark hair slicked back. His hands gripped her shoulders, like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to the wreckage in a storm. His lips were parted, and the noises he was making…

They were fucking obscene.

She loved them.

She picked up the pace. Beneath her other hand, she could feel his pecs trembling slightly. The whole of his body seemed drawn as tight as a bow string.

She peppered his chest with kisses, then fastened her mouth on his nipple and began to suck. There was a kind of moan. She thought it might have included words – possibly “Fuck, yes” – but she wasn’t entirely sure. She didn’t entirely care either. The bulk of her concentration was given to the task in hand. The very impressive task in hand.

She slid her free hand down over his stomach then slid it round his waist and down to his buttocks. She felt the muscles tense. Suddenly, he let out a noise somewhere between a grunt and a long drawn out groan, and rutted hard into the hand that was wrapped round his cock. Strings of pearlescent white streaked her hand and his stomach, gleaming against the line of dark hair that threaded its way up the muscles of his abs. They lingered for a moment before the hot water cascading over their bodies washed them away.

The tension went out of his body, and he sagged against her, his head coming to rest on her shoulder. Then he raised his head and brought his lips down on hers, spinning them round so that now her back was pressed against the tiles. He kissed her with a focussed intensity that made her knees feel like they were about to give way.

Suddenly, he reached out and turned the water off. He slid the shower cubicle open – the cold air hit Éowyn like diving into a cold loch on a summer day – and reached for a towel.

“Your turn,” he said.

He wrapped her up in the towel, then picked her up bodily. She gave a happy shriek of surprise as he carried her out through the door of the tiny bathroom and dropped her, towel and all, on the bed. She bounced gently, and came to rest with her calves dangling over the edge of the single bed. Faramir knelt down between them and lifted her left ankle and pressed a kiss to her ankle bone. Then started to kiss his way up her calf, then the inside of her thigh, peeling the towel off her.

She yelped. “I haven’t shaved in ages…”

“Shaved… not shaved… Don’t care. I just feel damn lucky to be here.” His kisses reached the top of her thigh. Just for a moment, he looked up at her, a cocky, self-assured grin on his face. Then, very slowly and deliberately, he dragged his tongue all the way along her, mouth coming to rest at the front and fastening onto her, his mouth hot and wet, licking and tonguing at her.

It was like a bolt of lightning. Her hips bucked off the bed. She stuffed her knuckles in her mouth to try to block the moan that seemed to come right from deep inside her.

“You like that?” He spoke without taking his mouth away, the movement of his lips and huff of his breath sending jolts through every nerve ending. Not that he really had to ask. Smug bastard. She could tell from the tone of his voice alone that he absolutely, completely knew she liked it. More than liked it.

He shifted his head just a fraction so he could look up at her as... He opened his mouth – it was so hot, so very hot. Then… he started to alternate sucking and licking at her.

“Oh fuck. Oh please. Oh God, yes...”

Her hands moved down to his head, and her fingers tangled in his hair.

With one hand, he held onto her arse, holding her against his mouth. The other hand slid up the inside of her thigh. Just for a moment, he lifted his mouth away, peppering her with little flicks of his tongue.

“Do you want my fingers inside you?”

Éowyn could barely speak. Her voice shook as she managed to gasp a single, shuddering, whispered “Yes.”

His mouth back to its task, he pressed two fingers deep inside her, then started to move them, curling them up against her in time with the movement of his tongue. She let go of his hair to grab onto the duvet, clutching it as she got nearer and nearer.

Her orgasm, when it came, was like an explosion – short, sharp, earth-shaking. The suddenness and intensity took her by surprise. She thought she made some sort of noise, she wasn’t sure what.

Faramir wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and gave her a triumphant, knowing grin. “I think we may have upset that violinist again. Jesus, you’re loud when you let rip. It must be the diaphragm control.”

Éowyn looked down at him, still kneeling between her thighs. “God, you’re a smug bastard.”

“If the noises you just made were anything to go by, I think I’ve got a lot to be smug about.”

Éowyn felt herself blush – it seemed to be a constant state these days. She felt deliciously shameless, lying there naked, skin still glistening wet from the shower, legs spread wide, with a gorgeous naked man kneeling between them.

“Not to mention the fact that you just about cut off the circulation to my fingers when you came. God you’ve got some powerful muscles.”

“II did a lot of riding as a kid. Get some more condoms, and I’ll show you what I can do to your cock this evening.”

Faramir climbed onto the bed beside her, eyes blown wide with lust.

“Bloody hell, you brought me off less than ten minutes ago, and already I want you again,” he murmured, nuzzling in against her neck. She reached down, and sure enough, he was hard.

He pulled her into a kiss. He tasted of her – salty, a bit brackish. In the past she’d recoiled from that taste, but now she just felt… Decadent. Desired. Needed. Wanted. Wanton. She kissed him back, wondering how he would react to the taste of him on her mouth. Now that was definitely something to try out.

He whispered into her ear. “Tonight. I promise to fuck you till you can’t remember your own name.”

Éowyn felt as though she might just melt into a puddle on the bed.

Then, abruptly, the alarm on her phone went off. She sat bolt upright.

“Oh bugger, I’m going to be late for Elfhelm.” She leapt off the bed and started dragging her clothes on, while Faramir lay there, hands behind head, completely naked, still half-hard, watching her every move with an amused smile.

Afternoon came round. And with it… repertoire.

Éowyn slid into her seat beside Hama. To her surprise, Stone was on the conductor’s rostrum instead of Noldor. Valandil was sitting in the leader’s chair. And, at the piano, looking surprisingly relaxed, smiling up at Stone and exchanging a few sentences she couldn’t make out from this distance, Faramir.

Oh Christ, he was gorgeous. And her mind filled with an incredibly vivid image of his head between her legs. And the feeling of his tongue, working her into a frenzy. Vivid enough that she felt herself getting wet at the mere thought. Focus, Eowyn, focus... Abruptly, Stone’s voice poured cold water over her memories.

“Okay, everybody. Today’s the first of a slightly different format which will stretch into next term. One pianist per session – today’s volunteer is Mr. Hurin here. And his chosen work – Rachmaninov’s Paganini Variations. Another change – we’ll be recording parts of this. In the interests of transparency, I’ll be making it clear when recording is on or off. The overall game plan is one recording of the first run through, then we work through passages in detail, then a final run-through. Primarily the recording is for pedagogical purposes – a before and after contrast for Mr. Hurin to think about with his piano teacher. But – with permission from me and anyone else in shot – if there are small extracts you want to include in your personal portfolios, the recording technicians will be happy to provide you with them after the event.”

She opened the copy in front of her. And offered up a silent prayer to the gods of concentration. Having listened to it yesterday with a mini-score, it was exactly the sort of piece she had to be really on the ball for. That “orchestral colour” thing. Lots of sharp staccato chords on off-beats, requiring intense focus on her part. And she totally owed it to Faramir to bring the best she could to this. Not fanny around fluffing entries because she couldn’t stop thinking about his cock. She breathed in through her nose, let out a long breath between her lips. And repeat. Focus, focus.

Stone raised his baton.

And even with the intense concentration she was bringing to bear, she realised she was in the presence of something special.

Faramir’s performance caught fire. Every note, every phrase, every flourish. But more than that – a sense of the overall architecture of the piece. But not dry, not intellectual. Instead, a vision of the whole, shot through with passion, and yearning and something more than that – something that spoke almost of desire. Lust, sex even. But something more than that too.

The rapid opening and first few variations shot past in a frenzy of virtuosity. It was all she could do to cling onto the rhythm he was setting. Variation IV – those staccato chords. Almost the noises he’d made in the shower, but translated into music. Variation V – the “blink and you’d miss them” phrases in the horn part. Finally with variation VII the tempo eased off a bit, down to a languorous, seductive love making. Cool, delicate chords in the piano while the bassoon picked out its theme, then the chords turned into loud, bell-like chimes with Éowyn's horn notes lingering beneath them.

Then back to a rapid, driving rhythm for variation VIII, the horns echoing the piano’s notes, frantic scurrying in the strings. Into triplets for the next variation, the two sections combining to make Éowyn think of the score of a Hitchcock movie. Somehow, her mind kept the beat and clung on to her part.

More bell-like piano chords while the brass stomped along in a quick march beneath, then let rip with a series of fanfares. Then the bravura technical mastery of keeping those chimes going in the left hand while the right played rippling semi-quavers accompanied by the woodwind, harp, strings and the incongruous crystalline sound of the glockenspiel.

Suddenly the pressure was off Éowyn as the tempo slowed dramatically, and the strings crept in with an almost silent tremolo, only for Faramir to launch into the most incredibly virtuoso passage she’d heard yet, a duet with the harp which rippled up and down the keyboard, cascading like a waterfall with sunlight sparkling off the myriad droplets of water, the whole combining into the most glorious sequence of notes.

And then into the minuet, slow, hauntingly beautiful, and finally, finally, her chance to play with Faramir, coaxing the most beautiful sound she could find, singing out over the orchestra, trying to fit with his notes as perfectly as they had fitted together last night.

Then… No time to linger on thoughts of what had been. A grand march, with chords in the horn which somehow sounded like syncopations even though they were on the beat. Then into a driving l’istesso tempo, urgent quavers, overlaid with triplet fanfares first in the woodwind, followed by the trumpet, and finally picked up by the horns and trombones. And through it all, through the whole orchestra, Faramir’s part ringing out, carrying over all the rest of them, holding them together, providing the musical centre. Before…

The l’istesso tempo served as a springboard into the most outrageous solo piano passage, coruscating notes flowing from beneath Faramir’s fingers. Éowyn listened, almost stunned, before realising the strings had come back in, and her entry was nearly upon her.

The tempo eased once more, the strings leading into a duet, thoughtful, questioning figures in the piano part being answered by a phrase of plangent longing in the oboe. Again, Faramir’s lead was the silver thread which held the whole orchestra together. Then, as the variation unwound, they reached the trio – Faramir, the leader’s almost vocal line in the violin, and Éowyn's horn part blending seamlessly, reflected back to her by the cor anglais. Then that soaring horn line, getting higher and higher, but quieter, like a whisper in her lover’s ear.

Then, rippling, mysterious arpeggios in the piano, with long, held notes, Éowyn blending with the other wind instruments. More of those fearsomely high whispers. Éowyn felt her stomach muscles tighten as she supported them – the same muscles that tightened when Faramir brought her to the brink. Then the strings took over, gradually dropping down their register until only the cellos played beneath those dark, brooding arpeggios… and then…

A few exploratory, gentle, thoughtful, rising triplets – gentle and thoughtful in the way his kisses were when they lay, sated, lust exhausted, only affection left between them – before Faramir’s fingers coaxed the blossoming, almost unbearably beautiful counter- melody out of the piano. He had his back to her, of course, given the layout of the orchestra. But she knew… or believed… or hoped… or wanted… She wanted this theme, this unbearable beauty to be for her. The notes he conjured from keys and hammers, dampers and strings, escaped dull mechanism and instead took life, breathing, heart beating, warm, vibrant, and soared across the space to kiss, to caress, to wrap her in his arms.

And as the strings joined in, she realised something. She was present at something truly special, one of those performances where the force of one musician’s vision and imagination and technical mastery raised a whole orchestra to produce something unique, something where each musician hung upon every note. Then, the strings and piano having played it, the entire orchestra joined in, the brass swelling to fill the hall. Yet over it all, Faramir’s playing cut through, incredibly powerful yet still beautiful. As the orchestra died away, fading into the background, all that was left was Faramir’s last reprise of the counter-melody, itself fading, quieter and quieter until it was almost as soft as his heartbeat, heard when she pressed her cheek to his chest. He sat in silence, the pause perfectly timed, until with an almost imperceptible nod to Stone...

The strings were off, in a rapid pizzicato, which Faramir joined with sharp, detached triplets, then into an almost hunting-horn like fanfare which the horns themselves picked up at the end of each phrase, the violins, now arco, scurrying beneath. Then into a dazzling array of almost jazz-like triplets, and back to the fanfare, the strings and woodwind scampering upwards, swapping from one to another.

The penultimate variation – a march in the piano with the orchestra reprising snippets of the original violin theme, fragments, a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, eventually shattering into cascading piano figures of dazzling, sparkling complexity, before finally the original Paganini theme returned with an extravagant lightness of touch in the piano. And all that was left was the bravura of the finale, hints of the theme ricocheting round the orchestra as the piano – oh, that assured, cocky self-confidence that she’d only just discovered in him, now on display to the full – the piano built into its virtuoso climax, orchestra and soloist crashing through the final, perfect chords.

Then… Silence. For a few tantalising seconds, it was as if no-one could even bring themselves to breathe. Then Valandil broke the spell, standing up and reaching out over his stand to shake Faramir’s hand. As they always did after a run-through, the orchestra applauded, but Éowyn was sure there was a sincerity to this – not mere politeness, but a recognition of something remarkable. As Faramir turned back towards the conductor, for a moment, he looked straight at her and smiled, and somehow the smile said ‘Yes, I was playing that for you.’

Stone signalled to the technician to cut the video recording, then joined in the applause, with what looked uncannily like a genuine smile on his face for once.

“Mr. Hurin, that was truly remarkable.” Again, that unaccustomed look of sincerity. But Stone never stayed the right side of respectability for long. He gave a knowing look. “I see you’ve taken my advice.”

He turned to the orchestra and grinned his shark-like grin. “I gave up smoking twenty years ago, but believe me, I feel like sparking up right now.” Then, to Éowyn's horror, he looked straight at her.

“Miss Earl. You are also to be congratulated on your remarkable performance.” He paused – never let it be said that Thorin Stone lacked a sense of timing, musical or comic. “And your playing today was excellent as well.”

As promised, they worked on various tricky corners – particularly for the strings – then Stone ran the whole thing again. To Éowyn's mind, although the orchestra was perhaps a touch more polished, and the mistakes fewer, the overall musical impact didn’t quite reach the first performance.

At the end of the rehearsal, Éowyn quickly unscrewed the bell of her horn and stowed it in its case, then wove her way between the strings’ stands to where Faramir stood beside the piano. With his (now customary) disregard for what anyone else might think, he scooped her into his arms and kissed her, then released her, leaving his left arm snug round her waist.

As they made their way out of the hall, Éowyn whispered “I went out at lunchtime and bought a dozen condoms…”

Faramir smiled and said “Funny you should say that… so did I.”

They both dissolved into peals of laughter. Faramir spun her round to face him and kissed her again.

Rachmaninov – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Vladimir Ashkenazy London Symphony Orch. André Previn (picking up at Variation 18, but start from the beginning if you want to follow the performance bit of the chapter).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvKTPDg0IW0&t=925s

Plenty of other performances on YouTube, but I have decided (c.f. my thoughts on RPF and the movie Tar in the comments section a few chapters back) that if it’s a sex scene with piano music, the top-of-the-chapter link needs to be music only no visuals. Bit too close to RPF for comfort if there are visuals.

Plus, also, it comes with a score so you can follow along. (You know you want to. Well, some of you do. Hail, my fellow nerds.)

On the issue of seeing the piece as an architectural whole, if you have an odd hour to spare, here’s Daniel Barenboim giving a masterclass to Lang Lang (early in Lang Lang’s career) on Beethoven’s 23rd Sonata:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NYfrht6TU8

And if you want to watch someone playing it, here is Anna Fedorova (https://www.annafedorova.com/) and the Philharmonie Südwestfalen under Gerard Oskamp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppJ5uITLECE

And Boris Giltburg, the Brussels Phil and Vassily Sinaisky with variation 24 (the final variation).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9KBjC0L498

Finally, in case you missed it in the notes of an earlier chapter, a truly extraordinary rendition of the original violin version, with Hilary Hahn, Two-Set Violin (and some hula-hoops)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOjO4ekcJQA

Chapter Text

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy2PNewPcXM

~o~O~o~

Faramir had come with her to the station to wave goodbye. There were many romantic railway stations in the world, Éowyn reflected, but Manchester Piccadilly was not one of them. Nonetheless, his farewell kiss had been passionate, and left her lips tingling as she made her way through the ticket barrier, up the platform and onto the train.

Now, after an odd and troubled night’s sleep in the small bed in her childhood bedroom, she was out with two of the farm sheepdogs, hiking across the hills above the farm. It was raining – that fine drizzle Scotland specialised in, that seems soft and innocuous as you stepped out of the door, but had you soaked to the skin within half an hour. But the wisps of mist blowing across the tops lent the landscape a mystical quality, and Éowyn relished it, striding out with the dogs trotting at her heels.

It was weird being home. It always felt weird being home these days. No Uncle Théoden. The farmhouse felt so empty without his solid, almost fatherly presence. Théodred, her cousin, was there though. He was much older than her, so much so that he often felt more like an uncle than a cousin. He was gradually beginning to put his own stamp on the farm. He had ideas about new sheep breeds, and was also talking about diversifying into beef cattle. Even so, she worried about him – all alone here, now she and Éomer were down in Manchester most of the time.

She was obviously not the only one in the family worried; Auntie Tilda, one of Théoden’s younger sisters, had announced that she and her family were coming over on Christmas day. They lived down in the town – near the station in Galashiels. To Éowyn's immense relief, Tilda had also announced her intention to take over cooking Christmas lunch, and had provided her niece with a lengthy list of purchases. (Éowyn had bridled briefly at the thought that this list had come to her by default rather than Éomer, but had then decided to let it go on the grounds that shopping was a small price to pay for not having to cook the bloody thing.)

Éowyn crossed a narrow burn, swollen by the recent rain into a torrent tumbling over the boulders in the stream-bed, hopping precariously from one rock to another.. The dogs jumped over in her wake, making it look effortless. She sat down on a boulder for a moment and ate some chocolate – the taste took her back to another hillside, in the Peak District, with Faramir offering her a Mars Bar. She smiled at the thought of how completely oblivious she’d been – and, in retrospect, how completely obvious he had been. So obvious even the pair of middle aged couples at the table in the pub had had him sussed in under thirty seconds.

The smile faded at the thought of how much she missed him; his absence was an almost physical pain. She wondered what he was doing right now. He’d been intending to spend a few more days in Manchester, she knew, before getting the train to his uncle’s just before Christmas. He’d been excited at the thought of a family Christmas, an almost childlike excitement. As he told the story, Christmases with his father and brother had been subdued, rather depressing affairs after his mum had died. In contrast, the insanely busy Christmases in his uncle and aunt’s house gave him a sense of family and warmth and love that had been largely absent from his childhood.

Éowyn tried and failed to picture the scene; a rather nice house in the Dorset countryside, apparently, near the sea. Faramir had shown her some photos – she’d been stunned by the size of the place and the beauty of its gardens. He’d ticked off the various family members who would be there. His uncle and aunt, of course, and Lottie, obviously. Apparently Rothos had leave, but Erchirion’s frigate was somewhere in the Black Sea, and Elphir’s unit were involved in NATO exercises in Norway. Two cousins out of four were an improvement on an empty flat, though, Faramir had said, before adding that he might well go and spend a bit of time in the flat after Christmas.

“It doesn’t do to leave it empty for too long. And there’s a rather nice piano, and lots of concerts nearby.”

She felt a pang at the thought of him on his own. It crossed her mind that perhaps she could go down there. But then again, the train all the way to London would cost an arm and a leg. And… Well, she still didn’t want to come over as too keen. Things were working, which was a novelty, but she didn’t want to do anything to upset what she saw as a precarious balancing act. She took a deep breath. This was taking her into territory she didn’t want to dwell on. Instead she called to the dogs. The girl, Peg, leaned against her leg; the boy, Rabbsie (named after Rab C. Nesbitt), lay on the ground by her feet. She scuffed the ruff of fur round Peg’s neck, and in return Peg laid her chin on Éowyn's thigh and looked up at her interrogatively. Éowyn swore that Peg was brighter than quite a few humans she’d known. Though what the current question was, she wasn’t quite sure. It could have been “Are you sad? Why sad?” But equally well it could have been “Bored now. Herd sheep now?”

She finished the chocolate, got to her feet, and set off down the path, the dogs trotting along at her side.

When she got back to the farmhouse she found a slew of messages on her phone.

Missing you loads.

Even more than I did last night.

Lottie is driving me mad.

So’s Rothos.

Her finger hovered over the screen, about to tap out a reply. Then she changed her mind and headed upstairs. Ran might have been more accurate, taking the steps two at a time. She shut her bedroom door firmly, and called Faramir instead. He answered almost immediately.

“Hi.” Just a single syllable, but she could have sworn she heard him smiling.

“Hi. Sorry for all the missed messages, I’ve been out on the hills with the dogs, no phone reception.”

“Doesn’t matter – it’s just great to hear your voice.”

“And you…” Suddenly Éowyn felt slightly tongue tied. She sat down on the bed.

“Where are you?”

“Hiding in my bedroom. Éomer isn’t within earshot, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I don’t think he thinks I’m good enough for you.”

“Not his call.”

“No, I know.”

“But it’s my call. And I think you are.”

“Good. That’s a relief.” There was barely suppressed laughter in his voice. “How are you getting on?”

“Bored already. Though it was nice being out in the countryside. Better weather than Derbyshire. Not by much mind. Still raining, but at least I could see more than a hundred yards.”

Faramir laughed out loud this time. “I picked a really awful day. I’m amazed you had anything to do with me after that.”

“I’m glad I did,” Éowyn replied.

“Good.” Again, that smile in his voice. “I’m missing you terribly, you know, and it’s only been a day.”

For a moment Éowyn didn’t know how to respond. A wave of panic at the unfamiliar territory hit her. Then she took a breath and realised that she didn’t need to panic. Honesty – that was all he asked. “I miss you too. Which is silly, ‘cos like you say, it’s only been a day.”

And as she said it, she realised it was true. She was hit by a visceral wave of longing. She really missed him, missed him in ways she couldn’t, or wouldn’t articulate. Fortunately, Faramir changed the subject.

“What have your family got planned for Christmas?”

“Well, I’m currently in a house full of bachelors, so I was a bit worried food preparation would be dumped on me, in which case it would have been pizza for Christmas…”

“I remember, your signature dish.” The warmth and fondness was unmistakable.

“Yeah, and not as good as yours. No M&S till you get to Edinburgh. It’s Aldi or nothing here. Fortunately one of my aunties has stepped into the breach. It does mean I have to find presents for the kids, but Lego should do.”

They chatted about everything and nothing for half an hour or so. It was nice, but… odd. A bit like being with him, but with a layer of awkwardness and artificiality. Éowyn felt a bit off-kilter. She wasn’t sure whether this was a sign that maybe their nascent romance wasn’t as solid as she’d hoped. Or whether the awkwardness stemmed simply from things that were hard to say over the phone. There was something unsaid, Éowyn felt. As though the distance put the brakes on something important. What was that phrase? An elephant in the room? Or, in this case, an elephant on the phone lines. Éowyn had a sudden, surreal mental image of an elephant, like a very over-sized crow, perched on some telephone lines which sagged and strained under its weight.

Eventually, though, the phone call came to an end when Éowyn heard Éomer calling her name.

“Oh god, gotta go and be sociable. My brother… Talk to you later.”

“Can I phone you to say goodnight?”

Éowyn almost burst out laughing at the earnest tone in his voice. Then she realised she liked his earnestness. And liked the idea too. Liked the idea a great deal.

“Yes. Talk to you later.”

“Later. I… I miss you like crazy… Ah… Yes, well, later. Bye.” And he hung up, leaving her feeling strangely bereft. And mildly amused that his usual articulacy seemed to have abandoned him.

By the time Christmas Day came round, Éowyn was climbing the walls with boredom. Only regular phone calls to Faramir were keeping her sane. With time and repetition, they’d got easier, less stilted. The bedtime ones in particular were her favourites. Predictably, it wasn’t just the affection and the feeling of being cared for. Éowyn (after some initial embarrassment) had discovered the joys of phone sex. She still felt a bit self-conscious, and it definitely wasn’t as good as the real thing, but it was still better than nothing. They swapped detailed descriptions of what they wanted to do to one another, and graphic details of exactly where their hands and fingers were (and how much they wished it was in fact the other’s hands and fingers exploring those places). Éowyn had put a rule in place, though; only the late night phone call, from the safety of her bedroom. Somehow she didn’t think she could face the family immediately after.

Christmas day was, at least, busier than previous days had been. Auntie Tilda had arrived, with a goose, which was placed safely out of reach of the dogs. (This was no mean task with collies: Éowyn still remembered the occasion a few Easters ago, where Peg had used Rabbsie as a springboard to get to a very high shelf and a leg of lamb. She swore it had been no spur of the moment improvisation, but a carefully planned attack.)

Then came the ritual opening of the presents. Éomer had bought her a new pair of decent gloves – the cheeky bugger. It didn’t feel quite like a real Christmas present, somehow, given that they merely replaced a perfectly serviceable pair he had purloined to give to his girlfriend. Théodred gave her a rather nice jumper, in a deep blue. Tilda had obviously gone for safety, and gave her a box of chocolate, but since (in Éowyn's opinion) there was no such thing as a bad box of chocolates, this went down a treat.

The kids (aged 12 and 8) liked their Lego (Éowyn had combined forces with Éomer once she realised how expensive the wretched stuff was). Theo opened the gate-leg table in the bay window for them to work at, and the two of them settled into building. Tilda made appreciative noises about the tin of fancy biscuits; Eowyn wasn’t sure if this was just politeness, but really, she hadn’t had a clue what her aunt would like. Her present for Jimmy, Tilda’s husband, was more successful; the small second-hand bookshop in the town had supplied a book by Gavin Hastings on his career in international rugby. Really, men in the borders tended to be easy to buy for, Éowyn thought. Just buy them something rugby related.

Then her aunt beckoned her over and said, “Time to get on with the cooking.”

Éowyn silently fumed at the assumption that the women did the work. But you could hardly get cross when someone had offered to come and do the bulk of the work, so she dutifully followed Tilda through to the kitchen. The goose was rapidly installed in the Rayburn. Éowyn was placed on peeling duty; her aunt was under no illusions as to her culinary skills. They had been correctly assessed and found wanting, but Tilda had obviously decided that surely not even a raging incompetent could muck up with a potato peeler. Once the roast potatoes were safely on to parboil and the carrots scraped and chopped, Éowyn was even allowed to trim some Brussels sprouts (all the while wondering why anyone actually ate these). Tilda did tell her off for making the nicks in the stalks too deep.

“They’ll go soggy.”

Finally released from chopping duty, Éowyn skirted the door to the sitting room and sneaked upstairs. She was going to phone Faramir, but noticed an email from Disa. She opened it. It had a video file as an attachment, and the single word “Enjoy.”

She grabbed her laptop and opened the file up. A hand-written title filled the screen: “KonzertStück: the Director’s Cut.” Then, in a very shonky attempt at a special effect, the word “Director’s” faded out to be replaced by “Disa”.

Disa had kept the sound track intact. The opening was as you’d expect – the wide shot of all four of them, the pianist visible in the background. But then, as the music unfurled, Éowyn realised Disa had spliced in a selection of video footage over the audio feed. Instead of focussing on whoever was playing at the time, she’d picked out as much footage of Éowyn and Faramir mooning over each other as possible.

The two of them snuggled up on the piano stool before they’d started playing (Éowyn hadn’t even realised the cameras were on at this point – Disa and Sam must have been doing sound checks). Moments where the third and fourth horn were playing – a close up of Hama and Théomund would fade into one of Éowyn sneaking a look at the piano. (Did she really look that besotted, that obviously? Oh God!). Or a moment when the horns were playing a cappella would be intercut with a shot of Faramir looking straight at her, a fond smile and slightly gormless look on his face. (Fuck! Was it that obvious, all the time? And how long had he been looking at her like that for? Was that why Disa had spent most of the term telling her he fancied her? And… most scary of all… What did a look like that mean? She didn’t think anyone had ever looked at her like that before.) And the really irritating thing was it turned her into an observer, looking at all this from the outside, and suddenly… Well, suddenly she could see why Disa found this all so entertaining.

Éowyn felt herself turning pink even though she was alone. She fired off a message to Disa.

Ha ha. Very funny.

Seriously though, that must have been loads of work.

Thanks. I think.

It was a labour of leurve.

Merry Christmas, btw

Durin helped. He thinks it’s hilarious. And a cinematic masterpiece. He reckons Cannes.

Piss off. Oh, and Merry Christmas to you too.

I sent a copy to Faramir too.

How’s Glen Arse-End-of-MacNowhere, or wherever it is you live.

Boring as fuck. How’s Sarf London?

Bit dull. Seeing family is great, mum’s cooking is brill.

And at least there’s exciting stuff only a bus ride away.

More than can be said for Galashiels – train to Edinburgh takes over an hour and costs an arm and a leg.

You planning on being in Jockland for the whole holiday?

”Jockland”? Fuck off.

Not sure how long I’ll stay. Depends on whether I can think of anything else. Maybe go back to Manchester early.

Bet Faramir would come back early too if you did.

Give it a rest.

Oh god, you haven’t gone into “Run Silent, Run Deep” mode, have you? You’re the human equivalent of the submarine in the naff cold war spy film I watched last night.

No, you would be proud of me. We’re talking on the phone several times a day.

It was a bit weird at first, but I’m getting the hang of it.

Keep up the good work you must, young padawan.

Oops, gotta go. Sounds like there’s a gravy catastrophe. Only I can save the day...

Have a good one.

You too, mwah, XXX

Éowyn settled down on the bed and called Faramir. He sounded delighted to hear from her, and they chatted for getting on for an hour until Éomer knocked at the door to tell her the Christmas dinner was ready.

The shit hit the fan the day after Boxing Day. Éowyn and Éomer had gone to Aldi to pick up some milk and bread. Éomer had disappeared to find some beer while Éowyn browsed the fruit and veg section. She rounded the end one of the vegetable displays and almost collided with Fi Douglas, pinched and angular and grey-faced, with her small child in tow. A snotty, unprepossessing kid. A small ginger kid who was the spitting image of his father.

“You…” Fi almost spat the word.

Éowyn went to turn heel, but Fi grabbed her by the coat.

“You lying bitch. Your lies left my bairn wi’out a father.”

“Let go of me.” Éowyn's voice was cold. She hoped it wasn’t shaking. Pride made her want her voice to stay level even when she was shaking on the inside. Shaking and fighting the urge to spew. Or punch Fi. She wasn’t sure which.

“Grima had to leave town because of your lies. It’s aw your fault.”

Éowyn felt her temper starting to rise. “They weren’t lies. And your bairn is better off without a rapist for a father.” She tugged her arm free of the other woman’s grasp.

“Still lying even now. Well, you’ll get yours. Just wait and see how he reacts to you saying that sort of shit, ‘cos he’ll be home for Hogmanay. His sister tellt me.”

“Aye, that sounds like he’s seriously involved in your life. Getting your news second hand from his sister.”

“You fucking bitch. He would never have left if it wasn’t for you.” She saw Fi raise her hand, ready to reach out and slap her, and stepped back out of range.

“Believe what you want. It doesn’t change the truth. And now I’m going.”

She turned and stalked off to find Éomer. As she did, she heard a hawking noise and felt a splat on the back of her coat. Instinctively her spine stiffened. Her hands balled into fists and it took every ounce of self control not to turn round and deck the cow.

She kept her pace steady. The last thing she wanted was to give that woman the satisfaction of seeing her scurrying away. She rounded the end of the shelves. Three aisles down she found Éomer.

“I’m going out to the Land Rover.” She explained about her encounter with Douglas, in as few words as she could. Éomer's face was grim as he pulled out a paper hankie and wiped the mess off her back.

She walked across the asphalt, still shaking. Part rage, part… She didn’t want to dig ito her emotions, other than acknowledging that they were a mess. She climbed into the passenger seat and sat, tight-lipped, waiting for Éomer.

On the drive back, Éomer apologised.

“Sorry. I’d heard on the grapevine that he’d be back. I was hoping you just wouldn’t hear about it.”

“Éomer, you fucking idiot. You and Théodred were planning on taking me out on a pub crawl on Hogmanay. What are the odds we’d have bumped into him?”

“I’m sorry. Yes, you’re right. That was an idiot move on my part.”

“God for a bright guy you can be fucking stupid sometimes.” She gave him a sidelong glance. Suddenly her anger flared, and she lashed out.

“You were putting your want for beer ahead of my feelings.”

As soon as the words were out she knew this wasn’t true; Éomer might have been guilty of hoping the problem would go away if he ignored it, but he certainly wasn’t planning on putting her in that situation because he didn’t care. But even though she knew she was being unfair, she couldn’t bring herself to retract that last accusation; some of the rage from earlier was flooding out, and Éomer was an easy target. The rest of the drive passed in stony silence.

It was about an hour later when there was a cautious knock on Éowyn's bedroom door. She was curled up in a ball, feeling fed-up. Actually, fed-up was an understatement. Ragingly angry, tortured by flashbacks to all the stuff she normally kept locked in the back room of her mind, and guilty as hell about taking it all out on Éomer.

Éomer poked his head into the room.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I am an idiot.”

Éowyn breathed in through her nose, and let out a long breath. Normally at this stage she’d have succumbed to another attack of ill-directed rage, but it seemed some of Faramir’s calmness and reasonableness was rubbing off on her.

“I’m sorry too. I know it wasn’t beer. I know it was because you didn’t know how to handle it.”

Éomer came into the room and perched on the end of Éowyn's bed. She uncurled herself from the foetal position and sat up, leaning against the headboard. Then, feeling rather exposed, drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms round them. Éomer looked at her anxiously.

“What do you want to do?”

“Honestly? Get as far away from here as possible.”

Éomer swallowed. “Okay. I know I called him all sorts. But – okay, I’m eating humble pie here – the guy genuinely seems to care for you. You could always ring Faramir, see if you could go to see him.”

“Can’t afford the train fare.”

“I’ve got an idea. You leave your return to Manchester here, Lottie leaves her return with Faramir, that way you each only have to buy a one-way ticket.”

Éowyn threw a pillow at him. “I should have known this wasn’t about sympathy for me. You just want to get your girlfriend up here.”

“No, that’s a side benefit. But I do think you should go somewhere you’d be happier. You could go back to Manchester early if you’d rather.”

Éowyn rested her chin on her knees and shut her eyes. She was silent for quite a long time, mulling over the options. Eventually she spoke.

“I’ll give Faramir a ring.”

Corelli, Christmas Concerto, Musica Amphion conducted by Pieter-Jan Belder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy2PNewPcXM
Just because it’s one of my favourites.

The cool thing that looks like a monster lute is a theorbo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVabz8LneI4

Chapter Text

Éowyn had got up early to fit in a couple of hours practice in before she caught the train; she guessed that by the time she got to London she’d be too shattered to do anything constructive. Besides which, London meant Faramir, and that was hardly conducive to concentration. Éomer had dropped her in Galashiels to catch the rattly little train to Edinburgh. It stopped at every lamp post like a dog going for a walk. Eventually she got to Waverley and went in search of the London train. She hadn’t got a seat reservation, and it took her quite a while, wandering up the train, before she found a seat. The man in the window seat glared at her for having the effrontery to want to sit down where his bag had been resting in comfort; he huffed in annoyance as he put it on the rack.

About half an hour into the journey, it became apparent that this was going to be a tortuous experience. Quite aside from the elbow of the man, flowing over the arm rest and digging into her ribs, the train’s heating appeared to be broken. She got up and dug an extra jumper out of her rucksack, then fought her way back into the seat, now having to contend with the man’s knee as well as his elbow. She sat and shivered.

After a while she realised she was beginning to lose feeling in her toes. She had her hands – in their new gloves – stuffed under her arms to see if she could get a bit of body heat into them. She was also somewhat uncomfortable – her horn case was tucked between her feet, which were pushed to one side by the man’s knee. She didn’t have many options, however; she certainly wasn’t planning on leaving it in the luggage space at the end of the carriage and it was just slightly too big for the overhead spaces. The train was surprisingly full; she would have expected lots of people fleeing north for Hogmanay in Edinburgh, but it seemed that there were an equal number of travellers heading down to London.

The first part of the journey wasn’t so bad, barring the knee and the elbow. Looking out the far window, she caught views of the Firth of Forth. Then the line swung round to the south east, through Dunbar, before cutting the corner off and heading inland. It emerged once more on the coast just north of Berwick, crossing the border, before heading along Éowyn's favourite part of the journey, the Northumbrian Coast with its low red sandstone cliffs looking over the North Sea. Lindisfarne never failed to inspire a sense of awe in her whenever she came this way, and Alnwick was as pretty as ever, its houses nestled in a fold of land beside its river, the bridge carrying the train across the inlet where the sea sparkled blue beneath the winter sun, already low in the sky.

If Lindisfarne bore testament to the greater glory of a god that few believed in any more, the high bridges over the Tyne, every bit as striking in their own way, bore testament to the secular god of profit and the might and ingenuity of the industrial revolution – though, in the event, a god abandoned just as readily by the tides of history. The train rattled across the high railway bridge and Éowyn gazed along the river to the more spectacular road bridge, with its semi-circle of cast iron girders supporting its span across the river, a Sydney Harbour bridge in miniature. Then the railway headed through the south of the city and the train continued on its journey.

The evening light gave way to the first indigo tendrils of night on the eastern horizon as they made their way over the spectacular gorge at Durham, its Cathedral fore-square on the top of the cliffs. The building was both beautiful and imposing, more like a fortress in some respects than a place of worship, a Norman statement of the power needed to hold down the north as much as it was a statement of the sanctified. Éowyn half remembered a history lesson about the Harrying of the North, and of having been shocked as a teen by just how many ordinary people were slaughtered with a casual carelessness (if she recalled correctly, her history teacher had used it as an example of the moral turpitude of the English, a lesson which lost some of its punch when compared to the not dissimilar monarchs north of the border at the time). By Darlington, the windows were filled with an inky blackness. Somewhere south of York it started to rain. She resorted to a book, held at an awkward angle because of the interloping elbow.

Despite Éowyn being resigned to the usual tardiness of the rail network, the train pulled into Kings Cross a mere five minutes late. She stretched the kinks out of her back (too much time sitting coiled like a corkscrew), then swung her rucksack onto her back, took a firm grasp on the horn case and headed for the ticket barrier.

Faramir was waiting just the other side, a huge smile spreading across his face the moment he saw her. He wrapped her in a bear hug, then kissed her. Then, somewhat typically, insisted on taking her rucksack. He led her down the long pedestrian tunnel which eventually brought them out in the underground, holding her hand all the way.

Éowyn realised that – just like that first occasion where he’d led her across the road – holding his hand still created sparks of excitement, her stomach doing some sort of strange jig of happiness in her abdomen. She looked up at him, curiously. Wasn’t that sort of feeling meant to have worn off now they were shagging each other’s brains out at every opportunity? Surely just holding hands should feel unimportant by now. And yet it didn’t. Was he aware of this? Did it have the same effect on him?

“Your hands are frozen. Again.”

“The heating on the train was bust.”

He put his arms round her and gave her another kiss, then held her in his warm embrace while they waited for the train.

It rattled its way to Victoria, from where Faramir led Éowyn down a maze of streets, eventually emerging in a street comprising what she always thought of as “wedding cake apartment blocks” – that curiously London phenomenon of white stucco and elaborate porticos and moulded cornices. Her jaw dropped as he led her up the steps to the glossy black front door of one of them, nestled between its fluted white columns. He took in her expression with a wry smile.

“It was my dad’s. Yes, it’s worth a ton of money – though it wasn’t back when my parents first bought it. He just used to say it was convenient for work. Or as convenient as you could get without being the wrong side of the river.”

“There’s a wrong side of the river?” Éowyn said, incredulously, as they climbed the thickly carpeted stairs to the first floor. Faramir opened the door on the left side of the landing, and ushered her in.

“I can tell you’re not a Londoner. Of course, Disa would strongly disagree,” he added, with a grin.

“I pull her leg about ‘Sarf London,’ but I didn’t realise it meant something.”

“The posh bits are typically this side of the river. Until you get all the way outside the M25 to Stockbroker Land,” he said with a grin. “Or head south-west to Richmond. Richmond is about as posh as it gets.”

“Are you telling me Peckham isn’t posh?” She pretended to be shocked and disappointed.

He just laughed.

A shower, a change of clothes and a plate of lasagne later (home made, she noted), Éowyn lay on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket. Soft wool – no polyester fleece from the market here. The flat was stunning, though old and frayed round the edges. It had been lived in, rather than done up as an investment for a wealthy oligarch.

No glittering granite and gleaming chrome in the kitchen; instead it had a distinctly 80s vibe to it, with old-fashioned pine fronted cupboards. One end boasted a rustic table with chairs at one side and a bench with cushions against the wall. The window looked out over a small courtyard at the rear towards the backs of the buildings on the neighbouring street. Tiny, higgledy piggledy windows and a veritable spaghetti tangle of drainpipes meant the back elevation was as untidy as the front was magnificent. To her amusement, when she went for a pee, the bathroom still boasted a coloured bathroom suite from when such things had been the cutting edge of fashion. It was very much the flat of a family who simply lived there rather than wanting to show it off. Which wasn’t to say parts of it weren’t beautiful. The sitting room, in contrast to the bathroom, had been furnished by someone who liked antiques and paintings and had a good eye. And enough money to buy them. She was particularly struck by a small print of a rural night scene of hay stooks under the light of a crescent moon. Faramir caught her looking.

“Yes, it’s the real deal. A Samuel Palmer my mum bought way back.” He shrugged as if this was nothing unusual.

Faramir had explained over dinner that he had visiting rights only – the flat in its entirety had been left to his brother.

“Didn’t that… I don’t know, really hurt?” Éowyn was mystified. She felt she had to explain a bit in case Faramir got the wrong end of the stick. “Not the money side of it. But what it meant. The… I mean, why did your father do that? It’s almost like... he didn’t seem to care for you much.”

“I think I mentioned before – it was what it was. I made my peace with it a long time ago. He did leave some money in trust to pay for my education, so it’s not like I was left high and dry. I’m a hell of a lot luckier than most students. And – well, my brother is a great guy. It’s kind of impossible to begrudge him.”

It had taken her a while to relax into the room. To start with it had seemed just too grand. It had a high ceiling and a fancy fireplace, which reminded her of some of the spectacular fireplaces in Edinburgh flats in the New Town. At least, the ones she’d seen in the property section of the Scotsman’s Sunday magazine (her uncle used to read it obsessively). There were bookcases in the alcoves on either side, filled with an eclectic collection of books which had the look of having been read and loved rather than purchased to impress. The rug on the floor was a deep selection of reds and creams – Persian, she thought. The real thing again, probably. No, correction, almost certainly. Beside her, a low table of polished wood held her wine glass and book. She was bathed in a warm glow from the table lamp – some sort of Art Deco design which she also had a horrible feeling was yet another instance of “the real thing,” and might well be worth something approaching the value of her horn.

Eventually, though, the tension had started to ease out of her shoulders. Faramir had suggested he play some Bach to her, and now – well, nothing could feel uncomfortable with Bach. She reached out and cradled the wine glass in her hand, letting the music wash over her.

Faramir sat in a pool of light from the standard lamp beside the piano. He’d chosen the Goldberg variations, and Éowyn lay, wrapped in her warm blanket, entranced by the opening – and by the fact that Faramir was playing for her. Not practising. Playing. The beautifully poised, poignant, perfect opening, each note of the tune singing, each part of the harmony perfectly drawing her through the phrases, building tension, holding her suspended, releasing her, then building again. Her own private recital. She let the sheer beauty of Bach flow over her, notes falling like drops of gold and silver, catching the light in a gentle, beautifully placed cascade of sound.

Faramir’s dark hair hung round his face as he bent forward over the keyboard, concentration etched on his face. Watching him totally absorbed in the music, making the keyboard sing to her, was a wonder all of its own.

At the end of the opening Aria, he paused.

“How much of this do you want to listen to?”

Éowyn smiled. “As much as you want to play – it’s beautiful.”

“There’s over an hour of it.” He gave one of those smiles, the one that said he was, in a quiet, understated way, pleased with himself.

“An hour of Bach being played that beautifully. Yes please…” Then, with a wicked twinkle… “That is, if you’ve got the stamina.”

“You know I have.”

“Are we still talking about Bach?”

“Bach, and the rest of the evening – it’s only 7.30.”

So Éowyn lay on the sofa. He launched into the second variation, a marcato variation of mathematical precision and intricacy, the tune dancing out and soaring over glittering arpeggios. Then on to the next – a work of intricate polyphony, the theme shifting from one voice to another, overlapping, breaking free to sing for a moment, then burrowing back into the surrounding texture. One after another, the magical inventiveness never letting up, Éowyn let the variations flow over her, the music shifting from sublime beauty to geometry frozen in sound, through spectacular polyphony, then finally back to sublime beauty, all suffused with emotions from joy to triumph to a transcendental calm. Through it all she watched his face, intent concentration and utter absorption in the music. And every emotion in the music was mirrored there in his expression. It struck her as if for the first time how incredibly beautiful he was. And his hands – so perfectly in control, those long, elegant fingers alternating between sensitivity and power.

She could see his lips moving slightly in the slower movements, and knew he was unable to resist the temptation to sing along, even if silently. His expression changed in the more rhythmic ones; the tension in his body suggested that somehow these ought to be danced to. She was as fascinated by his hands as by his profile – the way in some of the movements his left hand crossed over his right, or even seemed to play on top of it, as if both hands were competing for the same set of keys, yet somehow not – competition was the wrong word. His hands were sharing the same keys in places.

About an hour in, after an almost dance like variation which seemed to skip across the keyboard, like a joyous celebration of the first green shoots of spring, with a playfulness that brought a smile to her face, Faramir paused just for a moment before starting on the next movement, giving her a look of intense longing, before starting on a slow, drawn-out voicing of the theme. Each phrase was filled with octave leaps and the most agonising suspensions in the harmony, teetering on the brink of discord but somehow never quite toppling, conjuring a feeling of yearning almost beyond bearing. Éowyn felt as if something inside her was swelling to match the music, filling her with a desire for… She wasn’t quite sure what. A need to be with him, to be close to him, to sooth the anguished tension the music was creating. The need was almost, but not quite, about desire – yes, she desired him but somehow this went beyond that.

She lay in silence, listening to the yearning in the music, feeling the answering yearning within herself, until the final chord resolved the tension. For a long moment, Faramir let that final note hang in the air, before launching into a joyful cascade of notes in a compound time that asked to be danced to, and Éowyn felt the tension drain from her. But somehow it left traces etched into her – a longing, a need, which hadn’t been there before, a desire to somehow get inside the music, to capture that feeling within her, and within him, and sooth away the need, and replace it with joy, and then with calm.

The final variations seemed written to lighten the spirit, to release the tension, to rediscover the joyful playfulness of some of the opening. But their release merely paved the way for the transcendental calm of the ending. When Faramir finally reached the reprise of the opening Aria, Éowyn sat in stunned amazement at the control with which he drew out the notes into one long line, a seamless whole stretching out as if encompassing the whole world in one melodic line. As the final notes died away, Faramir leaned back slightly on the piano stool, shoulders relaxing, letting out a long, slow breath.

Then, finally, he got to his feet, came over and sat on the sofa by her feet. She laughed, partly a relief from tension, partly out of a curious bubbling feeling of joy, which seemed to teeter on the edge of her consciousness, asking for her to give it a name which she wasn’t quite brave enough to embrace. Instead, she reached out her hand, grabbing his and pulling him down on top of her. For a long time they simply lay and kissed, before he whispered in her ear.

“Bed?”

“Mmm hmm.”

The mood the whole evening had established somehow took them into new territory. Faramir took Éowyn to bed and made love to her with a slow, gentle deliberation that left her feeling as though she had been completely undone and remade. Afterwards, she lay on her side, tracing patterns on his chest with her fingers, looking across at him to find him looking back at her.

Eventually he spoke. “I’m sorry about the circumstances that drove you here. But I am glad to have you here. I’ve missed you so much. I… You’ve become very special to me.”

At the edges of Éowyn's consciousness, she sensed something left unsaid – unsaid by him, unanswered by her. And got the very strong sense that his playing had been about saying what was unsaid, and helping her to realise what it was she was leaving unsaid. But even now, she couldn’t put it into words – though in this moment, she didn’t think she needed to. Simply being with him was enough.

Éowyn snuggled up to him and buried her face against the warm skin of his chest, breathing in the smell of him. “I’ve missed you. You make me feel comfortable, and looked after, and safe, and…” She paused. “Happy. You make me feel happy. You make me realise how very long it is since I felt properly happy.”

Faramir’s arms tightened round her, and he kissed her gently on the forehead. “Good. I want to make you happy. You deserve to be happy. I…” Again his voice tailed off. “And it makes me happy being with you.”

Suddenly Éowyn lifted her head. “I almost forgot…” She jumped out of bed and went over to where her rucksack sat, leaning against the chest of drawers. It struck her as she crossed the room that she felt completely comfortable being naked with him. It was as natural, and as easy, as anything else in this – whatever it was – with him.

She dug in the front pocket and pulled out a small parcel.

“Your Christmas present.”

Faramir smiled, then frowned. “I haven’t got you anything yet – I wasn’t expecting to see you till the New Year.”

“Don’t worry.”

“No, I do worry. We’ll find something nice together – tomorrow.” He looked at the parcel. “And – thank you…”

“Well, open it.”

He carefully undid the wrapping paper – of course he would be careful, thought Éowyn. No ripping the paper to shreds and tossing it to one side. Everything he did – well, almost everything – was carefully and thoughtfully considered. Except for… She blushed. He seemed to lose control completely when it came to sex with her. Lost control in a good way.

Meanwhile, Faramir had finally undone the paper to his satisfaction. From the package he withdrew a book.

“Shostakovich… Testimony.” He reached out and drew Éowyn into his arms and kissed her. “Thank you.”

“I saw it in the second hand bookshop in Galashiels and thought you would like it.”

“I love it.” He kissed her again.

Somewhere deep inside her, she felt another of those bubbles of joy welling up, threatening to burst and fill her with happiness.

Bach Goldberg Variations, Lang Lang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXSahbTyvB8
I can’t get over how outrageously slowly Lang Lang takes the opening aria – and gets away with it! (Compare with the András Schiff recording below. There’s such a variation in timings – Lang Lang clocks in at over an hour and a half, the legendary Glenn Gould rockets through it in under an hour.)

And a documentary with Lang Lang talking about how he approaches learning Bach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FpGubUutQI
If you only watch one thing, watch this – it’s joyous. I love the fact that he always goes back to see his first teacher Prof Zhu whenever he tackles a new bit of Bach – and I love her explaining less is more. And the bit where he’s studying with a harpsichord player is fascinating – what you can do easily on a piano, what becomes hard, what works, what doesn’t, in translating Bach from the instrument it was written for to a modern piano. And the technical challenge of moving a piece written for a dual-manual harpsichord onto a piano with its single keyboard. Then he gets to try it out on the organ in the church where Bach got the job as organist as a very young man. But the best moment is when he’s rehearsing in the church in Leipzig where Bach is buried, and says, of being alone in the church playing Bach, “It’s like the whole universe is hugging you.”

The “anguished” variation is variation 25 – here’s András Schiff, at about 54 minutes in – this recording conveniently comes with timing (and tells you whether the movements are for 1 or 2 manuals – hence the hands on top of each other technique pianists have to resort to because pianos only come with one keyboard).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHFuaaGpGKQ
In the documentary with Lang Lang, he reckons it’s the musical and emotional centre of the whole piece.

The Samuel Palmer is based on a real experience; a friend recruited me to make up numbers for an evening of madrigal singing, hosted by an elderly couple in the choir she sang in. Yes, they had an original Samuel Palmer on the wall. It was gorgeous.

Fun fact – the Tyne Bridge was designed by the same firm of engineers as designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, so there’s a reason the first looks like a mini-me for the second.

Chapter Text

Faramir stretched out and put his empty cup back on the bedside table. Beside him, Éowyn snuggled under the duvet like a contented cat. Sex, breakfast in bed (including pain au chocolat), really nice coffee. And a night in a double bed. The perfect start to a *day.

“What do you want to do today?” Faramir asked, sinking back onto the pillow next to her and putting his arm round her.

“I suppose we both ought to do some practice,” Éowyn said. Some of the holiday mood evaporated.

“How about a morning of work, then go out and find a lunchtime concert, and do some touristy things in the afternoon. I never do touristy things.”

“What did you have in mind for a concert?”

“How about something we’d never play…” He reached for his phone, and started to scroll. “St. Martin in the Fields. Brahms String Sextet, Mendelssohn Octet. Then lunch, then whatever takes our fancy.”

Éowyn wrapped her arms round his waist and kissed him on the cheek.

Later, at lunchtime, they sat next to one another in a pew in St Martin in the Fields. Éowyn gazed around her at the building. She had never been in a church like this one. She was tempted to go with her “wedding cake” metaphor, only this would be like sitting inside a wedding cake turned inside out. But that didn’t do justice to it. Magnificentlyly over the top in all its moulded plaster details, the overall feel was surprisingly bright and airy, the huge, perfectly proportioned windows flooding the space with light, the cream and gold somehow surprisingly understated. It was glorious.

The final notes of the Brahms had just died away, and they sat expectantly while the chairs were rearranged to accommodate another two players. Furniture adjusted, the audience broke into applause as the string ensemble – now numbering eight – took to the front of the church once more.

Éowyn watched the players quickly glance round the semi-circle; a quick check that was all too familiar to her – that instinctive glance to make sure everyone was ready. Then the first violin moved, with the quick gesture with the scroll of her instrument that stood in place of a conductor’s upbeat, and suddenly the church was filled with a music to rival the light from the windows. Over a driving rhythm from the two violas and shimmering ripples from the other violins, the first violin soared upwards with a series of arpeggios, only to cascade back down in a flurry of notes. Each phrase built on the previous one, then the rising figure was handed to the first cello, the violins supplying a snapped-out dotted rhythm to act as counterbalance to the flowing arpeggios.

It was sheer unalloyed joy and exuberance, encapsulated in music. Without even thinking, Éowyn reached for Faramir’s hand. He squeezed hers, and she glanced up at him, to see him grinning from ear to ear. The music seemed to dance off every surface around them, glittering and sparkling.

Then the mood quieted, and the octet almost seemed to whisper through a more contemplative middle section, before a shift back into the major with sparkling runs up and down the instruments, passing the movement back and forth between them built back to the original, joyous arpeggios.

Éowyn was transported as if to a sunlit meadow amid mountains, not a care in the world. And somehow it was even more special because she could see from his face that Faramir felt exactly the same.

The mood shifted with the andante, to a darker, more complex space, but underlying it all, flashes of resolution into the major giving the promise of a return to happiness. But first, an aching beauty which strayed into a yearning minor key, again with the instruments passing the tune from one to another, and taking to runs to supply the harmony.

The scherzo started with scampering exchanges before the intricate, rapid melodic line formed out of the snatched phrases and broke through to soar up towards the high ceiling of the church, almost crying out to be danced to, before breaking apart into tiny glittering fragments of rhythm and counterpoint. The final presto was an outrageous fugue which in the hands of anyone other than Mendelssohn would have degenerated into a textbook exercise, but instead maintained the life and drive and joy of the preceding movements. Éowyn found herself not so much lost in the music as carried along with it, enveloped in it, consumed by it, unable to think of anything beyond the joie de vivre of the intertwining lines weaving together to make one glorious, incredible whole.

As the final chords rang out, Éowyn gave Faramir’s hand a squeeze before freeing her own to join in the applause which swelled to fill the space. Again, she looked over at him, and he smiled at her, a look of uncomplicated happiness that made her want to fling her arms round him and kiss him.

When the applause had died away, and the octet had taken several curtain-calls, the pair of them joined the throng filtering back out of the doors at the west end and out beneath the portico and down the steps to Trafalgar Square. Now Faramir took the opportunity to put his arm round Éowyn and snatch a longed-for kiss.

“That was incredible,” Éowyn said, still unable to stop smiling.

“Bloody string players,” said Faramir with a laugh. “They really do have all the best chamber music. There’s stuff for other instruments that gets pretty good on a good day, but things like that? No, they’ve got the market cornered.”

After lunch – a leisurely pizza – they wandered round the National Gallery for an hour or so. Éowyn hadn’t really known what to expect – she’d gone on school trips to the National Gallery of Scotland (the only thing she remembered was an incongruously skating clergyman). In contrast, this gallery was… huge. Faramir seemed to know it inside out though, and had taken her into the modern extension. He’d shrugged apologetically and said “Niche tastes. I like Medieval painting.”

To start with Éowyn had dutifully walked round each room in the intended direction, reading each card next to each painting, making agonisingly slow progress, until Faramir had caught her hand.

“There are no rules. No one’s forcing you to look at every painting, or memorise the details of every artist. Next room, stand in the centre, look around – then go to whichever painting grabs you most, and just look at it.”

Éowyn shook her head ruefully. “Too many school trips as a kid.”

But he was right – it was a much more entertaining way of approaching the place. In the course of the next hour, she looked at maybe a dozen paintings and ignored scores more. But the paintings she looked at, she looked at properly.

By this time they’d progressed a couple of centuries forward, and made their way into the main bit of the gallery. Éowyn stopped in front of the goddess Venus, cutting a rather dashing figure in an elegant broad-brimmed hat trimmed with fur… and nothing else. She gazed straight at the viewer, casually reaching up to a branch of the tree above her which held golden apples, while at her feet, a toddler sized cupid complained about having been stung by bees.

Éowyn broke with Faramir’s suggestion and looked at the card to work out when it was painted.

“Skinny and no tits to speak of – Christ, I was born 500 years too late. The dude that painted this would have thought I was a complete babe.”

Faramir bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “You are a complete babe.” He glanced round rapidly to make sure no-one was within earshot. “And sexy as fuck.”

She looked up at him, searching his face. It was obvious he meant it. She blushed.

“Maybe I should see if they have a print in the gallery shop.” He was still whispering. “I could put it up on the wall in my room in college, and everyone would just think I was into highbrow art. They wouldn’t realise it was there to remind me of you.”

He took her hand and led her through the rest of the gallery and down the huge, imposing staircase to the portico. Éowyn found herself looking down on Trafalgar square, its lions and fountains spread out before her. Only Nelson still gazed down from on high.

“Let’s walk back through St. James Park before it gets dark.” Faramir took Éowyn's hand again, and they walked between the lions on their plinths. Her shoulder brushed his arm as they walked, and she felt that feeling of sparks again. She took a quick glance up at him, to find him looking back at her. He paused, mid stride, and snatched a kiss.

The setting sun was red in the west, casting pink and purple glints of light across the water, as they made their way through the park. The water birds were beginning to retreat to their roosts for the night; only a few still glided across the surface, creating v-shaped wakes which were picked out in the inky indigos of the evening light. The air was cold and their breath hung in feathery plumes. Faramir led her to the narrow bridge which cut between the two ends of the lake. Éowyn paused to look down the water towards the palace, floodlit as the sun set.

“Well, I did promise you the tourist experience.” Faramir grinned at her. He stood behind her and slipped his arms round her waist, resting his chin against her head. She laid her arms on top of his and leant back against the warmth of his body.

“How come you know so much about art?”

“My mum was a painter. Her art books are still in the flat. I used to look at the pictures in them when I was little. Almost like my last connection with her. Then as I grew older, I started to read the text too. Boromir remembered more, of course, being older. And one of the things he kept saying was ‘Mum would have said the point of art is to enjoy it and find it beautiful – if you’re doing it to show off or make yourself look clever or cultured, you’re doing it wrong.’ And that’s sort of stuck with me.”

“So that’s why you said just pick out the painting in each room that grabs you.”

“Exactly.”

“And Cupid and Venus grabs you…”

He laughed. “Not particularly. Well, not before today at any rate. But now. Every time I see that painting, it’ll remind me of you, naked. Only you’re better looking.” Then he took her in his arms and kissed her. Not a chaste kiss, but a kiss that set every part of her on fire.

When he finally let go of her, she looked up at him. “I want to go back to your flat and take you to bed…”

Though as things turned out, they didn’t make it as far as the bed.

After almost running through the rest of the park and the streets beyond, they made it back to the flat in record time. Faramir fumbled with the key in the front door, seemingly distracted by her arms wrapped round his waist and her lips brushing against his ear. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach, but it was too tempting.

The door swung open and he grabbed her hand and pulled her through the entrance, kicking the door shut behind them. She started to shrug her coat off – he put his hands on her shoulders and helped her push it to the floor, before dropping his own on top of it. Then – wonderfully, hilariously – he just picked her up. She had thought she was already as turned on as she could be, but the effortless way he did this was like throwing petrol onto a fire. Almost desperately, she reached out for the nearest door handle.

“The kitchen? Really?” His lips next to her ear ruffled her hair.

A thought – a deliciously wicked thought – flitted through her mind. “Every room in the flat?”

“Now, there’s a challenge…”

He carried her into the kitchen and sat her on the counter. “Hold that thought…”

He reached out and pulled the blind cord, obscuring the window. “Now, where were we?”

It turned into a bit of a repeat of their first night together. He pulled her jumper over her head and lobbed it over his shoulder it towards the table behind him. She tugged his shirt clear of his trousers and unfastened the buttons as fast as she could, pulling it from his shoulders and tossing it to one side. Their jeans followed more or less simultaneously – after she’d undone them and dragged them down over his hips, he kicked them free, then took a step back so he could drag hers down her legs. She obediently held her legs out straight while he did this, then he stepped back between them, hard on pressing against her. Oh god! The feel of him, hard, against her, even through the fabric.

“This counter’s actually not a bad height,” he said, reaching behind her back to unclasp her bra. He stooped and fastened his mouth on one nipple, palming the other with his hand. The bra followed her sweater in an arc over his shoulder. She reached down and shoved his boxers over his hips, pausing briefly to reach round the front and free his cock. She felt a stab of desire that was almost visceral at the way he was so obviously ready for her. But he paused.

“Bugger, condoms again…”

“I need to go on the pill or something.”

He crouched down on the floor for a moment and grabbed one from the back pocket of his discarded jeans. Then kissed his way back up the inside of her leg, before pulling her pants down and dropping them to the floor beside his own. His mouth closed over her, licking along her, lapping at her, while his hands tore the packet open and rolled the condom into place.

Voice slightly muffled, words breathed against the most sensitive part of her, he murmured “Do you want me to bring you off like this first?”

“I want you to fuck me.”

“Anything my lady desires…” He kissed his way up her belly, over her breast, up her neck and then brought his lips down on hers. She pulled him close, digging her fingers into the muscles of his back. With one hand he guided his cock against her.

“Oh god, please. Now. I need you now…” Her hands slid down and grabbed his arse. With a strong thrust, he buried himself so deep it took her breath away. She wrapped her legs round his hips and dug her heels into his arse.

As she shifted, her own arse brushed something. Something cold and hard. There was a wooden clattering noise, then a pepper grinder rolled across the counter and bounced to the floor.

“Oops.”

He gave a snort of laugher.

“This always looks easy in films,” he muttered into her ear, and she started to laugh too.

It was indeed awkward. Contrary to his initial assessment, the counter was not quite the right height, not to mention being extremely cold under her arse, and slippy enough that she felt she wasn’t getting quite the right purchase on it. The sheer awkwardness meant that part of her felt almost like an external observer, watching their shenanigans with Olympian detachment. The whole thing was simultaneously incredibly funny and incredibly hot. The position might have been – how best would you describe it, she wondered? Not the most comfortable, that was for sure, but the almost adolescent feeling of sheer naughtiness at the thought of shagging on the kitchen counter made up for it. Whatever discomfort she felt was overwhelmed with a feeling of pure lust.

Faramir slowed for a moment, trying to find the right stance and angle, and kissed his way down her neck. Éowyn gave a huff of impatience into his dark hair.

“Keep going – fuck me. Now.”

She tightened her grip with her ankles to hold herself in place, and he got the hang of putting one hand on the counter to steady himself while the other held her tight. The timing of the first few thrusts was a bit off – the thought that this was disgraceful for a pair of musicians flitted across Éowyn's mind, just for an instant, before getting washed away by the rising tides of desire. Then Faramir seemed to get into his stride, and everything started to work.

And she was right – what the situation lacked in finesse, it more than made up for by a sense of doing something they really, really shouldn’t have been. She clung to his shoulders, then had the happy thought of slipping one hand between them.

“God… Are you wanking while I fuck you?” His voice sounded breathless in her ear.

She felt her cheeks flame. What if he thought it was some sort of judgement on his performance. She started to apologise. “Sorry… I…”

“No, don’t stop. Fuck, that has to be one of the hottest things ever. You bringing yourself off while I’m inside you. Don’t stop whatever you do.”

So she didn’t. And dammit, he was right, it was one of the hottest things ever. She could feel herself building, knew that she was going to lose it very soon, in fact…

Then they both froze, Faramir mid thrust.

The front door had slammed.

“Faramir?” It was a man’s voice, deep, commanding, the sort of voice that was used to being in control of situations.

Faramir, in contrast, sounded utterly panicked as he yelled “Stay in the hall for a moment…”

He stepped back, pulled off the condom and dropped it in the bin, then hopped frantically round the kitchen, pulling on underpants, jeans and sweater. It would have been comic to watch if Éowyn hadn’t been engaged in just as ridiculous a performance herself. And if she hadn’t been about to spontaneously combust with embarrassment.

She ran around like a headless chicken – knickers, jeans, bra… where the fuck was her bra? Bugger it, sweater on and worry about that later. Faramir, still barefoot, opened the door a crack and slipped into the hall. Éowyn looked round the room – damn, socks everywhere, and Faramir’s shirt, this time dangling from the tap. She gathered the socks, wrapped them in the shirt and shoved the bundle into the cupboard under the sink, quickly poured a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table, trying to compose herself into a look of nonchalance.

All for nothing. She heard a deep voice from beyond the door.

“Two coats in a heap just inside the front door… ‘Wait in the hall’? Really, little brother? The kitchen?”

Never had Éowyn heard the words “the kitchen” uttered with such extraordinary disdain. Disdain with an undercurrent of humour.

Faramir murmured something she couldn’t make out.

“I take it this is the beautiful French horn player you’re crazy about…”

“Embarrass me even more why don’t you?”

“I rather think you’re doing a good job of embarrassing yourself.”

“Well, it’s not like I was expecting you to show up…”

“Clearly… Either that, or you have a hitherto unsuspected penchant for exhibitionism…”

Articulate under pressure – clearly a family trait. Despite the overwhelming sensation of wanting to crawl into the cupboard under the sink and hide alongside the socks, Éowyn found herself smiling.

“So, are you going to introduce me?”

The kitchen door swung open.

“Éowyn, this is my brother, Boromir.” Faramir held the door open for him.

“Hello.” This, it turned out, was the limit of Éowyn's verbal ability. It felt as though the furious blush had extended to her vocal cords.

“Nice to meet you, finally.”

The programme for the lunchtime concert was inspired by two separate concerts from the Utrecht Chamber Music festival in 2019 which I found on YouTube (AVROTROS Klassiek – one of the Netherlands public broadcast channels, so blissfully without adverts).

Brahms Sextet no. 1. Janine Jansen, Boris Brovtsyn [violin] Amihai Grosz, Gareth Lubbe [viola] Jens Peter Maintz, Torleif Thedéen [cello]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5D9FbG71eE

Mendelssohn Octet, Janine Jansen, Ludvig Gudim, Johan Dalene, Sonoko Miriam Welde [violin] Amihai Grosz, Eivind Holtsmark Ringstad [viola] Jens Peter Maintz, Alexander Warenberg [cello]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw1kcQ-QbZw

The Mendelssohn Octet is one of the most fabulous pieces of chamber music ever written (definitely going to my desert island with me) – and written when he was only 16 years old.

Chapter Text

Boromir extended a hand in a curiously formal gesture; goodness, were all of this family as uptight and old-fashioned as Faramir? She shook it – his hand warm, his grip firm but not oppressive.

She managed to look at him. The resemblance to Faramir was arresting, but she was struck more by the differences: older, more serious, bulkier. (Where had that thought come from? He wasn’t overweight by any stretch of the imagination, but there was a solidity to him, in contrast to Faramir’s wiry strength.)

Something was niggling at the back of her mind about the way Boromir had greeted her. Then it dropped into place: the word “finally.”

“Finally meet me?” she said, not really directing the comment at either of them in particular. Then she glanced across at Faramir, who shrugged. Boromir caught the glance, and gave a knowing grin.

“Yes, when we met up a few weeks back, you were all he could talk about.”

Now it was Faramir’s turn to turn pink. Boromir must have noticed, but he kept an admirably straight face. He gave Faramir a friendly tap on the shoulders.

“I am jet-lagged to fuck, little brother. How about a mug of tea?”

He settled himself down on the bench behind the table, at right angles to Éowyn. It struck her that this arrangement took a bit of the pressure off the situation, made it seem less like a job interview, made her feel more comfortable. Then she recalled Faramir mentioning that his brother was involved in military intelligence in some unknown, unspoken capacity, and she wondered whether his choice of seat was an accident. There was, after all, more than one way to carry out an interrogation. Nice cop as well as nasty cop.

Faramir busied himself with the kettle and mugs.

“Do you want one as well, Éowyn?”

“Yes please.”

Boromir glanced at her. “Are you visiting for long?”

She swallowed. Here it came. The interrogation.

“I… We hadn’t actually talked about it. I just arrived yesterday.”

Faramir interrupted. “I’m hoping you’ll stay till we both go back to Manchester.” He smiled at her.

Boromir caught the smile, and raised his eyebrows slightly.

“Spur of the moment trip, then?”

“Sort of,” said Éowyn, cagily. “Home’s a bit… quiet. And boring.”

“Faramir tells me you’re from the Scottish borders.”

Éowyn realised she was being thrown a conversational lifeline, and did her best to grab onto it. “Yes, near Galashiels. My cousin has a sheep farm – we were brought up by my uncle.”

“I have to confess I don’t know the borders. I’ve visited the Highlands on holiday, and Edinburgh, but never the borders.”

“Bits of it are quite pretty,” said Éowyn, “But to be honest, if I didn’t have family there, I’d stick to Edinburgh and Glasgow and the Highlands.”

“Thinking of Scotland, the part where the lowlands become the highlands, Dad was posted in Stirling for a while in the 1950s, wasn’t he?” said Faramir.

“Yes. Back in the days when they had the Great Hall of the castle kitted out with mezzanine floors and used as barracks – weird to think of anyone doing that to a historic building these days.”

“What did your dad do?” asked Eowyn.

“Well, back then he was in the RAF. But gradually he moved into other things.” Faramir paused. “He was always a bit cagey about it. But he was very high up and worked over the river in Vauxhall…”

“I feel like I’ve come in on a conversation full of references I don’t get,” said Éowyn.

Boromir smiled. “You know that scene in the Bond film where Judi Dench’s office gets blown up?”

Éowyn nodded. “In the modern building with the green windows…”

“We suspect that might actually have been Dad’s office. And Dad’s job. Though we never knew for sure.”

“Pravdopodobnoye otritsaniye.” Faramir gave a chuckle.

“That’s not Italian,” Éowyn said, thinking of Faramir’s year in Rome, then immediately felt stupid for even saying it.

“No,” said Boromir. “It’s Russian for ‘plausible deniability.’ The old man made sure we both studied Russian. And Mandarin. Though so far, I’m the only one of the two of us to go into the family business. Well, a related branch of it anyway.”

“Wait a minute… You speak Russian? And Mandarin? As well as Italian?”

Faramir shrugged. “Among others. I’ve got a knack for languages.”

Boromir looked at her, apparently aware of her feelings of incredulity. “Yup. You’ve got us nailed. Dad wanted to produce a Mini-Me - in fact, two of them. It kind of worked with me, I guess. Didn’t take with Faramir. Underneath that surface affability and mild-mannered pianist act, he’s a bloody-minded bugger. Nods placatingly, then quietly does his own thing.”

“You’re not being fair to yourself,” Faramir said. “You’ve got far more of a conscience than Dad ever had.”

Éowyn noticed that he didn’t bother to deny being a bloody-minded bugger. Boromir just shrugged.

“Yes and no. I undoubtedly went into the ‘family business’…” Here, he sketched air-quotes. “Which of course can’t be mentioned. Except that it can, because I do desk analysis work, not cloak-and-dagger field work. Hello, I’m Boromir, I work in military intelligence and if I told you any more I’d have to take you outside and shoot you. With a water pistol of course. It’s not like it’s the Cold War any more you know.”

Éowyn laughed, as much to cover up a feeling of awkwardness and being out of her depth as anything else.

“Anyway, Faramir’s being too kind. I undoubtedly did the whole Sandhurst route because that’s what the old man expected. And he did push us into things – languages, cadet corps, martial arts – which he thought would be useful. In our future careers as Mini-mes.”

“Yeah,” said Faramir. “But later you continued with it for your own reasons. I remember you having some hammer and tongs arguments with the Old Man about what were the limits of the methods one could employ in intelligence gathering. He was very much ‘anything goes.’ You belong to the school of thought which says there’s only so far you can go before you become the very system you’re fighting against.”

“I think you may be projecting your idealistic streak onto me. I’m more of a pragmatist.”

Faramir turned to Éowyn and grinned. “Don’t listen to him. He’s a pragmatist with a conscience.”

“Whatever.” Boromir gave another shrug and a self-deprecating chuckle (they had that in common too, Éowyn noted). “Anyway. Dad. He was an odd bugger, that’s for sure. As you’ve no doubt gathered, we didn’t have exactly what you’d call a normal upbringing.”

Éowyn looked at Boromir. She suddenly had a wicked idea. “What else should I be asking you about him?” She jerked her thumb towards Faramir.

“That’s not fair,” Faramir said.

Boromir laughed. “And that’s such a little brother thing to say. In any case, all’s fair in love and war.”

Faramir flushed, to Éowyn's amusement.

“So,” said Boromir, turning back to Éowyn. “What did you want to know? I’m here to dish the dirt – as much dirt as you want. Did you know he’s a tricky bastard who’s really good at Krav Maga, for instance? He can take me down every time, despite my weight and height advantage.”

“No I did not know that.” She turned to Faramir and said, accusingly, “You said you couldn’t try out boxing because of the pins in your leg.”

“Partially true,” said Faramir. “My physio does get cross if I put myself in a situation where I might take a heavy fall, or twist my knee. But really, that was just a useful excuse. I didn’t want to join in because the point was to get Lothíriel to give it a go, not to hog your trainer’s attention myself.”

“You got Lothíriel boxing?” Boromir threw back his head and roared with laughter.

“It was method acting,” Éowyn explained.

Boromir raised his eyebrows again.

“She was singing the role of Julius Caesar, and being totally rubbish at it. Not so much ‘Veni, vidi, vici,’ more ‘handbags at dawn,’” Faramir explained.

“I wish I’d been there to see it.” Boromir shook his head in disbelief. Then added, “So, you box?”

“Yes, I got into it a few years back. Not seriously or anything. But I enjoy it.” Éowyn felt a slight pang at the thought that the conversation was straying into dangerous territory. She didn’t want him to start asking why. Then it occurred to her to wonder how much Faramir had told his brother; they were obviously very close.

Faramir set three mugs on the table. Boromir stretched to reach his, shifting on the bench. For a moment he froze, then frowned. He reached down to the cushions then, with an utterly deadpan expression, held something out to Éowyn.

“Yours, I presume.”

She froze, then felt herself turn scarlet. It was the missing bra. Not quite sure what to do, she took it out of his hand and placed it in her lap, trying to fold her hands over the top of it.

Boromir must have sensed that there was a point beyond which he shouldn’t go, for (quite casually and as if he hadn’t just found some of her underwear) he added, “So how did Lothíriel get on?”

Éowyn still felt as though she couldn’t breathe; to her relief, it seemed Faramir picked up on her rising panic because he answered for her. “Not too badly, surprisingly. She did at least come across as possibly a bit of a 90s ladette by the end of it – I don’t think she ever made it quite as far as tomboy, and certainly not as far as bloke.”

“So it’s not going to be her opera debut, then?”

“No, I don’t think so. Last I heard, she was working on Despina – saucy servant seems much more playing to her strengths.”

“She does have a lovely voice.” Finally Éowyn managed to say something. Anodyne and uninteresting, but something. She relaxed very slightly. Faramir moved behind her and put his hand on her shoulder – warm, solid, comforting.

“So, have you eaten?”

“Microscopic portion of rubber chicken on the plane.”

“I’ll nip down to the shop and buy something while you sort yourself out.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Boromir got to his feet. “I’ll grab a quick shower, if that’s okay.”

Éowyn nodded. Once the kitchen door had shut, Faramir bent over and whispered in her ear.

“So, we’ve found your missing bra… but where’s my shirt?”

“Under the sink… Along with the socks. Sorry, couldn’t think where else to put it.”

Faramir burst out laughing and went to retrieve it.

The next day, Éowyn hefted her horn over her shoulder, retracing her steps from the night she arrived, and headed to Victoria station. From there it was only a short journey to Peckham Rye. Disa was waiting for her, just outside the station, with a huge grin on her face.

“So?”

“Yes, I followed instructions. I’ve got my horn. I haven’t eaten breakfast. Ready for your promise of the best greasy spoon in South London.”

“Where’s Faramir?”

“Cooking breakfast for his brother – they’re heading out to watch rugby this afternoon – Sarries, I think. Never really followed English club rugby.”

Disa shrugged. “I don’t watch rugby of any sort, haven’t a clue. Anyway, more importantly… his brother. You’re getting to meet the family.” She gave Éowyn a friendly dig with her elbow.

“Well, not exactly a planned meeting. Boromir – that’s his brother – is just passing through on his way from one meeting to another. Travels a lot for work. I don’t think he expected to find us in the flat.”

As she said this, Éowyn couldn’t help herself. She could feel her cheeks warming. Predictably, Disa latched onto this immediately.

“So, what were you doing when he got home to an unexpectedly not-empty flat?”

Éowyn wanted the ground to swallow her up. Disa looked at her with amusement.

“Oh, this is gonna be good. Come on, girl, spill!”

Éowyn muttered something completely inaudible.

“Can’t hear you…” Disa’s voice was sing-song.

“We were… We were… He was… Shagging me while I sat on the kitchen counter.”

Disa doubled up laughing, and clutched onto a nearby lamppost for support.

“At least the main door makes a really loud noise when it slams shut. Faramir managed to get him to wait in the hall.”

Disa wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Really… The kitchen?”

“Funnily enough, that’s exactly what Boromir said.”

“Thank god for anti-bac spray.”

Éowyn's cheeks flamed even more.

“He found my bra down the side of the cushions on the bench seat.”

“Oh god, you must have been mortified.”

“Doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“What’s he like?”

“Nice… I think. Difficult to tell. Imagine an older, more serious, more guarded version of Faramir.”

“More serious? More guarded?”

Éowyn paused for a moment as it hit her just how close and easy her relationship was with Faramir.

“He’s not like that with me. Though I suppose he is a bit reserved with people he doesn’t know.”

Disa snorted. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s friendly, and can talk to you easily enough. I like the guy. He’s very good for you. But I always get the feeling there are whole areas of his life with ‘keep off’ signs round them.”

“I think he’s told me about most of them. But I guess, no, he doesn’t talk to everyone about them.”

Disa gave her another of her very sharp, assessing looks. “Hmm, like calls to like.”

Éowyn gave a start, looked back at her, tried to frame a response, and failed.

“Don’t worry. I’m not probing. I think I’ve got to know you well enough now to have realised that there’s some pretty deep shit back in the past somewhere and also that you’d sooner have your wisdom teeth pulled out than talk about it.”

Éowyn frowned. “Is it that obvious?”

“No, I don’t think it is. Remember I spend a lot of time with you, but people just meeting you – no. They get massive talent, a bit of reserve, a bit of prickliness if they push too hard.”

“Yeah, I get that. I come across as a miserable bitch. I know.”

“No, not a miserable bitch. Certainly not that. But your ‘keep off signs’ are even more obvious than Faramir’s. Possibly because he has that public school polish on him. So he does small talk better than you.”

By this time Disa had led Éowyn from the station and onto the high street. Sandwiched between a pub and a boarded-up bookies was the promised greasy spoon. Bright red letters in an arc on the window announced “Peckham Pete’s.” Disa shoved the door open. The smell of bacon hit Éowyn, and she realised how hungry she was. The tables were relics of the 60s, topped in pale blue Formica, with leatherette covered chairs bolted to them. Disa picked a table half way down the side wall.

“Orders at the counter, love,” called a woman from behind the counter. Like the tables, her hairstyle looked as though it was a relic from the 60s, half-way to a beehive, its chestnut colour now maintained with dye.

“What are you having?” asked Disa.

Éowyn glanced at the board above the counter – again, glossy white plastic and red lettering speaking of an earlier age.

“Bacon and egg roll and a coffee.”

Disa went and ordered, returning with a couple of mugs – big, white china ones that looked like they held the best part of a pint.

“Okay,” said Disa. “I’ve been dying to show you this.” She pulled her phone out. “Durin got me a CD for Christmas: Charlie Rouse and Julius Watkins’ Complete Jazz Sessions. It is bloody amazing. As in change your life amazing. Watch this.”

She pulled up a YouTube video. Éowyn bent over the screen, hair obscuring her face. She was aware of Disa, watching her watch the tiny picture. And also aware of the look of anticipation and humour dancing across Disa’s face.

The extract started off fairly low key – though the range of tones the guy conjured from the horn were astonishing – not just the characteristic sound of the horn, but moments where it was almost like a sax, or a trumpet, or a trombone. The fluidity, all within the rhythmic framework of the jazz, the lyricism. Then...

“What the fuck…”

Followed by, a moment or two later...

“Fuck me – I didn’t know you could get that high on a horn…”

And finally…

“Bloody hell, that’s amazing.”

Disa beamed. Her new passion had passed its test. “It is, isn’t it? He’s incredible.”

She munched happily on her full English for a moment, then said (voice slightly muffled), “That’s why I said bring your horn. I’ve downloaded a shit ton of jazz stuff – not playing it straight, but little riffs and progressions you have to get to grips with then play around with. Baby, we are going to spend this afternoon doing improv.”

Éowyn froze. “No! You can’t do that to me. I like my sheet music. Uptight classical musician through-and-through.”

“Last of the Christmas Ferrero Rocher to whoever hits the highest note?”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

It was dark and a fine rain had started by the time Éowyn got back to Victoria. The train journey had been spent staring into the streets, windows of houses filled with a warm glow, shops with white fluorescent glare over shelves of produce and neon signs, streetlights casting orange pools on ink black glistening pavements. And nagging away, as her eyes half focussed on the city blurring past, was the conversation with Disa and her mum when they stopped playing and had tea and cake – a fabulous Christmas fruit cake, full of rum and fruit and citrus.

“So, a girl like you, must be beating the boys off with a stick.” Disa’s mum, round and plump and twinkling, a hint of what Disa might look like in thirty years. With the same lack of filter on her conversation.

“Mum, she’s got a boyfriend…”

Éowyn had frozen. That was the word. The one she hadn’t been using. The one she had been trying very hard not to use. Out in the open. Disa had immediately clocked her reaction and had given her a side-long glance, the one that said ‘Oh God, not this again’.

“Oh, come on, girl. You know that’s what he is. He isn’t a fling, or a ‘situationship,’ or whatever weird phrase white girls who’ve read too many navel-gazing columns in glossy mags want to call it. He’s crazy about you, you spend all your time together, and even though you won’t admit it, you’re equally crazy about him.”

Was she? She didn’t know. She waved her card over the scanner and pushed through the barriers at Victoria. Bugger. There was, though, she knew, an easy out. Ignore everything. Live in the moment, enjoy the sex and the cuddles and having someone play Bach to her. (Did men in ‘situationships’ play Bach to you? She didn’t know. She supposed not. She had a feeling ‘playing Bach’ didn’t figure in the average Cosmo article anyway. Not that she knew. Beyond flicking through one in the dentist’s waiting room, she never read them. She wasn’t exactly their target audience. Anyway, situationships and Bach... Dammit, she wasn’t going to think about it.)

Whatever. The good news was with Faramir’s brother in the flat, there was no need for any deep heart-to-hearts. She could just muddle along. With that comforting thought, she made her way through the streets to the “wedding cake” row. Half way along the street she reached the right building, climbed the steps between the fluted columns and rang the doorbell.

“Hi.” It was Faramir’s voice on the intercom. He buzzed her into the building.

When she got to the door of the flat, it was already open, Faramir standing waiting for her. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She felt the tension drain out of her. Living in the moment would do just fine, when the moment felt this nice.

“How was the rugby?”

He frowned. “Disappointing. Gloucester won. How was Disa?”

“Crazy as ever, in a good way. You’re not going to believe this – we’ve spent the afternoon trying to play jazz on French horns. It’s her new passion. We ended up trying to play twelve bar blues on baroque horns just for a laugh. It all goes a bit pear-shaped ‘cos the bass lines have so many diminished sevenths in them.”

“I’d love to have seen that.” He gave her another hug. “We’re in the kitchen. I got your text saying you were on the train, so we’ve ordered a takeaway curry.”

He led her through. Boromir was already sitting at the table, a bottle of beer open on the table in front of him.

“We lost,” he said, morosely. Another uncanny similarity. Exactly the Eeyore expression Faramir could conjure at will. Then his expression shifted to a friendly smile. “There’s more beer in the fridge. Help yourself and help us drown our sorrows.”

The evening passed in a warm, familial glow. Boromir took the piss out of Faramir mercilessly. Faramir responded with a kind of verbal guerilla warfare, forcing jabs of wit in under Boromir’s guard. Both of them teased Éowyn too, though she noticed they were gentler with her – Faramir because he couldn’t be anything else, Boromir (she suspected) because he’d correctly read the underlying fragile brittleness. Dammit, Disa was right, as usual. People – at least some people – were not fooled by her attempts to project a certain tough, self-sufficiency.

When she and Faramir finally made it into the privacy of their bedroom, he gave her a long, lingering kiss.

“Now, I know you can make enough noise to get through a violinist’s noise-cancelling headphones at two rooms removed in the hall of residence. The question is…” And here, his hand slid up under her jumper to shove the fabric of her bra out the way and cup her breast, thumb stroking her nipple. “Can you also come quietly?”

She felt a rush of heat to her groin, almost painful in its intensity. “I’ll bite the pillow if I have to.”

“That…” he said, kissing her again, “Is very much the answer I was hoping for.”

The Julius Watkins Sextet and Phantom’s Blues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKhvMZjVFNo
My fellow horn players (I know there’s at least a couple) – listen and weep. I didn’t know some of those notes were even possible on a horn. That’s a Queen of the Night top F concert pitch – played on a French horn. And musically it’s brilliant too; it’s not just showmanship for the sake of it. Glorious, glorious playing. (If you’re not a horn player, note the music in the YouTube clip is written for horn in F, so the notes sound a fifth lower than is written.)

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed I’ve just edited the previous version of this chapter, the one where I said things would go on hiatus for a bit. I’m glad to say relative’s op went well, speedy recovery (remarkable for mid 80s) is in progress and all is a lot better.

Thank you very much for the kind messages – I didn’t really have a chance to respond to all of them individually, but they were very, very much appreciated and cheered me up greatly. Hopefully normal service will be nearly resumed (we have the small matter of panic stations over school exams for the teen coming up but apart from that...)

Here's the music I left to fill the gap while I was away (for personal reasons it was an apprpriate choice and a great favourite of mine).
Jean Sibelius - Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 (Orchestre de Paris, Paavo Järvi)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lHncn68uyQ

Chapter Text

The rest of the Christmas holidays had passed peacefully. Boromir had stayed for a couple of days. She liked him. Strangely, by the end of it she had the impression that, though he was like Faramir in some ways, in others he was… Perhaps a bit like her? He had a readiness to act, a bluntness, a willingness to move on things before he’d thought them through, unlike Faramir who would walk himself through all the consequences in all the myriad possibilities the future offered. She had floated this theory past Faramir.

“Maybe a bit. I like the way you leap before you look sometimes. It’s a good corrective to my caution.”

It had been a nice interlude. They’d gone down to the Thames for New Year’s Eve to watch the fireworks. She’d met up with Disa again. When Boromir left, they’d walked him to Victoria to catch the underground. Faramir had been very subdued afterwards.

“I don’t know, I just have a bad feeling about this,” he had said.

“He said himself: he’s a desk-bound analyst.”

“Well, that’s what he tells people. I think he sometimes gets a bit more hands on than that. I know he’s headed to Brize Norton, which means he’s flying out somewhere that can’t be reached on a scheduled civilian flight, and that always worries me.”

Éowyn hadn’t known how to answer that, so she’d settled for taking his hand. They’d walked for a long time in silence – through the streets to the Palace, through St. James’ Park, along the Mall, through Trafalgar Square, along the riverbank – though at some stage they’d started to talk again, and Éowyn had threaded her arm round his waist, just to let him know she was there.

Now she was back in Manchester. First lesson of term.

Erkenbrand watched Éowyn as the final notes died away.

“Good. Good progress over the holiday. But I think you can open up a bit more. It sounds… how shall I say? Stuffy? Yes, stuffy I think. I need a more open sound for that opening.”

Éowyn nodded.

“What would you do if you were on your own practising at this point, and you realised your sound was not what you wanted?”

“This is going to sound a bit mad…”

“Go on.”

“Probably put the horn down, do some stretches, maybe even do a bit of shadow boxing.”

Erkenbrand nodded in his slow, thoughtful way. “So. This is what you must do.”

“But I’ll feel silly doing it in front of you.”

Erkenbrand just watched her, raised eyebrows. Éowyn shook her head, reluctantly put her horn on the desk, then did just as she had described.

“So. Now I see why the boxing. You use the luft, the air to engage your diaphragm. This is what you must do with the horn too. Now play again.”

Eowyn picked up her horn and ran the passage again. It did indeed work much better.

“Is always about the air. Enough air. That is the key.” Erkenbrand looked at his watch. “And now our hour is almost up – but we will meet at lunch, with Elfhelm, to talk about auditions. We have heard some interesting things may be coming up.”

Sure enough, when Éowyn got out of her theory class and made her way down stairs, she found both her horn tutors waiting for her.

“Coffee shop on the university campus?” asked Elfhelm.

“It is close. Not good, but close,” conceded Erkenbrand. They led Éowyn across the road and into the maze of buildings that made up that part of the university.

“Okay,” said Elfhelm, as they settled with coffee and food – a sandwich for Éowyn, a toastie for Elfhelm and some sort of elaborate almond pastry for Erkenbrand. “To business. The trick is not waiting to hear about the job, it’s putting out feelers to find out which jobs are likely to be coming up.”

“So here is what we have come up with. There may be an opening for fourth horn with the Bournemouth Symphony,” Elfhelm continued. “But I don’t think low horn is where you should be aiming. Not with your tone quality at the top of the register.”

“There’s a part-time job that may be opening up in Frankfurt, but they’d only want you for a third, maybe half the concerts,” Erkenbrand said. “The big stuff – Mahler, Bruckner, Shostakovich, the stuff you need eight horns. And again, we think you can do better than this – spending half your time playing eighth horn and the other half trying to make ends meet teaching.”

“Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t try out for both jobs – the more experience of auditions you can get the better.”

“But the thing we’re excited about is that we – well, I – have heard that the deputy principal of Opera North may be moving on to a job with the LSO, which will leave his post open.”

“Deputy principal – isn’t it early in my career to go after that?”

“Again, no harm in trying,” said Elfhelm. “But given your talent, I’d say it was probably the ideal opening job, specially in an opera company. Your principal won’t just have you chugging along doing the boring bits – he’ll want real support if you’re doing, say, 4 hours of Wagner.”

“And their first horn is a good player and easy to get along with. I have played with him on several occasions,” said Erkenbrand.

“More to the point, how do you feel about opera work? They also double up as the regional symphony orchestra for Yorkshire and the north east, so you’d still get plenty of symphonic work, but the real bread-and-butter of the job is accompanying the opera.”

Éowyn paused for a moment. “I’ve been doing a lot of opera work – both on my Alex and period work. I actually really enjoy it. And… Opera North. I’d be chuffed. Did you hear their semi-staged Ring Cycle? I’ve been watching it on YouTube. It’s fantastic.”

“Good,” was Erkenbrand’s only observation.

Éowyn frowned slightly. “Do you really think I can go for it?”

“I don’t see why not. What’s the worst that can happen? You don’t get it, you spend a few years on the freelance circuit.” Elfhelm was quite insistent. “But do stick to auditioning for first and third positions. I think that’s where your playing should be taking you.”

“Now,” said Erkenbrand. “You must put together an audition tape. Fortunately, your Strauss was recorded, so that should obviously be a major part of it. And I think the Shostakovich cello concerto at the beginning of last term. What do you have coming up in the way of chamber music?”

“Faramir and I…” Éowyn found herself blushing furiously. “We’re planning a lunchtime recital – Beethoven and Hindemith.”

Elfhelm caught the blush and smiled. “Ah yes, your young man. I heard about that.”

Éowyn wanted the floor to swallow her. Did everyone know? Without pausing for breath, Elfhelm continued.

“A bit of chamber music should definitely fill things out nicely. We should also get clips of you working with the opera group.”

“Disa and I have been working on Va Tacito – on baroque horns. Would a modern orchestra be interested in that? And obviously if we can get a bit of the opening of Rosenkavalier… Actually, come to think of it, the technicians may have recorded the last repertoire session of last term where we did that and Till Eulenspiegel.”

“The more variety, the more bases you can cover the better. Put a set of quite long clips of all you’ve got so far together, then send it to me and Erkenbrand. We’ll start thinking about how to edit it down. Basically, you have to grab them in the first 5 seconds to make them want to listen to the rest, then think about showcasing the whole range of what you can do – long enough for each extract for them to hear how you play a variety of stuff, short and punchy enough that they’ll listen all the way through when they’re faced with what, maybe fifty to a hundred audition tapes.”

“The other thing you should start thinking about – you are playing principal with both the symphony orchestra and the orchestra for opera, yes?” Erkenbrand asked.

Éowyn nodded.

“You should start to think not just about your own playing, but the others too. How do you want them to sound? How do you set about getting that sound from them? How do you run your sectionals? Because they are your sectionals, not, how would you say, free-for-alls.”

Elfhelm nodded. “If you get to the final stages, there will be an interview as well as an audition – they’ll want to know not just that you can play, but that you’ve thought about your role in the orchestra, how you fit with everyone else, how you interact with your conductor.”

Éowyn thought rather guiltily about the round of “first horn schnapps” from the previous term. It looked like a crash course in adulting was on the cards. She nodded.

By the time Éowyn eventually wandered out into the grey January afternoon she felt slightly shell-shocked. It felt like a huge amount to process. But good. She realised she felt quite buoyed up.

The evenings rapidly settled back into their pre-Christmas routine – either she would stay at Faramir’s or he would stay at hers, but there seemed to be an unspoken agreement that they were happier together than apart. The violinist still scowled at them when he came across them in the kitchen. (Éowyn made yet another resolution to be quieter. She also managed to find a spare half hour to go to the student health centre. She was quietly touched when Faramir said he’d come with her so he could pick up a self-test kit, because he wasn’t throwing the condoms away till he knew he had a clean bill of health. This hadn’t even crossed her radar, though thinking about it, maybe it should have. Perhaps the fact that it hadn’t was another example of what Disa said – in a kindly way – was her tendency to self-destruct if her friends weren’t around to tell her she was worth more. She made a resolution to pick up a self-test kit for herself at the same time.)

Currently she was sitting on Faramir’s bed, a stack of pillows against the headboard, her laptop on her knee. Prompted by her burgeoning love of opera, she had signed up for an Italian elective. She had a test tomorrow, and was desperately trying to learn the present tense endings for the three types of regular verbs. God, she remembered how rubbish she’d been at languages at school. This was just like being back in Miss Murchison’s French class. Only with the added distraction of a hot man mere feet away. Faramir was rehearsing for a lunchtime recital the next day.

He launched into Beethoven’s C sharp major sonata. Not the languorous slow first movement that everyone knew, the one which gave it its name, the Moonlight Sonata. But the frantic, galloping rising introduction to the third movement. She was transfixed. His long fingers were a blur on the keyboard, the muscles and sinews in his forearms flexing. She could see his face in profile. His head was bent forward in concentration, lips slightly parted, moving as he murmured to himself in time with the music. As he hit the repeated, staccato chords at the end of each phrase, a lock of his dark hair moved across his cheek in time.

God, he was beautiful. Everything about him. His face in profile, that nose and those high cheekbones. The long lashes which should have seemed feminine but somehow didn’t. The width of his shoulders. The strength in his arms – those arms that could hold her up so effortlessly when he wanted to. Like last night – when he’d shagged her, pressed against the wall next to the bathroom, thrusting into her as his hands cradled her arse. The line of his hips – how she loved to feel those hips in her hands as he moved within her. Those long legs, thighs hard and muscular under her fingers.

And his playing. Every note perfect. Every phrase thundering upwards, each phrase more urgent than the last. How had she not noticed? It was sex in musical form. It occurred to her to wonder had Beethoven thought of it that way? Presumably – the thought popped into her head – he’d had his moments. After all she kind of half-remembered that he’d fallen out with one of his closest friends over a woman, so much so he’d rededicated the sonata he’d written for him to Kreutzer instead.

Musicians were a randy lot. Well, her mind added, this musician certainly was. She crossed her legs, trying to do something about the throbbing need in her groin.

He, on the other hand, was utterly absorbed in the music, playing from memory.

Until he wasn’t.

He stopped, abruptly. And looked at her.

“I can feel you watching me.”

“There’s going to be lots of people watching tomorrow lunchtime.”

“I can but hope…” Attendance at the lunchtime recital series could be a bit hit and miss. “But they won’t be watching the way you watch me.” He gave her a knowing smile.

Éowyn set her laptop to one side and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

“Well,” she said, slowly. “They probably will be paying attention to some of the things I’m paying attention to. Technique. Musicianship. That, by the way, sounds incredible.”

His smile broadened into a grin. “And yet, I feel there is a ‘But’ at the end of that comment.” He swivelled round on the piano stool so he was facing her.

“I suppose…” she said, drawing the moment out. “You may be onto something. They might enjoy the music. But… They probably won’t be watching you with an absolutely burning desire to rip your clothes off and fuck your brains out.”

“Ah. Yes.” She saw his adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “I don’t think my playing has ever had quite that effect on someone before.”

She got to her feet and walked across the room, then sat, straddling his lap.

“It has now.”

He put one arm round her waist, pulling her in tight, and wove his other hand into her hair. Then kissed her. Hard. Desperately hard, like he was a drowning man and she was his life raft.

She wrapped her arms round his back and kissed him back. She shifted slightly as she clung to him, then broke the contact of their lips, giving a little tug on his lower lip as she did so.

“God, you’re hard as a rock.”

“Yeah, well, you do have that effect on me. In case you hadn’t noticed.” He leaned in for another kiss, and this time his hand found its way under her sweatshirt, snaking its way up to unfasten her bra, then sliding round to the front to cup her breast.

She couldn’t help herself. She moaned. Part of her felt pathetic when she did this. Most of her didn’t care. Bloody hell. He could turn her into helpless jelly in a matter of seconds. Her hands grabbed onto the hem of his shirt. Again, she pulled away from his mouth, just long enough to tug his shirt over his head. He took the opportunity to shove her sweatshirt up, and his mouth fastened on her nipple as he groped for the button at the waistband of her jeans.

They staggered to their feet. She felt the zip open, felt his hands on the skin of her hips as he shoved both jeans and knickers out the way together. She kicked them off, trying not to stumble, and returned the favour, attacking his fly and pushing his trousers as far out of the way as she could reach, about half way down his thighs.

“Hang on.” His voice was a mumble, half blocked by her breast. He reached a hand down and fumbled in his back pocket, producing a condom packet. Éowyn tore it open with her teeth then fumbled the condom into place as his hands cupped her arse. He kissed her again, tongue dancing against hers. Then he sat down, half stumbling backwards, back onto the piano stool, pulling her back down onto his lap as he went.

She brought her hands up to his cheeks, cradling his face as she kissed him back with a growing desperation, grinding herself against his hard cock. He slid his hand down to help guide himself inside her and she gave another moan. She wrapped her legs around his waist, already half way there; he moved his hand slightly so he could rub against her. God, he knew how her body worked. He knew exactly where to press, how hard, how fast. She could feel herself getting closer to the edge. Closer and closer.

She arched her back and threw her hands back to brace herself. The orgasm hit at exactly the same moment as an almighty discord from the piano keyboard. Her resulting shriek was as much surprise as ecstasy.

Faramir must have been almost as close as she was, because as she came down from her climax, she felt his hips buck underneath her, and heard him grunt something inarticulate – it might have been “Oh fuck” – into her ear.

They sat on the piano stool for a few moments, breathing hard. She sagged against him, arms now wrapped round his shoulder. Finally, Faramir broke the silence.

“I think I’m stuck to the stool with sweat…”

Eowyn reluctantly got to her feet. “Sorry about the piano…”

He laughed. “They’re quite tough. I wouldn’t worry…” Then he added ruefully, “God, that violinist is probably plotting how to slip cyanide into my milk...”

Beethoven – Moonlight Sonata, 3rd movement, Evgeny Kissin
https://youtu.be/r4v_XP0BTdU?t=510
You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to find the right YouTube link because (a) I am very fussy about what I want this piece to sound like (there are far too many “muddy” recordings out there, or recordings which put the stresses in really odd places) and (b) given that it accompanies a sex scene, I wanted just the music, no visuals (which would stray a bit too close to RPF for comfort).

Other good performances – I really rate Daniel Barenboim’s. I caught a glorious one on Radio 3 the other morning, but (early morning) unfortunately didn’t catch the pianist. In fact it was that early morning moment which gave me the idea for this chapter... I’m also betting Uchida does a superb version, but all I could find on YouTube was her playing the first movement as an encore at the Proms a few years back (you can find her doing most of the Beethoven concertos on YouTube though, and they are superb).

Chapter Text

Thanks to the piano stool incident (as Éowyn had mentally dubbed it), the week had started well, and to her surprise, continued to be so. The usual round of sessions had come and gone – two horn lessons, piano, repertoire, rehearsals for her upcoming recitals. Thursday was the symphony orchestra – Shostakovich’s 7th. Before the session started, Éowyn went to grab a cup of tea. She found Disa and Merry in the cafe, huddled together over a laptop.

“Best overall…”

“Okay, start with the bottom line. Click on the Amazon link.”

“Fuck me. Over 900 quid.”

“That’s a no, then.”

“What’s their best budget recommendation?”

“There is no best budget. Only a best mid-range.”

“As Yoda didn’t say.”

“Okay… best mid-range… What the fuck? That’s 1400 quid.”

“Clearly this is not the review page you’re looking for.”

“Okay, ‘budget’ in the search bar.”

“Tech Radar – their reviews are usually okay.”

“Still no ‘budget’ section, and doesn’t seem to say if they’re any good for music.”

Éowyn sat down with her cup of tea.

“What are you guys up to?”

“We’ve decided to go halves on the cost of a video camera. Whoever gets a job first after we graduate buys the other one out.”

“Only trouble is they’re bloody expensive.”

Éowyn shook her head sadly. “Another friend lost to the dark side. Technology is taking over the world – or at least, friends obsessing about technology is taking over my world.”

Disa grinned. “You will be assimilated…”

“Wrong sci fi franchise,” Merry replied.

“Meh…” Éowyn shrugged. “You do you. I’m happy to leave the technical recording stuff to the actual technicians the college pays to do this stuff for us.”

Éowyn let her attention drift off while the other two geeked-out. She was just mulling over the list of possible auditions Elfhelm and Erkenbrand had come up with when Disa waved her hand in front of her face.

“Stop daydreaming about pianists and get your act together – orchestra starts in five.”

“I was thinking about auditions, I’ll have you know,” Éowyn replied, huffily.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, shift your arse.”

Éowyn dutifully followed the other two up the stairs and into the main auditorium. She took her seat in the horn section, then glanced around at her section: three horns to her right (Disa in the third horn chair), four more behind her. The trombones and trumpets on the other side of the back of the orchestra were similarly doubled. She remembered Sam reading her and Disa the riot act yet again, and felt in her pocket for the ear-plugs he’d presented her with. She’d probably only need them part of the time but – eyeing the monstrous percussion section – they probably weren’t a bad idea.

Noldor was back on the podium again. “So, this is our work for public performance in about five weeks time, and it is huge. The other works on the programme – the Tchaikovsky, the Rachmaninov – obviously we’ll do some work on them, and it doesn’t do to take anything for granted, but broadly speaking, they will look after themselves.

“But this is the piece that will really stretch you – technically, musically, and in terms of stamina. It weighs in at nearly an hour and a half. So I need a huge effort from you – totally on the ball in rehearsals, please, and work on the tricky corners in your own time, If you don’t understand how it fits together, listen to as many recordings as you can – listen, listen, listen. The start of all performance is listening – to yourself, to those around you, to existing great performances. Note I don’t want slavish copies – but learn from them. Take what you can work with, adapt, use it as a springboard for your own performances, especially in the woodwind.

“Now, overall, I want a monumental sound – not lush. This is the opposite of lush. Attack, energy, determination, heroics in the loud passages, elegiac in the quieter ones. There are passages of sublime beauty – but it’s a cold, brittle, ethereal beauty, not soft or full.”

She looked round at them. The pause stretched for several moments. She looked as if she was considering her next words carefully.

“Now, a bit of biography. Normally I adhere to the old adage biography is about fellows, musicology is about cellos. But in this instance, we can’t get away from the fact that Shostakovich was trapped in Leningrad, writing this symphony, while the city was under siege by the German army. The first performance was given under siege. A siege which was the most deadly in history – a million and a half deaths.

“So this is what Shostakovich is writing about – heroism in the face of almost overwhelming military force on the other side. People are dying around him – whether from bombardment or starvation. It’s a symphony filled with moments of desperation, and occasional flashes of hope and, amidst it all, flashes of that almost elegiac beauty I just mentioned. And bringing it all together a focus on heroism – the relentless military snare drum through much of the first movement is a call to arms, a call to fight tyranny against overwhelming odds. He’s writing about his home city, about his friends and neighbours. But also remember he’s seen tyranny from both sides. He’s already lived through the Russian revolution and Stalin’s purges of the 19030s – only just lived through it, what’s more. His own composition teacher was executed. Shostakovich writes with an immediacy – about war, about oppression, about struggle – an immediacy I hope few of us will ever experience for ourselves.”

She paused, as if giving herself as much as them a chance to reflect on the enormity of the work in front of them.

“To start with today, we’re just going to run the first movement, then start working on it. We’ll take it to bits in the second half of the rehearsal.”

She raised her baton. The cellos came in with a solid wall of sound, the timpani cutting through, before the rest of the strings and the woodwind came in. As Noldor had indicated, within a few minutes, the music calmed, with a beautiful tune in the violins, taken up by the strings, leading to the plangent oboe solo. The quietly contemplative passages led eventually to an exchange between the piccolo and solo violin, the violin fading into the very quiet entry of the snare drum.

Noldor’s words still echoed in Éowyn's mind. The understated entry, its almost whispering quality, rendered it all the more menacing. There was no way you could fail to notice the military quality to the rhythm, but it was distant guns, distant soldiers, soldiers whose attention you might yet avoid. Or you thought you might avoid them. But something about the soundscape hinted that your hopes might be displaced. As yet, though, it was only a hint.

The strings picked up the tune, pizzicato. Its first appearance sounded almost whimsical against the snare drum. It seemed to say “Maybe your fears are misplaced. Maybe we will get away with hiding from this. Maybe they will pass our city by.” Éowyn tried to imagine what it would be like coming to this symphony cold for the first time. As the flute took over the tune, at the bottom of its register, there was only the barest hint of what was to come – until the reprise of the jaunty tune, joined by piccolo, was undercut by odd, out-of-kilter swaying phrases in the cellos. The bassoon and oboe swapped the tune between each other, question and answer, while the cellos marched along, very quietly, underneath them. It wasn’t quite a sense of menace, not quite yet, but it was starting to get unsettling.

The rocking rhythmic accompaniment shifted to the piano, while the trombones, muted, carried on with that repetitive tune. Now the whole of the wind section joined in, weaving in and out of each other. And all the while, quietly, the snare drum continued, painting its picture of the militaristic shape of things to come. The piano kept its drive, the strings reprised the tune again. But the whimsy was gone; this time it was filled with attack and unsettling slides and articulations. A few bars to go, and the horns were in. Not full volume quite yet – then a few bars later, all eight of them in unison, with an incongruous accompaniment on xylophone and flute.

Then the strings came in with a repeated phrase which could have done double duty in a horror film, and the whole brass section took over. More and more complex counter-melodies filled the air, as the snare – now doubled by a second player – got louder and louder. They were reinforced by the whole percussion section – timpani, cymbals, base drum, tambourine and still that xylophone, like a war photographer’s shot of a child’s toy lying in the debris of a bomb crater.

The brass filled the auditorium with sound, the violins and xylophone playing sharp, atonal fragments of scales. The trumpets were set to produce wild rasping noises over trills in the wind, while the horns kept producing ever louder.

The crash of the tam-tam signalled the final end of the snare, and a wild, grandiose theme, half monumental, half desperate, first in the strings, then the horns, then all of the brass, with layers upon layers building up as only Shostakovich could do.

The woodwind produced a final flourish of the tune, before the brass built a series of chords, then the strings slid quietly into a more elegaic mood, the horns supporting them. One by one, the sections of instruments fell away, leaving only a solo flute, answered by a solo clarinet.

Without a break, spare octaves in the bass of the piano led them into the slower section, the bassoon taking up the almost improvisatory line of music. Éowyn led the horns in a call which signalled the shift to a tune of haunting beauty, moving from strings to woodwind and back to strings, before morphing back into a quick flourish of the earlier martial theme. Another horn call, and the music slowed again into the agonisingly sad theme in the strings, suspensions and discords leading high held notes while the double basses brought the section to a close. Another few calls from the horns and the snare drum restarted its rhythm, Merry on solo trumpet picking out the tune of the march before a handful of pizzicato notes beneath the snare drum finally brought the movement to an end.

Noldor stood for a moment, baton still raised, motionless, then relaxed. The orchestra collectively released a breath they hadn’t been aware they’d been holding.

“Good. That’s an excellent platform to build on. We’ll break it down in detail after the break, but a few pointers to think about over the break. Brass section leaders – a lot of the time you’re in unison as sections. Use your sectionals to come up with suitable breathings – I want a continuous sound, not the sound of eight horn players gasping for breath at the same moment (likewise trumpets, trombones).

“Strings – again, section leaders, especially firsts and seconds – get together almost as a string quintet and work on bowings. I don’t care what you come up with so long as it works musically – I’d suggest for instance…” Noldor leafed back through the score. “Yes, this bit at figure 87, up bows on the slurs there…” She leaned over and pointed to the relevant bit in the first violin part.

“Woodwind. That sounded terrific. Okay, everyone, back in twenty minutes, please.”

Éowyn emerged onto Oxford Road an hour and a half later. She felt drained. Something about the symphony had got to her in a way listening to it in the past hadn’t. Noldor putting it in context? She had found her mind flicking through images remembered from news footage, of wars around the world even within her own lifetime. The violence, the destruction, the horrors wreaked upon the innocent. It all seemed to have an immediacy that had tangled itself up with her own experience of violence.

Shostakovich had lived through – and written about – the last world war. But not the last war. They seemed to go on and on, not fought by superpowers, not directly, but their proxy wars – Syria, Congo, Chechnya, Yugoslavia… So many people. So many deaths. She suddenly felt an overwhelming need to see Faramir. He would understand.

They hadn’t made any definite plans for the evening, so she pulled her phone – still on silent from the rehearsal – out of her pocket. There, blinking at her, were alerts for several missed calls and a text.

The text said, “Call me ASAP. F. xxx”

The first couple of calls went straight to voice mail.

The third attempt connected. Faramir picked up almost immediately – from the background noise, he was on a train somewhere.

“Hi.” Just that single syllable. A single syllable was enough to tell Éowyn something was terribly wrong.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s Boromir. It was an IED…”

Her mind went blank at the acronym. “I… What?”

“A bomb. A home-made bomb. Went off under the armoured carrier.”

She could hear the anguish in his voice. Her stomach flipped as the worst case scenario played out in her head.

“He’s…” Her tongue wouldn’t complete the question.

“Still alive. Just. Brain bleed and shrapnel in his legs. Not sure if they can save his legs.” She heard his voice starting to crack. “Not sure if they can save him.”

“Oh god. Where are you?”

“Train. Half way to London. They stabilised him in the field hospital, now they’ve flown him back, transferred him to UCL’s neurosurgery unit.”

Her insides continued to tie themselves in knots. She felt a visceral need to reach out and hold him, but he was a hundred miles away, just a disembodied voice on the phone.

“Can I do anything?”

His reply sounded bereft. “Not really. Just… Be there on the other end of the phone?” There was a note of pleading, with an undertone of uncertainty.

The uncertainty. At least she could do something about the uncertainty. “Any time. I mean it. Doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the night. Any time.”

“Thank you.”

“And… Let me know how he is, as soon as you know anything.”

“I will. I… Thank you… For just…”

“It’s okay. I wish I could do something… I dunno. Something more real.”

“I don’t think there’s anything any of us can do. Well, other than the doctors.”

“Take care of yourself. I’ll be thinking of you.” There was something unsaid, but she didn’t know what it was. And was damn sure that now wasn’t the moment to be worrying about it.

“And I you. Always.” The words hung in the air. Equally unsaid. Again, not the time.

“If I was with you, I’d just hold you.”

“I know. And I wish you could.”

Éowyn found her eyes filling with tears. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, tried to collect herself, get her voice under control. He was the one with the right to be upset. She didn’t need to turn into some sort of drama queen, making it all about her. She swallowed. “Look after yourself.”

“I will.” There was a pause, then “We’re just pulling into the tunnels leading to New Street – I think the phone reception might go any second.”

“I’m thinking of both of you.”

“Tha…”

The phone bleeped as it cut off.

Shostakovich 7th Symphony (the Leningrad), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Klaus Mäkelä
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB3zR_X25UU
https://www.britannica.com/event/Siege-of-Leningrad

And as a bonus, Shostakovich 10th Symphony, National Youth Orchestra of the USA, Valery Gergiev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSJwP5dvzPg
This is the one that’s the musical portrait of Stalin.

Chapter Text

How did the trip to the hospital go?

Brutal. He’s intubated and unconscious. The nurses said it was good to sit by him and talk to him. They say maybe he can hear some of it.

Oh God.

So sorry

I don’t have the words. Poor Boromir. And you.

He just looks so fragile

Stupid thing to say. I mean, he’s still him, still bigger than me. But somehow he looks smaller in the hospital bed.

What do the doctors say

Consultants not on duty – too late. Will talk to them tomorrow.

Nurses said they’d operated in the medical centre in Akrotiri to remove pressure on his brain and stop the bleed.

Couldn’t speak for the neurosurgeon, but thinks extent of damage not yet clear.

The uncertainty must be awful.

It is. His left leg’s pretty fucked too.

Maybe we’ll end up with a matching pair.

Gallows humour. Sorry.

Don’t worry, I’m a Scot. 90% of the national sense of humour.

Anyway, whatever keeps you sane.

Not feeling very sane. He’s all I’ve got.

Close family, that is.

What are you doing?

Pottering round the kitchen making cups of tea, forgetting to drink them, listening to radio 3 but not really listening.

Have you eaten?

Don’t feel like it.

I know that feeling. But you need to. What’s in the fridge?

Out of date yoghurt and a bottle of beer.

Cupboard?

Cans, pasta, jar of sauce.

Looks like you’re going to have to lower your standards. Pasta and sauce. Imagine I cooked it for you.

It’s about the limit of my ability, but if I was there I would.

Kettle’s on. I will try to pretend you’re here with me.

If you thought it would help, I would be.

No, you stick with college. Maybe once I’ve a better idea what’s going on.

What are you going to do about college?

I’ve already emailed Stone and my tutors. I’ll try to ring him up tomorrow. At least there’s a piano here in the flat.

I know. I remember from Christmas. Goldberg.

The nurses seemed to think talking to Boromir would help. So I need to spend as much time on this as it takes.

Crap. I’ve just realised it’s 1.30 in the morning and I’m keeping you up.

This is more important.

No, there’s no point in you being unable to function tomorrow. Get some sleep.

It’s really helped having someone to talk to.

...

Look after yourself. I’ll be thinking of you.

Good night. XXX

XXX back at you. And hugs too. Try to get some sleep after you’ve eaten.

The next morning, Éowyn sat in the cafe in college with Disa and Merry. She’d just finished telling them.

“God, poor Faramir,” Disa said.

“What are you going to do?” Merry asked.

“At the moment, nothing. I offered to go down there, but he said at the moment there’s nothing much I could do. He said to hang tight here.”

“What do you think he actually wants?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. I mean, maybe being around to look after him, even if it’s only making sure he remembers to eat and drink, might be good. On the other hand, this is about him and his brother. I don’t want to get in the way.”

Disa nodded.

Éowyn checked her phone.

“Any messages?”

“No. I think he was hoping to get the chance to talk to the doctors this morning.”

Disa took a sip of coffee, uncharacteristically silent. Even Merry was quiet for once. It suddenly struck Éowyn how odd it was that her two closest friends were such ebullient, chatty types. Maybe she’d chosen them to fill in something lacking in herself. In that moment, she couldn’t quite see what they’d seen in her. A project? No, that was unfair.

The phone rang.

“Hi.”

“Hang on, let me just head somewhere quieter. How are things?”

“I just talked to the neurosurgeon. The initial operation stemmed the bleeding, but they’re worried there may be a region of damage round the site – they’re not sure how much, or how much loss of function. Left side of the brain. Apparently, it’s both the language centre and some of the motor regions likely to be affected, but they don’t know how badly. They’re going to do some more scans tomorrow. He basically repeated what the nurse told me last night – talking to him is good even if he’s in a coma.”

“Shit, it must be so scary. Do they have any idea when he’s likely to come round?”

“It’s actually an induced coma. They said they routinely do this with brain injuries. It helps the brain to heal, apparently.”

“Oh. I think I sort of see. And his leg?”

“Haven’t had a chance to talk to the orthopaedic surgeon yet, but from the sound of it, it’s pretty badly fucked up. I mean, badly enough that they still haven’t ruled out amputation.”

“Oh Christ.”

“Yeah, that bit’s brutal too. I know how bad the rehab is, and I kept my leg.”

“Shit.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Éowyn pulled herself together.

“How are you coping?”

“Badly. I hardly slept. I did eat, though. I can just about manage toast and cups of tea.”

“Sure you don’t want me to come down?”

“Not at the moment. Maybe once I’ve got a bit more idea what’s going on. It’s all a bit overwhelming at the moment.”

“Okay. Phone whenever you want though – and any time.”

“I don’t want to disrupt you.”

“Bugger that. Phone. Literally any time. You wouldn’t believe how many times I had to ring Éomer up at 2, 3, 4 in the morning when things were really shitty for me. Any time you need someone to talk to.”

There was what sounded like a sigh at the other end of the phone. Then, “What have you got on this afternoon?”

It was a deliberate change of subject. Handled with an uncharacteristic lack of finesse. She went with it.

“Opera workshop. Modern horn – we’re working on extracts from Verdi with the chorus.”

“Big emotions then.”

“Understatement.” For a moment Éowyn wondered what to say. She didn’t want to witter on about unimportant stuff while he had all this shit to deal with. Then it occurred to her that maybe wittering on was exactly what he needed. Something to take his mind off the big shit.

“It should be interesting. As well as the usual pit stuff – not that there’s really a ‘pit’ in the studio, but you know what I mean – we’re going to do some off-stage stuff. Small room off to the side, working with an assistant conductor who’s got a video feed. First time for all of us – it could be a complete clusterfuck.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she got that stab of guilt, of foot-in-mouth. Clusterfuck. Cluster bombs. Shrapnel. IED. The acronym she wished she’d never had to learn. Faramir didn’t seem fazed, though, or if he was, it didn’t show in his tone of voice. God, she wished she could be there so she could see his face, read his body language.

“Yeah. Still, I guess it’s how we learn.”

“Mmm hmm. Are you spending all day in hospital?”

“Thought I’d spend another hour with Boromir. Then go home, do some practice, grab some food. Then meet the orthopaedic surgeon, hopefully, and spend a bit more time with Boromir.”

“I know I keep saying this, and it’s sounds more rubbish to me every time I say it, but I can’t think what else to say. Look after yourself.”

“I will. I have toast, I have tea, I have a piano, I have a bed – with some very happy memories attached thanks to you. I’m not going to fall apart.”

“Good to know. I have happy memories of that bed too. And the kitchen counter.”

“The kitchen counter is unfinished business.” There was what sounded almost like a laugh. Then an exhalation of breath. If breathing could convey anything, it seemed like a return to sadness. “Anyway, I should go. I need to try to ring Thorin Stone and talk to him.”

“Okay. I’m thinking of you. And… missing you.” (Oh God. Why did she have to blurt that out? She was a twat. Making it all about her.)

“I’m missing you too. It helps knowing I can talk.”

“Any time. I meant it.”

“And… Take care.”

“And you. Bye.”

She wandered back into the cafe only half aware of her surroundings, and sat down at the table once more. It took Disa about three attempts to get her attention. Briefly, she explained what she knew.

“Poor guy must be beside himself. Are you going to go down to see him?”

“At the moment he wants to be on his own – too much to cope with and process, I think. Maybe next weekend.” A thought struck her. “I’ll have to sell a kidney to pay for the train tickets at this rate.”

“Bullshit,” said Disa. “We’ll go busking. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Pick somewhere posh – St Anne’s Square or King Street. We’ll raise your train fare easily.” She checked her phone. “Oops, gotta go. Lesson with Elfhelm. See you later.”

After a sandwich – home made and dry and disappointingly bland, part of her ongoing economy drive – Éowyn made her way to the large rehearsal studio at the back of the ground floor. It had been reconfigured since she’d last been in there, shuffled round and set up for opera workshops. There was a (low) stage at the back of the room, with the orchestra on the floor in front. It didn’t really mimic an orchestra pit, but there was a sense of the action taking place behind one’s head which was completely unlike concert performances. The stage was set up with a couple of low benches round the edges, and the chorus were already sitting there, thumbing through copies and chatting.

Noldor stood at the front with another, smaller group of students. Éowyn had come across one or two of them before – the students taking the conducting courses. Dammit, she’d forgotten that. There were also some faces she didn’t recognise, but a little bit of eavesdropping while she screwed her bell in place revealed that they were students doing a stage direction elective, who were being given free rein as to how to arrange the chorus on stage. She made her way over to the stage and sat down beside Hama.

A gangly young man with red hair and round, metal-rimmed glasses took to the podium.

“Hi. Um. Orchestra. We’re starting with Patria Opressa from Macbeth.”

Éowyn started to leave through her music.

“Uh, Jon, do you want to tell the chorus how you want them to do this?” The red haired guy gestured to another student sitting in the seats by the wall.

He turned out to be a rather more confident young man dressed in ripped jeans and a patterned shirt. He got to his feet and strode up the steps to the stage, taking them two at a time.

“Hi everyone. So you guys are war refugees. I want you sitting in groups dotted around the stage in front of the benches. Everyone comfortable with singing sitting down?”

Éowyn swore she could hear the eyeballs rolling in the heads of the chorus behind her. They were mostly final year opera students. If you asked them to sing standing on their heads they probably could. It was a necessary trick of the trade. Though it turned out maybe she didn’t know as much about it as she thought she did, because Noldor interjected.

“Chorus – do feel free to adapt those instructions. The main thing is you look hopeless, but if, for example, you want to stretch out to the side to give yourself a bit of room, or kneel up to open up your voices, do so. The trick is always to make it look right for the audience while giving yourself the flexibility you need to sing. So, for example, a movie director might ask his refugees to stare at the ground in desperation, but you guys need to project – so think faces raised to the heavens in prayer instead. Whatever works in terms of acting plus sound projection.”

The chorus got into position. The conductor shifted nervously from one foot to another, then pushed his glasses up his nose.

“When you’re ready,” said Noldor.

He lifted his baton. A drum roll. Then into the opening chords in the brass – so unmistakeably Verdi. No-one wrote for brass quite like him; the power of the instruments, the sound filling the studio. The chord progressions, with their unexpected modulations, speaking of pain and bravery and a fight to the death. Then the strings, coming in sul ponticello, with that strange, glassy, brittle quality to the sound. The oboe added a haunting, plangent sound, then the horns were in again, just as the chorus started to sing. The effect was extraordinary.

Oppressed country. That had been Disa’s hasty translation, before they started to play. And Éowyn felt as though she was transported into the scene behind her, one of the refugees fleeing a country in thrall to a brutal tyrant.

She also had another of those moments where she saw, as if viewing the world in its entirety from some other-worldly viewpoint, that the point of her part was its role in the whole, a whole which was greater than the sum of its parts. As she hit and held the C sharp entry, her note adding to the emotional impact of the chorus part, she felt almost as if she was singing with them.

The sparse, spare writing of the opening expanded into richer harmonies, still filled with a deep pain, then thinned out once more into a sparser vocal line. The way Verdi used harmony – either full or deliberately only a few lines in unison – to paint his emotional landscape was stunning.

The final chords faded away. The conductor broke the spell by turning to Noldor and looking at her rather anxiously. She smiled at him kindly. (Éowyn was suddenly struck by how different her teaching technique was from King’s. She’d never given it much thought before, but suddenly realised that Noldor’s “firm but fair” approach seemed to inspire her students to give everything, not because they were frightened of failure, but because they wanted to live up to her expectations. Incongruously – or maybe not – she remembered Elfhelm’s admonition to think about how she wanted to lead her section. There was definitely something she could learn from here.)

“Not at all bad for a first run. Before we go back, though, and iron out some corners, I’m going to stretch you a bit. Where’s my Macduff?”

A dark-haired young man that Éowyn half-remembered from a party a few months earlier got up from the seats at the edge of the studio.

“Ah, Anborn isn’t it? Can we run your recitative and aria?” She turned back to the student conductor. “This is where it gets really challenging – helping your orchestra stay with the singer through a recitative. Anborn, if you could come up to the podium and just walk us through what you want to do before we try to do it live.”

“What’s going on in this bit?” she whispered to Disa.

“And you a Scot and all,” Disa whispered back, rolling her eyes. “This is the bit where Macduff’s lamenting the murder of his wife and children. You know, the ‘Bleed, bleed, poor country!’ bit. Didn’t you do that at school?”

“We did Romeo and Juliet.”

“And there was me thinking the Scottish education system was meant to be better than the English one. And you didn’t even study Macbeth.”

“Pah, we did real history. Not Elizabethan propaganda. Apparently the real Macbeth was pretty competent as a king, for the time and all…”

“Horns, would you care to join the rest of us?” Noldor’s dry tones cut through their sotto voce conversation. “If you’re ready, that is?”

Éowyn felt herself blush furiously.

The rehearsal gradually unwound. They weren’t tackling the opera in its entirety, only the chorus parts and the parts with Macbeth and Macduff. Éowyn was fascinated when Noldor got the student conductors sit down for a moment, and said “Anborn, Mablung, come to the front and we’ll just run the final fight as a concert performance. Chorus, just line up as if you’re doing an oratorio. Would be directors and choreographers – I want you to listen and decide what you’d do with the scene. Do you attempt to choreograph an actual fight, or do you go for a stylised ending, or something more akin to an execution or an assassination? Listen to the music and try to decide how much of a blank canvas you feel you have to play with here.”

They ran the ending. Stripped down to the music, without the acting, it was still mesmerising. Somehow, coming from a symphonic background, Verdi had somewhat passed Éowyn by. Not now. Now she could see why everyone involved in opera raved about him as a genius. The writing, the blending of melody, harmony, even a fugue at one point, with the words – all of it was breathtaking. But more than that, it hit her in an immensely vulnerable spot.

She realised that, stylised and distilled down to an abstract musical representation, this was still about war and death. The very abstractness meant that everything was stripped away except the emotional impact. Suddenly, she felt almost sick at the thought that somewhere in a hospital someone she knew was lying in a hospital bed because of this. And Verdi was writing about the pain, the terror, the loss of war. It was a weird sensation. When the rehearsal finally ended, she put her instrument away almost on autopilot, not quite aware of her surroundings.

“Are you okay?” It was Disa.

“Just being stupid.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s… All the emotions in the opera. All about war and suffering. And… Well, you know.”

Disa nodded. “Come on. Let me feed you some chocolate before your next class.”

The weekend came and went. Busking turned out to be as lucrative as Disa had promised: she now had half the train fare. They’d ended up playing as a brass quartet, with Merry on the top line and Pippin supplying the bass. Experiment had shown that the things that went down best were movie themes and show tunes, though breaking it up with a bit of Renaissance brass went well too. She’d wanted to split the takings equally – the others had said she could have the lot. In the end they reached a compromise which left her with slightly more than her share of the pot and a shed-load of guilt.

She’d also kept talking to Faramir. The bad news was Boromir’s leg – it looked like it couldn’t be saved. He’d been trying to take the whole load of this on himself; in the end Éowyn had had persuaded him to call his uncle. “You need help with this one. You need to feel you’re not making a massive call about your brother’s future all on your own.”

The final decision hadn’t been made yet – the ortho team were off for the weekend, and things hadn’t taken an emergency turn. Yet.

Éowyn made her way into college feeling tired and emotionally drained, with the horrible feeling of trepidation that always preceded a session with King.

Her sense of trepidation was on the money. They ended up having a huge row. About nodal vents, of all things.

They were playing Handel, and King insisted that she hold the bell of her hand horn – a copy of a much later instrument – up in the air in the manner of a horn of Handel’s period. Then he’d thrown a fit when the F and A partials in the upper register were horrendously out of tune.

“If you’d just let me explain… This is a copy of an 18th century hand horn. It’s meant to be played with the hand up the bell. If it was a copy of a 17th century horn, a modern copy would have a tuning hole.”

“A bad workman blames his tools… a bad work-woman even more so, it seems,” King sneered.

Eowyn felt her fist ball in anger. Thank god it was safely out of sight, up the bell of her horn. She struggled to keep the tone of her voice level.

“They’re necessary to keep the instrument in tune, even if they’re not authentic.”

King snorted with derision. “Are you trying to tell me that Handel’s and Bach’s horn players couldn’t play in tune? What nonsense.”

“They couldn’t get those high partial harmonics in tune according to the even tempering we now use. But the audience would probably have been used to those notes, and wouldn’t have been shocked. Notions of what counted as ‘in tune’ were more flexible in the 17th century.”

“Nonsense. I wrote a monograph on the variety of tempering systems on keyboard instruments in the mid 17th century. It’s ridiculous to suggest that they didn’t have a concept of ‘in tune’.”

“I know,” Éowyn managed to say through gritted teeth. “I read your monograph when I was researching my dissertation – which was on the lack of historical evidence for nodal vents. I wasn’t implying they had no concept of intonation. That would be stupid.”

“At last, something we agree on.” King’s voice was filled with the lofty arrogance of one who thinks he has won a point.

Éowyn struggled not to lose her temper at the way he was quite obviously wilfully misunderstanding her. “I just said their concept of ‘in tune’ wasn’t as rigid as ours.”

“’Ours’ you say. I don’t think there’s any ‘ours’ there – I think you’re trying to cover up your own poor sense of intonation.”

Éowyn breathed in through her nose, counted to five, then said, “I don’t recall you ever complaining about my intonation before – I think you’re resorting to ad hominem attacks because there’s no historical evidence for nodal vents in the time of Bach and Handel.”

“Typical female response. Take my criticism of your playing as a personal attack on your character. It’s not an…” He paused for dramatic effect. “Ad feminam attack if it’s true.”

“It is if it’s beside the point. You didn’t criticise my playing when I was actually playing this instrument as intended – as a hand horn. It’s only now you’ve insisted I play it without my right hand that you’re now complaining about my intonation. You’ve produced a criticism after the event to distract from my point about the history of the instrument I play. Because you don’t have an answer to the historical point. That’s what I meant by ad hominem.”

“Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.” King obviously thought this the killer blow.

“But historical claims have to be backed up by evidence – physical artefacts in the form of brass instruments from the period, written evidence in the form of horn tutor books, descriptions of performances, drawings of instruments and how people held them… None of the sources we have show instruments with vents. Nor do they show players holding the instruments as you would a horn or trumpet with a vent.”

This was the point at which King went nuclear.

“How dare you waste my time, and those of your fellow students, in this way? I would remind you that I am the expert on historical performances here, and you are the – distinctly second-rate – student. In fact, I invite you to leave, and spend a bit of time elsewhere thinking about whether you are capable of learning at all, or are in fact wasting everyone’s time?”

King stood on the rostrum glaring at her, arms folded, while she packed away her horn and left.

It took Elfhelm the best part of an hour and copious quantities of coffee to talk her down.

“Does this mean I’ve blown this module?” she eventually said, when she could frame a coherent sentence.

“I’ll have a word. Get Noldor on board too.” Elfhelm paused for a moment. “And also see if I can manage to source a copy of a 17th century instrument for you to borrow.”

Disa came and found her later.

“I don’t think it was your fault. I think it was Private Eye’s.”

“What?”

“Back in the early days of using authentic instruments, Private Eye’ did a mock up of a concert poster – ‘Wytlesse King and Musica Ennui de Paris performing on original out-of-tune instruments.’ He’s never forgiven or forgotten. Hence being incredibly touchy about issues around tuning.”

“Oh fuck. My card’s marked, isn’t it?”

“I think it always was. He’s a nasty little man. Doesn’t like any of his students but particularly doesn’t like female ones or talented ones. And as for female and talented – of course he was gunning for you.”

Éowyn looked at Disa. “What about female and talented and black.”

“Yup, I’m completely fucked. Just hoping that the fact that the final recital for the course is in front of a board of tutors who serve to moderate marks – hoping they’ll mitigate the worst of King.”

Éowyn patted Disa’s hand.

“Actually, weirdly when it comes to race, I think King hates male, talented and black even more than female, talented and black. All sorts of nasties about power and race and toxic masculinity to unpack there. Which I won’t. I’d rather just have a pint and forget about the wanker.”

“Why does the college put up with him?”

“Incredibly difficult to sack someone once they lawyer up. I mean, look at that incident in America…” Disa named the orchestra. “Woman gets roofied, raped, career over, players responsible get sacked – then they get lawyers and the performer’s union on the case, and suddenly they’re back in their chairs in the orchestra like nothing’s happened.”

“At least King doesn’t do that.”

“Doesn’t do that these days. There’s stories from his younger days that are hair raising. Not overtly violent, but abuse of power and threats round female singers’ careers…”

Éowyn thought she was going to be sick. It must have shown on her face. Disa took her hands.

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t your fault…”

“Has Merry told you?”

“Merry hasn’t said anything. But it’s obvious there are areas with huge ‘keep off’ signs, and things that make you tense up – particular things. You don’t have to talk about it. I just want you to know you’re not hiding as much as you think you are. At least, not from me.”

Éowyn took a deep breath. “I wish I was able to talk about it. I just… I can’t. Well, I sort of have. To Merry. ‘Cos he was around at the time. Or very soon after. And to Faramir. He kind of has a way of worming things out of you.” She paused for a moment, as if realising that made him sound a bit weird and stalker-ish. She hastily continued. “Not in a nasty way. He’s just good at seeing what makes other people tick. And good at listening. Oh God. I miss him, you know. That sounds awful – god I’m such a needy mess. He’s got his own shit to deal with and it should be me looking after him.”

“It’s a two way street. Relationships are. Or at least, the good ones are.” Disa seemed to sense that a change of tack was called for. “Are you going to go and see him?”

“Yeah, I don’t have any classes on Friday, by some strange bloody miracle. I thought I’d get the train Thursday night.”

“That’s good. And don’t worry about King. Things will come good.”

Verdi, Macbeth (starting from the chorus Patria Opressa):
https://youtu.be/MI8V78mPsMA?t=6023
Thomas Hampson as Macbeth, Luis Lima as Macduff, Zurich Opera House chorus and orchestra, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst.

The climax to to Macbeth can be found from this timestamp onwards:
https://youtu.be/MI8V78mPsMA?t=7702
This is the very “stylised” end of the spectrum – I love the way they handle the arrival of Birnam wood.

The Private Eye cartoon was real: “Christopher Hogwash and Musica Antiqua Bora, playing on original out-of-tune instruments.” Rather unkind but very funny (Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music were one of the earliest groups to bring the idea of authentic performance to a wider audience. Fabulous. I still have some of their stuff on vinyl. Yes, I am that old.)

Chapter Text

Éowyn walked up the long ramp towards the main concourse, dodging a long string of luggage carts trundling in the opposite direction. She was still feeling shell shocked from the text earlier, just before she’d lost mobile signal. God, after ten days of hoping against hope, they’d had to amputate. At least, from the sound of it, Faramir hadn’t had to make the decision. Medically it was clear cut. But still. She’d tried to ring him, to no avail. She had a whole string of texts queued up – hopefully some of them might have got through in intermittent windows of phone signal.

As she finally emerged through the ticket barrier, she spotted Faramir. He was scanning the crowd and hadn’t seen her yet.

The contrast to the last time she’d met him in London was staggering. He looked tired – exhausted even – a sort of pale grey. Drawn. It seemed ridiculous after such a short time but she could swear he was skinnier. As she got closer she could see his eyes lined with pink – tiredness or the aftermath of tears? She wasn’t sure which.

Then he saw her and smiled. Not the overjoyed smile she was used to. But a sad smile, shot through with relief. As he had last time, he wrapped her in his arms. Then he seemed to sag against her. She hugged him back.

“I’m so glad to see you.”

She couldn’t think how to answer, so reached up and stroked his cheek with her hand. It was stubbly. She guessed shaving wasn’t high on his agenda right now. He covered her hand with his own, then leaned in and kissed her. There was an aching tenderness to the kiss.

“Thank you for coming.”

She waved her hand. “It’s nothing…”

“It’s everything.”

She looked at him, meeting those grey eyes, taking in the dark smudges beneath them. “’Someone on your side.’ That’s what you offered me. And it’s what I can give back to you.” She stood on tiptoes and gave him another kiss.

“Here, let me take your rucksack.”

She passed the bag over to him.

“How’s Boromir? I was so sorry to hear about his leg. Sorry, your text came through just as the phone signal dropped.”

A look of distress clouded his face. “In the end there wasn’t a choice. His infection markers shot up and they couldn’t risk not operating. Thank god the infection’s now under control. He’s still in an induced coma, though. The medics keep telling me that in itself it’s not something to worry about – it’s simply a means of keeping the swelling and inflammation down while the healing process gets underway. But I feel so bloody hopeless. Just looking at him lying there.”

She gave his hand a squeeze.

“The noise of the machines. That bloody hissing noise of the ventilator. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”

“Are you going back to see him tonight?”

“I thought I’d leave it till tomorrow morning. They’re planning on doing a scan tomorrow afternoon.”

“Sorry. God, you must be worried sick.”

They paused for a moment by the entrance to the underground. Faramir looked at it, a haunted expression on his face.

“Would you mind if we got the bus instead? It takes longer. But I don’t think I can face being underground.”

Later, back at the flat, after they’d eaten, and Faramir had mentioned how exhausted he was, she’d suggested an early night. She emerged from the bathroom in a baggy t-shirt that stretched half way down her thighs. He raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t want to presume.”

He smiled, obviously remembering when he’d said the same to her.

Nonetheless, when she had wrapped herself against him in the bed, she’d noticed he was hard. Silently, without words, they’d clung to each other, and she’d helped him pull the layers of clothing from both of them, before they made love. Quietly. Almost sadly. Born not out of passion or even lust, but driven by a need for human connection. Afterwards, she’d lain on her back and he’d curled up against her, his head on her shoulder. She had wrapped her arms round him and held him there. Idly, she’d drawn circles on his shoulder with her hand until she heard his breathing slow and he’d relaxed into sleep.

The next morning, the flat felt strange. Faramir had left first thing, immediately after breakfast. She pottered around for a bit, tidying the dishes into the dishwasher. Then she got her horn out and did a couple of hours practice. Everything sounded stuffy and below par; she wasn’t herself at all. Still, she told herself, she needed to soldier through it. Then mentally kicked herself for a bad choice of metaphor. The minutes, quarter hours, half hours seemed to stretch out endlessly. Warm up, scales, arpeggios, technical exercises. Then some Mozart. It should have been easy, but somehow she couldn’t get the instrument to sing. Each note came out mechanically, disconnected from the rest.

She looked at the clock on the mantlepiece. It was still only 11. She took the spare key Faramir had given her and let herself out. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do, but wandered through the streets in a bit of a daze, until she found herself on Victoria Street. About half way down she found a reasonably modest looking cafe with prices which weren’t too extortionate for central London and treated herself to a coffee and a bacon piece. (For a moment she smiled as she realised that Manchester had rubbed off on her – she’d almost asked for a “bacon buttie”, correcting herself to “bacon roll” just in time. She didn’t suppose they’d understand what a “piece” was either, come to think of it.)

She cradled the cup of coffee, warming her hands and staring at the froth on its surface, idly looking for patterns in the sprinkling of chocolate powder. Normally she tried to hide from her feelings, but today they were just too raw. The main ones, the ones which were overwhelming, were (to her surprise) a need to look after Faramir, and an agonising sense of powerlessness that she couldn’t do anything to make things better for him, no matter how much she wanted to. This was such a new, such an alien set of feelings. She supposed she’d felt the same sort of concern for Éomer, but not with this intensity. Perhaps because her brother was always the solid presence in her life. The one doing the looking after. Not needing to be looked after. Something to do with birth order, she supposed. She supposed that even when they were in their seventies, she’d be the little sister and he’d be the big brother.

Not that Faramir needed looked after. He had a self-contained self-sufficiency to him, she realised, always had had. Out of necessity given his upbringing. But he shouldn’t have to be like that. And she wanted to look after him – if that was the right way of phrasing it – not because he needed it, but because he deserved it.

She took the teaspoon and added a spoonful of sugar to the coffee, stirring it contemplatively.

Deserved it. How had her mind ended up with that thought? She thought about Faramir for a moment, tracing what she’d come to know about him and how she’d felt about it the more she got to know him. Sex on legs, obviously. She smiled at this thought. But that realisation had taken a long time to arrive. She’d ignored it, or fought it off for weeks, months even. But before it got to that point. What had she thought during that strange term where he’d gradually insinuated himself into her life? Thoughtful. Serious. Kind. Gentle.

And underneath all of that. A sort of steely determination. To do the best he could. To be the best musician he could be. But also… She thought of the way Frodo and Beregond interacted with him. He was… Decent. The sort of friend you could rely on. The sort of man who’d always do the right thing, not the easy thing. (Including sleeping on the floor when there was a woman he fancied in his bed, a woman who had made it abundantly clear she was there for the taking, mere feet away. She smiled again. Yes, decent was the word.)

So yes, he was all these things. And that explained why he deserved someone to look after him. But it didn’t explain why she felt this burning need to look after him. Lots of people deserved being looked after. Needed to be looked after. But that knowledge didn’t cause this almost physical pain in her guts. The intensity with which she needed to make things better for him was tying her in knots.

But she couldn’t. They would either get better on their own. Or they wouldn’t. She swallowed. That thought was just too awful to bear.

She couldn’t cope with being alone with her thoughts any more. She picked up her phone and scrolled through the contacts.

Hey, how’s things? Having a bacon buttie and thinking of you.

It was only a few moments before her phone buzzed.

Huh. Taunting me with your talk of bacon rolls.

How’s Faramir? And his brother?

Faramir’s really strung out and upset. Brother not good. They’ve had to take his leg off. Still in a coma.

Shit. That’s awful. Poor Faramir.

Give him a hug from me.

Will do.

He’s up at the hospital at the moment.

Sounds stupid, but I don’t think I thought this through. Hadn’t realised I’d spend most of the weekend hanging around on my own while he’s visiting his brother.

Stupid really

Not stupid. Is he glad to see you?

Yeah. I think so anyway. I think he needs me. He’s really upset.

Just want to make things better for him. And I can’t.

You did the right thing going down there. And it will help.

Later, she decided to try to cook. Hopefully, Faramir would appreciate her trying even if it turned out to be shit. And if it was catastrophically bad, they could always phone out for a takeaway. It didn’t smell to bad, she felt, as she heard the door slam, then watched as Faramir slipped into the kitchen.

All things considered, she was quite proud of her efforts. She’d managed to soften the onions without burning them. She’d remembered to brown the mince like Auntie Tilda did. She’d added the sauce from its glass jar and left it on a low heat. Now Faramir was back, she set the pasta going. She even remembered to set a timer so the pasta didn’t burn. All the same, she couldn’t help but notice (after cautiously sampling the first mouthful) Faramir splashing Lee and Perrins on his liberally when he thought she wasn’t looking. Still, with a healthy (or unhealthy) sprinkling of grated cheese, she personally thought she’d hit culinary heights she hadn’t known she was capable of.

Radio 3 murmured on in the background – Glass’s violin concerto. Somehow it matched the subdued mood perfectly. Faramir paused between forkfuls (at least he was finally eating something that wasn’t toast) and covered her hand with his own.

“Thank you again for coming down here. I can’t say how much it means.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Still stubbly, even more so than yesterday. At this rate, he’d have the beginnings of a beard before she left to go back to Manchester. She rather liked the way it looked – would have liked it more if it hadn’t been coupled with black rings round his eyes and a gaunt, exhausted look. As for the feel… She wasn’t so sure about that. But frankly, he could kiss her in pretty much any state and she’d still come back for more. He now seemed to be woven into the fabric of her being in a way she couldn’t even begin to work out how she’d unpick if things went wrong.

That train of thought was taking her into dangerous waters. Shut up, mind... She wasn’t going to go there. Not now. Life was already complicated enough. She wove her fingers through his dark hair and kissed him again.

“So,” she said, recalling the conversation when he came through the door. “They’re going to bring him round. How does that work?”

“They gradually bring down the levels of drugs they’re using to keep him unconscious.”

“And then?”

“Then we see what happens. Either there will be signs that he’s… that he’s still him. Or there won’t be.” He swallowed and his adam’s apple bobbed. Then he blinked a couple fo times, and took an audible breath in.

He took her hand again, and squeezed it.

“God, I’m fucking terrified. What if….”

She shuffled her chair round the corner of the table to get closer so she could put her arms around him. He pressed his cheek against her, leaning into her.

“Wait and see. Don’t agonise over the worst case now.” She could feel his cheek wet against her skin. She turned her head and kissed him, tasting the salt on her lips.

They ate the rest of the meal in silence, then settled on the couch in the sitting room, curled up against one another, and listened to the radio. Eventually, Faramir got up and went for a shower. He poked his head round the sitting room door about ten minutes later to let Éowyn know the bathroom was free. By the time she’d washed and cleaned her teeth, she found him in bed – fast asleep.

Again, Faramir had set off early. Éowyn had arranged to meet him late morning. She was on her third cup of tea, anxiously glancing through the plate glass window of the cafe across the road from UCL Hospital, when she finally caught sight of him. He glanced around, then seized his opportunity and sprinted across Gower Street, taking advantage of a lull in the traffic.

She watched his movements. Somehow, he seemed more upright, less beaten down, than when he’d headed into the hospital two hours earlier. She felt a stab of hope, so precarious, so tentative in its prematurity, that it was like a knife twisting in her gut. She forced herself to damp it down, to wait for his arrival.

The door swung round, and he quickly scanned the cafe before his gaze settled on her. Then he gave a smile; not quite a full-on smile, but enough of one, with enough conviction, that the twisting feeling seeped away, as if the tension inside her had turned to liquid and was flowing out of her like water flowing over rocks.

He took a couple of strides, then sat down in the chair opposite her.

“He’s awake. And – I think – he’s still him.” The relief in his voice was almost tangible. Éowyn reached across the table and took his hands. His eyes glistened with unshed tears. “But there’s a lot of damage. Really, a lot.”

Éowyn reached up and touched his cheek. “Tell me.”

“It’s pretty devastating. He can’t say a lot. And what he says is really hard to make out. One side of his face is a bit droopy – apparently that’s to do with the motor control. And it’s possible there’s damage to the language centres of his brain – they don’t know yet, it’s early days.”

He rubbed his hands over his face. Then looked at her, steadily, and took a deep breath. “But – god I hope this isn’t wishful thinking – his eyes follow you as you talk, and sort of respond. And when I joked with him, they sort of crinkled round the corners the way they always used to, and his lips moved. Like he was trying to smile but the muscles weren’t cooperating. And…”

“And?”

He gave a half smile. “I think at one stage, when I said something a bit stupid, he made a noise that sounded very much like ‘fuck’.”

Eowyn couldn’t help it; she gave a low chuckle. Then felt awful. “Sorry.”

“No.” Again, he managed that half-smile. “It’s another thing that makes me think he’s still him.”

“What now?”

“Lunch,” he said. “Not that I feel like eating, but I know I should. Then I thought I’d go back this afternoon and see how he’s doing.”

She took his hand in hers, interlacing her fingers with his.

Philip Glass, Violin Concerto, Mari Samuelsen, BBC Concert Orchestra, Anna-Maria Helsing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpI0gU6ohfI

I also really like this performance – Gidon Kremer, Vienna Phil, Dohnányi – but it’s broken up with ads in a really intrusive way, unfortunately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vov9SAItc9A

Chapter Text

On Sunday night, Éowyn caught the train back to Manchester. Faramir had spent Sunday morning with his brother and had then met her for lunch. They’d spent the afternoon wandering round Hyde Park together before he took her to Euston and waved goodbye to her. (She knew now that UCL was conveniently close to Euston, and that he’d been planning on heading back there after seeing her off.)

Monday had come and gone, with a lesson with Erkenbrand, which had gone well, and a piano lesson, which hadn’t gone so well. She knew she should be putting more effort into piano, but with the amount of demands on her time right now, something had to give, and that something was piano. Monday evening had been spent on the phone to Faramir, catching up on how things were going with Boromir. From the sound of it, he was a bit more obviously himself – but obviously faced a huge struggle to regain both motor control and speech. And was finding it incredibly frustrating and upsetting not to be able to express himself.

“Fuck was always one of his favourite words, now it’s close to being his only word,” Faramir had observed, dryly.

Now it was Tuesday, and she was back in the opera studio session. As before, the room was set up with its low platform, maybe five or six feet above the stage itself. In the middle of this makeshift stage there was a higher platform with a flight of steps facing the non-existent audience, running down to stage level. Éowyn guessed that they were going to be taking staging and direction and choreography to a new level. She had mixed feelings about this. It was interesting to see the process; at the same time, though, it tended to break up rehearsals and leave her getting cold in between stints of playing.

The other change was the tutors. Today was a big deal for the singers. For the half-way point in the term Noldor had brought in a seriously impressive line-up of tutors. They had soprano Luthien Gale tutoring the singing. Éowyn felt slightly star-struck. Even as a non-singer she’d heard of her. Gale was being talked about as a new generation’s Renée Fleming or Joyce DiDonato. Over breakfast Lothíriel had been almost beside herself with excitement. Noldor was conducting (which Éowyn was relieved at – she knew the conducting students had to have their moment in the sun, but rehearsals did tend to go more smoothly with Noldor on the podium). Next to Noldor, though – and fresh from his latest production at Covent Garden – was her husband, the opera director Celeborn Doriath. Presumably this explained the rather more elaborate stage set-up.

Noldor introduced their visitors. The audience – mainly students from other years, seated in chairs round the back of the studio – applauded politely.

Out of the corner of her eye, Éowyn saw the door at the back of the studio open and close. A latecomer. Then she nearly dropped her horn in surprise: it was her brother! Bloody hell! This was a level of interest in a girl she hadn’t seen him display before. He was really going to sit through an opera masterclass, just because Lothíriel was there? The heart-sinking prospect of an endless vista of forced jollity over breakfast and exuberantly girly shopping trips stretched out to the distant horizon. She mentally gave herself a ticking off. Lottie was lovely, even if they were poles apart in terms of personality. And Éomer was playing well out of his league, which was amusing, and generally speaking it was a good thing. Noldor’s voice interrupted her train of thought.

“Okay, our starting point is the Act I finale from Cosi. Can we have our singers up on stage?”

Éowyn pulled her attention back onto the task in hand. The singers trooped up the steps onto the low stage. Éowyn was amused to see that they were partly in costume. Haldir – the guy she and Disa had been working with the previous term – was there, along with Anborn again, the dark haired tenor she remembered from the Verdi rehearsal a couple of weeks back. Both were wearing stage swords and absurdly plumed military hats. But the most ridiculous outfit of the lot had to be Lothíriel, dressed, in a move that was somehow simultaneously incongruous and oddly (and disturbingly) believable, as a French maid.

Okay, scratch her earlier panic. Maybe she could step down from Defcon 3 and stop fretting about being forced into a bridesmaid’s dress. Her brother’s presence might not be true love after all; it might just be the French maid’s outfit.

The rehearsal started with a run through. The action unfolded in a whirlwind of the men throwing themselves at the feet of the two main female characters, then pretending to languish dramatically on the brink of death – of quite what cause, Éowyn wasn’t sure. But it led to the golden moment at which Lothíriel, having rushed off to “find a doctor” reappeared – in a floor length black robe, powdered wig and insanely curly fake moustache. That should damp Éomer's ardour, Éowyn thought, trying not to laugh out loud.

Then Doriath and Gale started to pick the piece apart one section at a time.

“Okay, stop there,” said Celeborn. He sang the chromatic passage from Ferrando’s part. “Can you pick that up in the score for me, Gal?”

Noldor quickly counted bars in her part. “Eleven bars before the key change and shift into three-four.”

“Okay, can we have the orchestra? In fact, no, just the orchestral parts with Ferrando and Guiglielmo’s parts.”

“Okay, violas and cellos please, from eleven bars before the key change.”

She gave an upbeat. The two sections duly played their parts – the violas, a rising chromatic figure ending in upwards thirds, the cellos starting with a descending figure, then picking up the chromatic movement.

“There. Right there. That’s the moment – those chromatic figures, the feeling of musical uncertainty they generate, the feeling of being slightly off-balance – that’s where the boys realise they’re in way over their heads and Don Alfonso has got them into a situation they can no longer control. Luthien, would you agree?”

“Absolutely. So the question is, how do we handle this as singers? You’ve already been worrying that the girls are softening. But now the mood has to get very much darker, quite suddenly, and your tone has to shift to match, but without losing projection or clarity.”

“The acting has to change too.” Celeborn walked over to the two young men. “We need you to reposition yourselves on stage. You’ve been – quite naturally – watching the girls while you sing about your worries that they’re softening towards the Albanians. But now this has to be more of a soliloquy – move, I’d say, just slightly stage left of centre. And if the girls – at the back of the stage – if you move slightly right. Yes, just there. Girls facing each other, as if conferring about your worries. Boys, front of stage, facing outwards. Backs to the girls, and equally importantly, slightly turned away from each other. You’re not talking to one another, you’re each – individually, but at the same time – voicing this sudden feeling of unease that’s hit you. It’s all about using movement to back up the meaning of the words and the emotional content of the music. Let’s walk it back another twenty bars or so to get a run into it.”

“Ferrando,” said Gale, “Let’s start from ‘Più domestiche e trattabile’.”

Galadriel leafed back through the score. “Orchestra, that’s bar two hundred and seventy.”

After an hour of Mozart, they shifted gears abruptly, to the Donizetti. Éowyn watched as Lothíriel skirted round the back of the studio and sat down next to Éomer. They seemed to be discussing something very earnestly. Lothíriel looked quite upset all of a sudden. Éowyn was seized with a vague feeling of unease. But she couldn’t watch them; she had to pay attention to her part. The Donizetti opened with a mood setting melody in the horns, dark and forbidding and prefiguring the tragedy about to unfold on stage.

However, there was (as always) a certain amount of faffing around to be done first. Celeborn was positioning singers on stage. Arwen climbed up the staircase to the slightly rickety looking platform above, and draped herself in a bridal veil – a bridal veil daubed with red paint.

Éowyn raised an eyebrow at Disa who had, as always, done her homework.

Disa rolled her eyes. She was used to this now. Bringing Éowyn up to speed on the plot was a second job. She sighed. “It’s 19th century grand opera: lots of people are going to die, tragically. And in deeply implausible ways. For deeply implausible reasons.”

“Specifically?” asked Éowyn.

“Lucia – that’s Arwen, by the way – is in love with Edgardo (not on stage in this scene). Her evil brother Enrico – Ted Sandyman, over there…” She pointed with her pencil. “In the rather natty false beard just at the bottom of the stairs – anyway, Enrico forces her to marry a nobleman from a more acceptable family, Arturo. Enrico, being a right bastard, has told Edgardo that Lucia is “enjoying” her wedding bed. However, what Enrico doesn’t know is that Lucia has just stabbed Arturo to death in the vicinity of said marriage bed. Hence the bridal veil covered in blood. She returns to the reception, promptly goes mad, sings a lot and then dies, presumably from high-C-itis. Or lead soprano syndrome. Or something. Edgardo, on hearing of her death, stabs himself so that they can be reunited in heaven.”

Éowyn felt a funny sort of twisting feeling in her gut. To try to cover up the feeling, she quipped, “Sounds like an upbeat little number.”

“Yup. This is, officially, ‘The Mad Scene.’ Seriously. It’s actually referred to as the Mad Scene. If you want to look it up on YouTube, that’s what you put in the search bar.”

Éowyn gave a watery smile. “Fun fact. I grew up not far from the Lammermuirs.”

“Ah, well then, you’ll know all about mad aristocrats running wild about the hills.”

Éowyn hoped that the twisting gut feeling wasn’t showing on her face.

When they’d run it in a non-staged rehearsal, Éowyn had had no idea as to what was going on in the piece. She’d been more concerned with quickly pencilling in transpositions and making sure she had the cuts marked. Now she wished she’d done her homework. Having this sprung on her in rehearsal with Arwen draped in a bloodied wedding veil and no escape route was not really how she wanted to approach this subject material.

“Are you okay? You’ve gone white as a sheet?” Disa’s voice seemed to come from far away.

“Fine. I’m fine. I’ll tell you about it later.” Tell you an edited version later, her mind added. Then she remembered telling Faramir. The whole story. Not a lie to spare your friend’s feelings. Maybe she should tell more people. Maybe it was time to come out of the shadows.

Galadriel raised her hands, and Éowyn tried to focus on the music. As with the Mozart, they ran the whole scene.

Arwen was sublime. The piece was a fiendishly hard piece of bel canto for the soprano, but Arwen made the technical side of things sound effortless, while putting body and soul into acting the part. Éowyn felt like her mind was splitting in two. One half was listening to the superb artistry of Arwen’s singing. The other part of her was… back in her teens, a dozen or so miles from the Lammermuirs. She didn’t want to dwell on a bloodied veil as a metaphor. If only she’d had a handy dagger. Though that wasn’t how it went down in real life. In real life you froze. You couldn’t do anything.

You couldn’t even conveniently go mad. You just had to soldier on, not mad, but not exactly sane either, not any more, at any rate. Reliving the flashbacks with all your faculties intact.

And so the two halves of her drifted further apart. The professional part getting on with the music. The other part, the part she didn’t have a name for, drifting out into a tempestuous sea, sinking, drowning.

By the time they’d run it, pulled it apart, put it back together again, Éowyn felt physically sick. The world seemed out of focus. She held onto her horn like an anchor, stopping her from drifting away into the shadowy depths of the ocean that threatened to engulf her.

She didn’t really hear what Disa was saying to her. She was dimly aware of Lothíriel saying something to Éomer, kissing him on the cheek, then leaving. Then Éomer came over to her, and, quite uncharacteristically, took her hands in his.

“Can we sit down? I’ve got something to tell you.”

“I… I’ve got to put my horn away.”

She was suddenly aware of Disa, still sitting at her elbow, looking worried.

“I’ll take it,” said Disa, gently lifting the Alexander out of her hands.

Éomer scrolled through his phone. BBC Norfolk. What the fuck? Then he scrolled down through the articles, and handed the phone over to her.

Felixstowe man stabbed to death. In what police are describing as a drugs related incident, Grima Galmodson, 47, was found stabbed to death in a premises being used as a distribution centre for illegal drugs. The drugs were thought to be part of a supply chain from the Netherlands being imported through Felixstowe...

Éowyn shoved the phone back into Éomer's hands and ran. Out through the doors. Down the corridor. Into the ladies. Into a cubicle. On her knees. Vomiting into the toilet until all that was left were dry heaves.

“Wyn? Wynnie?” A hand was laid gently on her back. She turned her head.

Éomer lifted her gently to her feet and wrapped her in a bear hug.

After she’d had a chance to splash cold water on her face, Éomer took her back to where Disa was waiting, looking anxious. Éomer took her horn case and slung it over his shoulder.

“Come on, wee blister. Let’s get you home.” He looked at her anxiously, then looked at Disa. “Do you want Disa to come too? We’ll get pizza and chocolate ice cream.”

Her teenage choice of comfort food when everything was getting too much. She felt tears prick at her eyes and nodded. Then managed to say, “If that’s alright with you, Disa.”

“Of course it is.”

Over the course of the evening, Éowyn gradually told Disa the whole story. Disa sat, mostly silent, listening, and occasionally reaching out to pat her on the arm. It was funny, Éowyn thought, how she’d gone from this prickly person who shrank from any sort of physical contact to someone who now seemed to crave the connection that came from it. And it turned out it wasn’t just Faramir, it was purely affectionate contact from friends too. The socially awkward, self-contained persona she’d constructed and told herself was central to who she was – all this had crumbled, and she wasn’t quite sure what was there in its place.

Half way through the evening, Faramir rang. She’d started out by asking after Boromir, and got an update, including the fact that Faramir would almost certainly be back in Manchester Monday of next week. He’d worked out a schedule with Thorin Stone such that he could do most of his college work Monday to Thursday of each week, then spend Friday to Sunday with Boromir. The neurology department at UCL wanted to keep him under observation for a while before he was moved to the rehabilitation centre at Stanford Hall.

Out of the corner of her eye, Éowyn could see Disa mouthing “Tell him.” She shook her head.

But she didn’t need to. After bringing her up to date, Faramir suddenly and abruptly changed the subject.

“Are you okay? You sound upset.”

She felt herself tense. How did she tell him without making him feel like he had to be in two places at once? She took a deep breath.

“I’m not good. But it’s under control and Disa and Éomer are looking after me. Éomer found out today that Wormtongue was dead. Killed in some sort of gangland stabbing over drugs.”

Faramir surprised her with the cool way he simply said “Good. Bastard had it coming. He’s no loss.”

She had a sudden flash-back to Christmas and the conversation with Faramir and Boromir in the flat. And her realisation that while Faramir was a very thoughtful, decent, instinctively kind man, there was also an underlying streak of ruthlessness. Some of his father was in there, albeit tempered by a much kinder, better man.

Faramir continued, “But you’re upset.”

“It’s just brought it all back. And… I suppose it ought to give me ‘closure’ or some sort of shit like that. But. It hasn’t. It really hasn’t. I just feel like he never got punished for what he did to me.”

“I think I get that.” There was a long pause. “Do you want me to come up there?”

That was what she’d been worrying about.

“No. Really, I’m fine. Stay with Boromir – he needs you more.”

“It’s not a competition.”

“No. But seriously, I have Éomer. I have Disa. I’ll be fine.”

They talked for a bit longer, then Faramir mentioned that he still had to have dinner, and Éowyn broke off the call with firm instructions that he was to feed himself.

Disa rolled her eyes. “You’re terrible. Your instinct with everything – with everyone – is to cover up your feelings and not let anyone in.”

Éowyn shook her head. “Denial. Works for me.” Then added, “No seriously, this is really tricky for me. Because honestly, Faramir needs to be with Boromir more than I need him. That’s just how it is. If that means downplaying things a bit…”

“You say downplaying. I say lying by omission. Not healthy.”

“We’ll sort it out when he’s under less stress, honest.”

“Be careful.” Disa looked at her, and her expression softened. She came over and gave Éowyn a hug.

Wednesday was a day to be endured. The emotional aftershocks still hadn’t left her. She fought her way through it, ticking off classes and rehearsals and practice time one item at a time. And all through it, nagging away, was the horrible knowledge that tomorrow she had period orchestra – the first time since her row, the first time since Elfhelm and Erkenbrand had had to pull out all the stops to prevent her being kicked off the module. Pulling out all the stops had included her agreeing to a painful meeting, refereed by a reluctant Noldor, between her and King, in which she’d had to grovel and apologise.

Thursday brought another of King’s capricious, malicious last minute changes of plan. He suddenly announced that instead of being in the main auditorium, they’d be in the rehearsal studio. Éowyn wondered what was up until she walked in and saw a group of unhappy looking singers – both the chorus (who always got a tongue-lashing from King) and soloists (which included Lothíriel and Arwen).

Of course. King’s ego. He’d heard about the high-profile opera class earlier in the week, with Gale and Doriath. So he need to stage his own period-instrument opera class. Just because.

King clocked her as soon as she walked in.

“Miss Earl. How delightful.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “May I begin by reminding you you are here on sufferance, because Professors Hartmann and Marshall pleaded with me to give you a second chance.”

Pleaded. God, he clearly loved framing it that way. Made him feel like Billy Big-Baws, thinking his colleagues were grovelling. She carefully kept her face neutral.

King addressed the orchestra and singers. “Miss Earl has of course apologised for her entirely unacceptable behaviour of a few weeks ago.” He turned back to her, a smug smirk playing on his lips. “If you wouldn’t mind, perhaps you could repeat that apology in public?”

He was clearly relishing the power. She took a deep breath. The course mattered more than winning a single skirmish.

“I apologise.”

“For what?”

“I apologise for questioning your historical and musical judgement. It won’t happen again.”

“Remember that. Now sit down, and keep quiet unless you’re actually called on to play. In tune, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Éowyn took her seat, seething inwardly, and with a horrible feeling that everything was about to go to shit, catastrophically.

Donizetti, Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor, Natalie Dessay and the Metropolitan Opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92jiitUEahg
And the scene in full, from Houston Grand Opera, with Laura Claycomb as Lucia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cefNlpc1wGM
Lisette Operesa talks about how hard it is to perform – hitting the right combination of making the singing beautiful versus being convincingly mad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR_SqtJMqZE

I want a feminist re-write where, having killed her evil husband, Lucia abseils out the window on her torn-up veil, escapes to find Edgardo standing over the dead body of her evil brother, having killed him fair and square in a duel, and the two escape to… I dunno, France, Italy, wherever and live happily ever after.

If you’re wondering about the inconsistency in spelling, Lammermuir is the Scots spelling (pronounced myure, which I think is quite tricky for English people). Walter Scott, in the novel, anglicised this to Lammermoor. Donizetti then followed Scott’s spelling. I’m told it’s one of the very few “tells” I still have as to my Scots origins – I still (very occasionally) say “muir” and “buik” (book).

And the cuts… oh god, the cuts. I played this just before Christmas with a local opera group, and ended up regressing to primary school and taking scissors and prit-stick to a photocopy so I had a clean copy so I knew what the fuck was going on.

Meanwhile, back with Mozart, here’s the shift in mood in the Act I finale of Cosi:
https://youtu.be/MXCEuYL1pBU?t=5020
The girls start to worry that the dashing “Albanians” really have taken poison. The boys start to worry the girls are softening.

Nerd alert: I have no idea whether it is bar 270 because my score does not have bar numbers, but the video is picking it up at the right moment. However, I did sit down and work out that the chromatic passage I think is so central to the emotional shift is indeed eleven bars before the key change (should you wish to consult the score, available from IMSLP). As a musical trick, to my mind it’s up there with “How strange the change from major to minor” in “Every Time We Say Goodbye” by Cole Porter – sung here by Ella Fitzgerald, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOllc918mcE (the magic in this case happens at about 1:30). You may have realised I’m a bit of an Ella Fitzgerald fangirl.

Chapter Text

Despite the hellish start, the early part of the rehearsal plodded along ponderously. At first glance it was as if King had given no thought to the instrumental and vocal resources at his disposal, and how to schedule the rehearsal time efficiently. On more careful reflection, Éowyn was pretty sure this wasn’t poor planning, it was deliberate time-wasting.

She and Disa were sitting in their usual places in the opera rehearsal studio, at the back, stage left below the low platform that served as stage for the singers. The period orchestra was spread out in front of them. And she and Disa were twiddling their thumbs.

The line up for today was a series of extracts from period operas, from Monteverdi to Cavalli and Handel. Of these, only the Handel opera had horn parts. The sensible thing, of course, would have been to do the Handel first, then let Disa and Éowyn go. Instead King had interspersed arias – “thematically”, he’d said, but Éowyn was pretty sure he was just enjoying messing the brass players around.

The ponderous opening was the calm before the storm. It seemed as though, having vented his spleen on Éowyn early on, King needed a few moments to regather the requisite amount of bile, but now he was spitting it over anyone within range. The extracts from Cavalli had some fiddly violin passage; King went on the attack against the leader. Éowyn winced. This time he’d gone for imaginary failings in rhythm and attack rather than intonation. His target was the principal second, a pretty dark-haired second-year. Éowyn had met her down the pub a few times; she and Merry seemed to be an item, though Éowyn wasn’t entirely certain. Anyway, whether or not she was Merry’s girlfriend, King certainly had it in for her.

The Cavalli came and went. Now King moved on to the Monteverdi – specifically, the “morning after the night before” scene in L’Incoronazione di Poppea. As always, Disa had had to explain the plot (during a five minute break – the idea of the meltdown King would have if he caught his brass section chatting during the actual rehearsal was unthinkable). Newly up to speed, Éowyn turned her chair and looked up at the stage behind her. The emperor Nero and his lover (and soon-to-be second wife), Poppea were engaged in a soulful duet of spent passion and seductive preparations for a second round, interspersed with political intrigue as Poppea tried to consolidate her position, moving from mistress to wife via the tactic of having the existing wife beheaded.

The music was every bit as ravishing and seductive as the plot demanded. The staging, on the other hand…

Lothíriel was, yet again, woefully miscast in a trouser role. Another Roman emperor. “Roman Emperor” was clearly not playing to her strengths. Equally clearly, King was no Celeborn Doriath when it came to stage direction. Though, again as a second thought, it occurred to Éowyn that King had done it deliberately.

The rest of the casting was just as terrible. Playing opposite Lothíriel was another first year – only, this one was as mousy as Lottie was ebullient. Certainly a million miles from scheming temptress and political animal intent on seducing the most powerful man in the known world, despite (or perhaps, in a case of kindred spirits attracting, because of) the fact that he was a complete psychopath.

For the moment, though, King was ignoring the singers, intent only on making the orchestra’s life miserable. Specifically the guy playing the theorbo, who apparently (allegedly) hadn’t tuned correctly. Éowyn entertained herself with a cartoon-esque fantasy in which the theorbo player got to his feet, wielded his instrument like Robert the Bruce wielding a claymore, and twatted King round the head with it. Those things were fucking huge. Timed right, Éowyn was sure you could easily knock someone out that way.

“From the start of the duet, singers.” King had shouted at people so often during the rehearsal his voice came out as a hoarse bark. Christ, he hasn’t even bothered to find out his singers’ names. It was all Éowyn could do not to roll her eyes visibly. She was aware that anything other than a completely neutral expression would lead to another fit of anger.

The duet unfolded, slowly. It should have involved building sexual tension; instead there was a woodenness to both performances. Finally King acknowledged this (surely he must have known all along – Éowyn assumed he’d been playing dumb as some sort of mind game), and turned his attention to the two singers.

“You’re meant to be the worst Roman emperor of all time. It’s not a bloody Victorian parlour ditty.”

Lottie winced visibly. She tried to stand up straighter, and puff her chest out.

“Movement. I need movement. Command the stage.”

It was obvious to Éowyn that Lothíriel was trying to remember Gamling’s advice. She started to move about the stage, seemingly doing the “imaginary line between the feet” technique. This didn’t impress King in the slightest.

“What the hell’s that supposed to be? Bloody line dancing? We’re in ancient Rome, woman, not bloody Texas. Right, orchestra, pick it up from bar 263.”

The singers tried again. Lothíriel tried (and failed) to strut across the stage. Even her singing was off, poisoned by King’s malevolent presence. Two days earlier, Lottie had sparkled as the saucy servant in Cosi; today she sang with the conviction of a soggy blancmange past its best. Meanwhile, her Poppea tried (and also failed) to drape herself seductively over the low sofa that formed the only furnishing to the stage. The audience might have been hoping for Joyce DiDonato – but she seemed to be chanelling her inner Joyce Grenfell.

King gave no help. There were no hints on anything – whether characterisation, vocal projection, staging, positioning on stage. He just let them get worse and worse. With a sinking feeling Éowyn recognised the technique. He did this sometimes: left students to flounder until they’d got into such a mess that he could justify (in his own mind, if nowhere else) a volcanic eruption of rage. The fact that this time she wasn’t going to be on the receiving end did nothing to stop the knotted feeling in her stomach.

Even if, on stage at any rate, the growth in sexual tension was not apparent in the two singers, Éowyn could hear the underlying intention in the string parts, a gradual building of desire, reaching its climax in a sudden rapid rising scale in the cello continuo, echoed by Lottie launching into a sudden allegro passage. Her articulation as she attacked the rising scale was perfect, but delivered almost like a technical exercise in coloratura.

“NO!” Finally, King’s explosion arrived. “She’s been trying to seduce you, you’ve finally cracked and are on the brink of ravishing her. Which does not take the form of bellowing an out-of-tune scale from half a cricket pitch away.”

“Sorry,” said Lottie, then (with a defiant tilt of her chin) added, “Some direction would be really helpful.”

“Direction! I’ll give you direction!” King stepped down from the podium and strode angrily through the orchestra, almost body checking the principal viola on his way past. He climbed the steps onto the staging, then shoved the mousy soprano out of the way, and turned his furious gaze on Lottie “You’re Poppea, I’m you – stand here. Cello – from the scale.”

King launched into the vocal part, an octave down, without the words, just vaguely filling in the tune. And as he did so, he grabbed Lottie roughly by the arm, pulled her to him, then pushed her back onto the chaise long before almost crawling on top of her, placing his hand on her breast to hold her down. And all the while, he continued to sing in the creaking, rusty parody of a coloratura line.

Éowyn was paralysed by the look of fear on Lothíriel’s face, part terror, part utter repulsion. Lottie gave an involuntary squeak of horror.

“No!” Her voice came out in a high screech as she tried to push him off her.

Éowyn reacted instinctively. It was as if five years’ worth of emotions had suddenly come to the boil inside her – a nauseating, gut-griping sickness at the hand on Lottie’s breast, second hand fear as Lottie’s terrified expression triggered her own memories, a term and a half of bottled up outrage at how she herself had been treated, and the unifying, over-arching sensation of a blinding, blazing rage the likes of which she had never felt before. The world swam red before her, with her eyes laser focused on King.

“Hold my horn.” Éowyn thrust the Alex into Disa’s hands. She didn’t bother with the steps. Placing both palms on the edge of the staging, she vaulted up onto it, crossed the stage in three swift paces and seized King by the scruff of the neck. The rage seemed to give her superhuman strength; she picked him up almost as if he’d been a rag doll.

“She said no!” Then, suddenly realising what she’d done, she released him.

Mistake.

He turned and swung a fist at her. The sheer shock value of it took her by surprise. (When she re-ran events later, over and over again, she told herself she should have anticipated such an amateur move. But in the heat of the moment...)

She bobbed her head back on instinct, but he still made contact with her cheekbone. Pain exploded out across her face. She felt her teeth rattle in their sockets. Again, completely on instinct, she countered with a jab and cross that Gamling would have been proud of. The jab didn’t do much damage, but the cross connected solidly with King’s nose. He reeled backwards, landing with a crash on his arse on the stage.

There was complete silence. All Éowyn could hear was her own breathing roaring in her ears. Then King gave a groan. He half rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow, and clutched his hand to his nose. Éowyn could see the dark red blood trickling between his fingers and dropping onto the smooth, black surface of the stage, leaving inky, oily droplets.

“Someone call the police. I’ve been assaulted.” King’s voice came out in a nasal, muffled whine. He patted his pockets down, then pulled his phone out.

Police? Éowyn staggered back, then sat heavily on the sofa in the centre of the stage. What the fuck had she done? She let her head fall forwards, covering her face with her hands. Between her fingers, she saw one of the other students come onto the stage and help King to his feet, saw King limp to the side of the stage and start to prod at the phone with his index finger. Suddenly, she felt the couch beside her sag. She lifted her head just a fraction. It was Disa.

“The fucker means it – I think he’s going to call 999.”

“Shit. He… It was instinct. He punched me, I punched back.”
.
“Self defence. But it’s going to be messy before it gets better.”

“What have I done?”

“Hang tight.” Disa gave her head a shake and her braids bobbed. “Time for the talk.”

“The talk?”

“The one all black mums have to have with their sons once they get to within a head height of adult size. How to handle the police. Don’t say anything beyond your name and ‘I want a lawyer.’ Don’t admit to anything. Don’t explain. Be polite but don’t talk. And don’t whatever the fuck else you do, accept a caution. They’ll try to sell it as just a minor piece of admin, a way of making everything disappear and letting you go home. It isn’t. It carries the same legal consequences as pleading guilty in court. Your future employment prospects will be fucked if you accept a caution.”

Éowyn felt her head swimming.

“Three things. That’s all. Ask for a lawyer. Stay polite but don’t say anything. Don’t sign a caution.”

Éowyn felt tears start to prick and wiped her hand across her eyes, wincing as she made contact with the bruise on her cheekbone.

“C’mon, stay with me. What are the three things you’ve got to do?”

Éowyn took a breath. “Lawyer. Stay quiet. Don’t sign anything.”

There was a soft thump to the other side, and Éowyn turned her head to see Lothíriel kneeling down.

“Thank you. God, thank you. That was horrible, just horrible, what he was doing.”

The doors to the rehearsal studio swung open, and Noldor came in, closely followed by Stone. They looked like… Éowyn searched for the right phrase… They looked like they’d come to preside over a hanging. Hers. They conferred for a moment, then Stone headed for King, who had finished his phone call and was now standing, handkerchief pressed against his nose. Noldor came over to Éowyn.

“Would you care to tell me your version of events?” There was an ice-cold professionalism to her tone.

Éowyn started to speak, but Lothíriel interrupted. “Professor King sexually assaulted me under the guise of pretending to give stage directions. Éowyn pulled him off me. There was a scuffle, he hit her, she hit him back in self defence.”

Noldor fixed her with a stare that could have quelled an oncoming army. “I did not ask you. Éowyn?”

“That’s pretty much what happened. King said they weren’t doing the seduction scene right, said he’d show them how it was done, then shoved Lottie onto the couch and started to grope her. She was obviously really upset and saying no, so I got onto the stage and pulled him off her. Then he hit me…” She pointed to the bruise on her cheek. “And I hit him back. I didn’t mean to. It was just… instinctive. He’d hit me.”

Noldor nodded curtly, then turned to confer with Stone.

Éowyn started to shake. Adrenaline, she supposed. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What had she done?

Éowyn shifted uncomfortably on the narrow bench. The “mattress”, if you could call it that, was only a couple of inches thick and covered in plastic which left her legs sweaty even though the rest of her was cold. She was very, very bored. And scared. And hungry. But mostly bored.

The journey in the back of the police car and arrival at the station had passed in a blur. She remembered the fingerprints, the mugshots, the collection of all her personal items, the removal of her shoe laces. But not really what order it had all happened in. And the caution. The caution had fucking terrified her. “Don’t talk,” Disa had said. But now it seemed like if she didn’t talk, they’d assume she was guilty when it got to court.

She couldn’t help thinking back to her last court appearance, on the opposite side. She knew how easily her words could be twisted. So she knew exactly why Disa had said “Don’t talk.” But at the same time, now they’d told her that if she didn’t talk the court would assume she was dodgy as fuck. Dammed if she did. Dammed if she didn’t.

She gave an audible sigh. It was like this was the summation of her whole life. The icing on the cake. Her crappy lack of choices taken to its logical conclusion and encapsulated neatly in one brief moment of scuffle.

She’d asked for a lawyer. They’d just nodded and said one would be along later. She’d asked them to call Éomer. Who knew whether they’d actually done it, or if they had, whether he’d be able to do anything. She’d assumed from TV that she’d immediately get a lawyer then they’d do an interview right away. Which wouldn’t be nice. But at least it would be done. All done and dusted in an hour or so.

Instead, here she was, twiddling her thumbs in a cell, with nothing to do. And no clock. Nothing to mark the passage of time. It was doing her head in. An idea occurred to her. Perhaps she could measure time with music. Imagine herself doing the full Farkas warm up – that should be good for twenty minutes. And scales – every single scale and its minor, two octaves, arpeggios, dominant and diminished sevenths, whole tone, chromatic. She started trying to do the arithmetic. Crotchet equals one-twenty, scales in quavers, arpeggios in quaver triplets. How long would that take?

She gave up trying to do the arithmetic.

She did, however, settle down to pretend to go through all the scales, even the really shitty keys like F sharp and C sharp. She guessed it must have taken twenty minutes at least.

Then she pretended to play all of the Mozart Concertos. Eight minutes for the first one, maybe fifteen minutes each for the other three.

Strauss 1 – closer to twenty minutes.

She reckoned she must have filled in about two hours, but still nothing had happened. Except that she realised she’d been pretending to tongue the notes as well as moving her fingers across imaginary valves, and now her tongue was sore. She explored the side of her mouth. There… Just below the throbbing cheekbone. She vaguely remembered her teeth rattling as King’s flailing punch had connected. Dammit. She’d chipped a tooth. There was a rough bit on one of the bottom molars.

She tried to tuck her tongue out of the way. It was one of those times where the harder you tried not to do something, the harder it became to resist. On top of everything else, she became aware of a low, dragging pain at the bottom of her back. Oh god. Not now. Not now of all times. Sure enough, an imagined rendition of the first movement of Beethoven 3 later, she felt that familiar trickling sensation in her groin. Her sodding period had started.

There was a rattle and the jangle of a key in the lock and the door swung open. It was a new police officer, one she hadn’t seen before, a middle-aged man with a greying moustache and a bit of a gut on him. He was carrying a sandwich and a plastic bottle of water.

“Is my solicitor here yet?”

“Solicitor? Didn’t they tell you? Duty solicitor’s unlikely to be here before tomorrow morning. Might as well settle yourself down and try to get some sleep.” He gestured to the blanket, folded, at the foot of the bed.

Éowyn felt a rising tide of panic, which she tried to push back down, deep, deep inside her. C’mon, she tried to pull herself together. She’d had plenty of training in dealing with this. She could cope with a night here. It’s not like they were going to do anything to her. Boredom was about as bad as it was going to get.

“Can I go to the toilet?” Her voice sounded shaky, and maybe a fifth higher than normal, like some little kid.

“I’ll get a female officer to escort you.”

The door locked. It felt like an age, but must have only been a few minutes, when the door was unlocked. The woman was younger, dark hair scraped back in a bun, uniform bulky on a thin frame. She took Éowyn down the corridor.

The toilet was a relief. There wasn’t a mirror, though, so Éowyn couldn’t check the bruise.

Her pants were soaked through. She took them off, gave the gusset a quick wash in the sink, then tried, ineffectually, to dry them under the hand drier. Then she folded up as much toilet roll as she could into a pad and stuffed it into her knickers.

Once back in the cell, she ate the sandwich – dry and unappetising, but better than nothing, she supposed. She decided to ration the water out a little at a time. Then she unfolded the blanket and settled down, carefully putting the pillow under her right cheek to avoid the throbbing bruise on the other side. She pulled the blanket over herself and tried to sleep, curling up into a ball to try to stay warm.

As she shifted restlessly, the main thought that kept coming back to her (or perhaps second thought – the main one had to be “I am completely fucked here”) – anyway, the thought her mind kept circling back to was how much she wanted Faramir. And how impossible it was to ask for him, because, however much shit she’d got herself into, she was the one who’d done it – it was all her own fault, and he was busy looking after his brother, who was in hospital through no fault of his own. And, as her mind really got into the swing of spiralling downwards, how it might well be the case that Faramir wouldn’t want anything more to do with someone who’d demonstrated they were capable of assaulting someone.

Eventually exhaustion claimed her, and she slipped into a fitful, unsettled sleep.

Monteverdi: Signor, deh, non partire! from L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Sarah Connolly and Miah Persson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSAe_ThZIWM

Apologies for the Portuguese subtitles, but I love this performance. Nerone aka Nero (Connolly) is married to his empress, Ottavia, but Poppea (Persson) is determined to seduce him, displace Ottavia (who comes to a very bad end) and get crowned herself. (As with Va Tacito, Connolly’s part would originally have been sung by a castrato.)

Fantasies involving twatting people round the head with theorbos has a certain historical pedigree. Apparently James VI and I (aka the “wisest fool in Christendom”) once had his customs officials refuse entry to a renowned Italian (I think) theorbo player because he thought the instrument was some sort of weapon in disguise and part of an assassination plot aimed at him.

Find of the week: Yun Zeng playing Strauss (Zeng is the new principal horn at the Berlin Phil).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuHblrJBewA
His tone is amazing. (A few split notes – but I think competition nerves probably explain this, plus he was only in his teens when this was recorded.) Don’t worry – Stefan’s still going to be around. The Berlin Phil typically has two principals (partly because of the enormous workload).

Details of police procedure and the law (in this chapter and the next one) largely taken from Nasir Hafezi's Community Legal Education YouTube channel. Mistakes are of course my own.

SPOILER ALERT FOR COMMENTS SECTION: Katy and I got into quite a lengthy discussion of legal niceties which gives you quite a lot of the plot for the next chapter - so don't read if you want that to come as a surprise.

And apologies for the gap in posting - I'm snowed under at work.

Chapter Text

“You can use this room, Indis,” the police officer said, gesturing the pair of them into a small room with a table and two chairs.

“I’d prefer it if you called me Mrs Khan, thank you, Sergeant,” the woman said. She ushered Éowyn into the room, then closed the door firmly.

“Doesn’t do to let them think they can get all pally with you,” she explained. “Sit down.”

Éowyn looked at her solicitor. A grey floor-length gown and dark blue hijab, intelligent brown eyes, and a solid local accent. Or maybe not. Not Manchester. Somewhere north of Manchester perhaps?

“You can call me Indis, though. How are you?” She sat down on the chair opposite.

“Tired. Sore. Hungry. Thirsty.”

“That’s not good. Didn’t they get you food and water when you asked?”

“They brought me a sandwich last night and some toast this morning.”

“Didn’t they tell you you could ring the buzzer to ask for stuff?”

“No… I didn’t even know there was a buzzer.” Éowyn paused, then felt her cheeks turn red. “Umm… I need some tampons or towels or something. My period came on last night.”

“Hang on a minute.” Her solicitor went to the door and called out. There was a brief conversation, then she came back. “There will be a female officer along in a moment to bring you some sanitary protection and take you to the toilet. Again, they should have told you this was available.”

She looked across the table, assessing. Just for a moment, the look of thoughtful concern on her face made Éowyn think of Faramir.

“That bruise on your face – how did you get that?”

“It’s from when Professor King hit me.”

“So pre-custody. Okay. Any other physical injuries?”

“I think my teeth must have banged together awkwardly when he hit me – I seem to have chipped a tooth.”

“Have they got a doctor to look at you and catalogue the injuries?”

“No.”

“They should have done. I’ll just call the custody sergeant and have him arrange a medic. We need the bruise photographed and recorded, and the damage to your tooth. And we’ll definitely want to revisit the lack of immediate medical attention with them later.” She paused for a moment. “Okay. Let me summarise what this chat’s about. It’s really a chance for me to do two things – first, explain the legal situation to you and what to expect in the interview, and second, to get your account of things. Is that clear so far?”

“Yes,” Éowyn said. To her own ears her voice came out strangely flat.

“Right, first off, did they read you the caution? The statement that went like this: You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence If you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

“Yes.” Éowyn felt the silence after that single word pressing in on her. She felt she had to speak. “It scared me shitless, to be honest.” Then she looked at Indis’s hijab. “Sorry for my language.”

Indis smiled. “I’ve heard worse. You tend to, in this job. Okay, so let me talk you through what it means, particularly the middle bit. The first bit – obviously you have the right not to say anything. The last bit – they will record the interview, and anything you say can be used in court – either the recording itself or a transcript. And the interview is designed to ferret out inconsistencies. To put not to fine a point on it, to trip you up.

“So, it’s the middle bit that matters. You could choose to stay silent, give a no-comment interview, which removes the risk of them tripping you up. But there are circumstances – it’s not automatic, note – there are circumstances where the court can draw what’s known as ‘adverse inference’ from your silence.

“On the other hand, you could answer questions, because giving a consistent, truthful account now, then sticking to it in court – particularly if it matches the statements given by the other witnesses – will make you look like a reliable witness. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes.” Éowyn paused for a moment. “My best friend said to keep quiet. Mind you, she’s black so I don’t think her community has the easiest relationship with the police.”

“An issue I’m familiar with,” Indis said, dryly. “I think what we’ll do is go through your recollection of events, then I can advise you on what I see as the best way to play things. I will say this, though. A no-comment interview isn’t automatically the best strategy from a defence perspective.”

Éowyn took a deep breath. “I’m terrified they will try to trip me up, like you said. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in court.”

Indis raised her eyebrows just a fraction, but remained quiet, waiting for the next bit. The sort of attentive silence that, again, reminded Éowyn of Faramir.

“I was a witness. In fact I was raped. The defence solicitor gave me a hell of a time in court. Trying to get me to contradict myself, trying to argue I couldn’t remember things clearly.”

“He would have been a barrister, but yes, that’s fairly standard, sadly.”

Suddenly Éowyn felt a wave of anger. “How do you do this job and sleep at night?”

“I wasn’t on the defence team in your case,” Indis said. Suddenly she sounded world-weary. Her facial expression seemed closed-off suddenly. Éowyn realised she was in danger of becoming yet another in a long line of awkward sods the solicitor had encountered in this tiny room.

“Sorry. I know you weren’t. And I’m… relieved you’re here. Immensely relieved.”

The guarded look faded, just by a fraction.

“If you want to know why I do it – it’s long, and complicated, but the bottom line is the principle of blind justice. You defend everyone as best you can, because if the judicial process is going to be fair to everyone, not just the ones who look like nice people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. If it’s unfair for anyone – even the person your instincts tell you is guilty as sin before you start – then it ceases to be a fair system.”

It sounded as though the line of argument was a well-worn one that Indis was accustomed to giving, though there was a note of sincerity underlying her words.

“But we need to get back to your case. Walk me through what happened.”

“So, I’m a student at the music college. We had an opera rehearsal. Singers plus orchestra, taken by Professor King. It wasn’t going very well, and he was annoyed with the singers. Well, he was annoyed with pretty much everyone, but particularly the singers, said they weren’t acting very well. Which in fairness, they weren’t, but probably mainly because they were terrified he was going to shout at them.

“The scene was kind of, I dunno, a seduction scene I guess. Both roles sung by women – long complicated history behind that, but basically it happens quite a lot in opera, you have two sopranos, but one of them’s playing a male character. Anyway, King lost his temper and said he’d show them how the seduction scene ought to go. He pushed his way through the orchestra, and got onto the stage. Then he shoved Lottie – one of the singers – onto this couch that was in the middle of the stage and climbed on top of her and started groping her. She was obviously terrified – her face… And she kept trying to push him off and say no. And I… Well, I kind of lost my temper and climbed onto the stage and grabbed him and pulled him off her.”

“What did you do after you’d pulled him off her?”

“Well I suddenly realised I was in really deep shit – grabbing one of the professors. So I let him go. And he turned round and hit me. And I hit him back. I didn’t mean to, but it was kind of instinctive…”

“How many times did you hit him?”

“Twice. Jab and cross.” Éowyn mimed the motions.

Indis looked very thoughtful. “Am I right in thinking you’ve got some sort of training in this sort of thing?”

“Yeah, I took up boxing after… after I was raped.”

“For self defence?”

“Yes. But then I kind of got hooked on it as a sport.”

“I see. And what was going through your head – after he hit you, and when you hit him?”

“Honestly? Nothing. He didn’t land his punch that well, but it was still bloody painful. Too painful to think straight, really. And I just wanted to stop him doing it again, and get myself out of there.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, he fell over backwards and landed on his ar… bum. And held his hand to his nose. And I realised it was bleeding. Then he started going on about calling the police and I realised just how much trouble I was in. Then everything’s a bit of a blur. Someone helped me over to the couch. Lottie said thank you, I think. And Disa – my mate in the horn section – she came over to see how I was. And to tell me not to talk to the police and remember to ask for a lawyer. And… there was something else. I can’t remember now.”

Éowyn felt tiredness wash over her like a giant wave, and felt tears prick her eyes. She rubbed them angrily.

“What happened to King?”

“I think someone helped him up. I wasn’t really paying attention. I did hear him say he was calling the police.”

“Okay, I think that covers the details of the incident. I’d like to explore a bit more about you and King. Sounds like he’s a bit of a bully.”

“Understatement. He’s shouted at me loads of times, threatened to kick me off his course recently.”

“Why was that?”

“We had an argument about historical accuracy. Normally I just try to keep quiet and out of the way in his classes, but he’d touched on an aspect of horn playing I’d written a dissertation about. It’s kind of complicated and technical…” Éowyn rubbed her eyes again, this time as much to buy herself time to think as anything else. “Really the bottom line is he was really having a go at me when in fact what he was asking me to do was impossible on the sort of horn I’d got.”

“And would you say he’s got it in for you personally, or is he like that with other students?”

Éowyn gave a bitter laugh. “Let’s see. He kicked Hama off his course after Hama walked out because he kept shouting at him. Miriel dropped out of his course and switched to something else because she couldn’t take him any more. Valandil and Arondir had a run-in with him and accused him of racism – which I think it was, I was there. The college authorities said it wasn’t. It was one of those things that skirted just the right side of…” Suddenly she had a flashback to the kitchen in London, to Boromir translating Faramir’s throwaway comment in Russian. She felt a lump in her throat and swallowed. “It was just the right side of plausible deniability.”

Indis nodded. “I know the kind of thing.” A strand of dark hair had escaped from beneath the blue cloth, and the solicitor pushed it back under her hijab in an automatic, almost absent-minded gesture.

Éowyn looked at her and thought Yeah, I suppose you would, then wondered what it took to make it as an Asian woman, and a visibly observant Muslim woman as well.

Indis continued. “That’s helpful to have that background, thanks. Okay, the key thing here is the likelihood that we can successfully use self-defence as a defence to a charge of assault, and from what you’ve said so far, I think this is a promising line to take. Yes, you started things, but by intervening in a situation where you justifiably thought someone was being sexually assaulted. You let go of him as soon as you’d pulled him away from the other woman. Do you think she’ll back your version up?”

“Lottie came over and said thank you after it happened.”

“Is Lottie a friend of yours, then?”

“Yes. In fact, she’s my brother’s girlfriend.” Éowyn paused, wondering how much of the complicated details of her life her solicitor needed to know, then thought In for a penny, in for a pound. She knew from hard, bitter experience that everything about her life would be sifted through and held up for examination in as harsh a light as possible when things came to court. “And I’m going out with her cousin. Which kind of sounds a bit weird but that’s just how things panned out.”

“Ah, that could get interesting. We’ll come back to that later. But continuing with the issue of self-defence, again, the fact that he hit you first, and your response was instinctive and in the heat of the moment, and you didn’t follow through after the initial pair of punches will play in your favour. So my advice would definitely be to allow the police to interview you – get this version on record before you can be accused of having arranged to have your narrative agree with your best friend’s and your brother’s girlfriend’s versions.”

Eowyn sensed there was a but coming.

“But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be plain sailing. There are, as I see it, three things any prosecution barrister worth their salt is going to push you on – and hence the police will too.” Indis began to tick them off on her fingers. “First, they’re going to try to use your history of being a rape victim to argue that you misinterpreted events – that your own emotions led you to misinterpret a regrettably hands-on but otherwise honest attempt at giving stage direction as an assault. Second, they will probably argue that your past history with King means that you were already on a hair trigger and ready to over-react – though we should be able to rebut that if we can show that he had an all-round track record of bullying. Third, they may try to give you a hard time over the boxing – argue that it’s equivalent to going into a situation ‘tooled up.’ But I’m pretty confident we have case law on our side on that one.”

Éowyn felt a sick feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. Her rape was going to be dredged up, picked over in court again.

“I still think, though, that all things considered, you want to give an interview and play it as straight as you can. We don’t want to go for a no-comment interview.” She tucked another strand of hair out the way.

“So, the police usually take this in three stages. First, they’ll ask you to give an account just like you’ve done to me. Keep close to the way you’ve just detailed events – I think that was fine. The key things, from a defence point of view, are that you let go of King as soon as you’d pulled him off the singer, that he then hit you first, that you responded, briefly and proportionately, in the heat of the moment.”

Éowyn felt like she was expected to respond at this point, so she nodded.

“The second stage, they’ll read it back to you and ask for confirmation – things like ‘So you say he hit you first, is that right?’ They normally play this bit of the interview fairly straight, but if there’s any point where you feel that they’re misrepresenting what you’ve said, step in and correct them. And remember I’m here to back you up.”

Again, Éowyn nodded, then said, miserably, “Okay. Yeah. I understand. I think.”

“The third stage is where they start to ask you open ended questions to check your account out, and this is the bit you’ll probably find hard. They’ll ask stuff like ‘What made you think it was a sexual assault? Are you sure he wasn’t just showing her how she was supposed to act the scene?’ and ‘Are you sure your rape doesn’t mean you over-reacted and your own emotions meant you misinterpreted things?’”

Éowyn let her head fall forward and buried her face in her hands.

“Yes, I’m afraid they will go there.”

“Do I have to mention the rape? I mean, it’s not like they’ll know if I don’t tell them.”

“They probably don’t know right now, but they’ll find out pretty quickly once they start doing a search across databases. I can lead into the question if you want – something along the lines of ‘My client wants to disclose the following by way of context and in order to give a full account of the background.’ As for relations with King, you don’t mention that in the first part of the interview – that’s about the events that happened, in the order they happened. Steer well clear of motives – your own, or what you think King’s were, or even what you assume was going on in Lottie’s head. You can talk about her pushing him away, her saying no, you can even say you thought she looked frightened – because that’s about what you saw. As for allegations that King was bullying you, that will probably come out in the third part of the interview.”

Éowyn suddenly blurted out, “I feel sick…”

Indis shoved a box of tissues across the table. “Do you need me to get the female police officer to take you to the toilet?”

Éowyn took several deep breaths. “No, I’ll be alright. I think.” She leaned into that knotted feeling in her stomach, and mentally prepared herself for the ordeal to come. Indis got up to find out from the desk sergeant whether the doctor had arrived yet to catalogue Eowyn’s bruise and chipped tooth, then took photos of them herself on her phone.

And now Éowyn was home. And she wasn’t alright. She was very far from alright. About as far as it was possible to be.

She’d sobbed in Éomer's arms for the best part of half an hour she guessed. Messy, snotty, angry, desperate crying.

The dredging up of the rape and trial had been particularly awful. She’d been prepared for questions about whether her emotional response meant she’d misinterpreted King’s actions. What she hadn’t been prepared for was a particularly lengthy line of questioning where the two detectives interviewing her had argued that because Wormtongue had been acquitted, this meant the rape had never taken place and she was a serial fantasist who always thought the worst of men. King was just the latest victim of her misandry and unpredictable emotions and anger.

They’d only backed off when, having asked for Wormtongue's details so they could check his side of the story for corroborating details of this, she’d told them she’d recently found out he’d been stabbed to death in an altercation with a fellow drug-dealer. It seemed to have dawned on them at that point that maybe relying on the idea that she’d got previous for trying to fit up an innocent, upstanding family man wouldn’t fly given that he was obviously low-life scum.

After the interview, there had been a horrible moment, back in the police station, when she thought they were going to keep her there. Formally charge her, take her back to the cells, keep her there till something Indis said was called a remand hearing. But in the end they’d released her on something called police bail. This meant she wasn’t allowed to approach King – no problem there. If she never saw him again in her life it would be too soon. But she also wasn’t meant to see any of the other witnesses – which included Disa, and which was also going to put a bit of a damper on Éomer's life, seeing as how they lived together, so he now couldn’t have Lottie round there.

So, finally, at about eleven in the morning, they’d released her (without mobile phone – that was still bagged and held as evidence), and she’d started the long walk home to Fallowfield and Éomer.

Indis had said she’d organise challenging the bail conditions on Monday. The ban on seeing King was fair enough, but the rest of the conditions would make it almost impossible to attend college.

She’d realised that without her phone she couldn’t contact anyone – and that she’d missed her lesson with Elfhelm. She also needed someone to find Disa for her and get her horn back. So, in the afternoon, she’d caught the bus to college. She tried looking for Elfhelm, but instead bumped into Stone. Looking like a black cloud had settled over him, he’d taken her to Noldor’s office, where she’d been informed that she was temporarily suspended from the college pending the outcome of the police investigation. Shell-shocked, she’d returned to Fallowfield.

Round about tea time, Disa had shown up. With horn.

“You’re not meant to be here…”

“Yeah, and the police have someone watching to make sure… Oh, no, they don’t. We’re in the clear so long as you don’t do anything stupid that leaves a record of contacting me – like sending me texts or emails, or calling me…”

Disa had handed over a mobile phone – a basic brick.

“Pay as you go, I’ve put some numbers in there for you – including Faramir’s. Not mine, though, for obvious reasons.” And she’d handed over a piece of paper with her number on. She must have seen Éowyn's sceptical expression. “Not my first rodeo. Cousins, school friends… various people with grief with the police, some deserved, some not so much. You learn how to dodge the system. Call it South London Rules.” A nod to a series of spy thrillers they’d both enjoyed.

After Disa had gone, she’d added Indis’s number to the contacts and texted her.

New temporary phone number. I’ve been suspended from college pending the results of the investigation.

Then she’d gone up to her room and crawled onto the bed, curling into a little ball and staring into space while her mind whirled helplessly.

Now she lay there, feeling cold, but paralysed and unable even to pull the duvet over herself. The pain at the thought of just how badly she’d fucked up, how she’d screwed up her future, her career prospects, her… everything stretched out into an endless eternity.

There was a quiet knock at the door. She presumed it was Éomer.

“Not sure I can face company…”

The door opened anyway, and she half rolled over. There, standing, back-lit by the light from the stair, was Faramir. Without meaning to, she found herself starting to cry again. He took two strides over to the bed, sat down and scooped her up, holding her against his chest. She wrapped her arms around him and clung to him.

Beethoven, Fidelio
https://youtu.be/c3kfn5h-EY8
René Kollo as Florestan and Gundula Janowitz as Leonore, Wiener Staatsoper under Leonard Bernstein.

As with the previous chapter, legal details mostly taken from Nasir Hafezi's Community Legal Education channel.
https://www.youtube.com/@communitylegaleducation8438
Big shout out to Katy for going through the details with me (comments section of previous chapter). Any remaining legal errors or misinterpretations are entirely my own.

There may be a gap of a week in posting the next chapter – I have a concert next weekend and visitors, so I will be very busy.

Chapter Text

“Of all the people I had to hear about this from – Prof Stone, for God’s sake.”

Éowyn had finally managed to stop sobbing and had given Faramir a sketchy, slightly confused account of things.

“Sorry… My phone… The police still have it.” She blew her nose. “And. Well, Boromir. I didn’t want to drag you away because he’s far more important and, well, this was my own stupid fault. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. Shouldn’t have punched him.”

“It’s not a bloody competition.” Faramir pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound short-tempered. But it really isn’t. I can care about both of you.”

“What did Stone say?”

“The bare bones of what he’d been told happened. And the fact that you’d been arrested. Which is bloody unfair, seeing as he started it by assaulting Lottie, and nothing seems to have happened to him.”

“Same old, same old.”

Faramir stroked her hair. “But they’ve released you.”

“My lawyer says they’ll be building a case with the CPS before they decide what to do next. She’s good, by the way. My lawyer.”

“Yes, I know.”

Éowyn looked at him, feeling puzzled.

“I phoned my uncle on the way here, got him to do some checking. Apparently she’s one of the best defence lawyers around, mostly does private work, but does a certain proportion of pro-bono and police station defence work as a way of giving back to the community.”

He put his hand under her chin and gently tipped her face up, then studied her intently.

“You look absolutely done in.”

“I am. I hardly slept last night. I was cold. And scared. And worried sick. And my fucking period came on.”

“What have you had to eat?”

“Toast. A bowl of cornflakes when I got home.”

“So bugger all. How about you have a hot shower, get some clean clothes on, I’ll cook something, then we’ll get you to bed.” He paused. “To sleep, that is.”

He got up, then pulled her to her feet. She stood there, rooted to the spot, while he pulled clean clothes out of her drawers and found a clean towel, then piled them all into her arms. Then he steered her gently across the landing to the bathroom.

When she came downstairs, she found him stirring a pan of some sort of sauce. “I found some mince in the fridge – bonus points, it was still in date. Spaghetti Bolognaise on the way.”

“That was Éomer's.”

“I’ll replace it. And if he kicks off about it, I’ll kick his arse.” He looked at her. “Where is Éomer, by the way?”

“Gone to see Lottie. I’m not meant to meet up with her. Or anyone else the police are using as witnesses. Which includes Disa.”

“That’s a bugger. Disa won’t be pleased. In fact I can’t see her paying much attention to that.”

“No, she hasn’t,” said Éowyn, and produced the first approximation to a laugh she’d managed in over 24 hours. “She came round and gave me a burner phone.”

“That is very Disa.” He fumbled in his pocket. “If you’ve got a phone…” He produced a scrap of paper. “I didn’t just see Stone, I also bumped into Elfhelm, who said ring him and arrange to go round to his place for a lesson, since you’re not allowed into college.”

Éowyn took the piece of paper. She sat down at the table while Faramir chopped some tomatoes to go into a salad.

“Well, go on then, give him a ring.”

She tapped the number into the new phone.

“Hi, it’s me, Éowyn.”

“Thank god you’ve got in touch.”

Elfhelm talked for a minute or so. By the end of it, Éowyn had gleaned that, firstly, Elfhelm was slightly disappointed not to have had the excuse to punch King himself, secondly that, yes, unfortunately, it would affect her career prospects, thirdly that notwithstanding that he still wanted to see her for a lesson tomorrow, and fourthly, she and Faramir were invited for lunch. He also passed on Erkenbrand’s number. “He also wants to punch King.”

Éowyn relayed the conversation to Faramir.

“So do I,” Faramir said. “Punch King, that is.” He turned to the sink and drained the pasta. “Lunch sounds good.”

“Gets you out of having to eat my cooking too.”

Waking up next to Faramir had been the most comforting thing Éowyn could recall in the last week or so. Snuggled under the duvet, her head resting on his shoulder, breathing in the warm, familiar smell of him. She felt safe. It might only be temporary, but it was good. The only slightly odd thing was to find herself in bed with him without feeling any desire. She supposed circumstances had knocked all this out of her. She felt slightly guilty. Then had a sudden flash of Disa saying “Don’t be daft…” She shifted slightly, and his eyelids flickered, then his eyes opened just a crack.

“What time is it?” His voice was a little hoarse with sleep.

“Not sure…” She reached out and picked her phone off the bedside table. “Nearly eight.”

“What time did Elfhelm say to get there for?”

“11.00 for a lesson, then lunch afterwards.”

“Which I guess means bus about 10.00.” He rolled over and looped his arm round her, then kissed the top of her head. “Any chance of setting the alarm for 9.00 and getting a bit more sleep? I’m knackered. You must be too.”

She thought she wouldn’t manage to get back to sleep, and to start with, as Faramir’s breathing slowed and she felt his grip on her waist relax, she felt a flash of irritation that he could drift off so easily, while she remained keyed up. But something about his steady breathing soothed her, and the next thing she knew, her phone had started to buzz with such ferocity it managed to vibrate its way off the table and onto the floor.

Elfhelm lived in a suburban semi in Parrs Wood with his wife Hilde (who turned out to be a down-to-earth German woman with a slightly hippy-ish vibe which perfectly matched Elfhelm’s own relic-of-the-seventies feel). For once the Manchester buses co-operated; Éowyn and Faramir arrived as promised, just before 11.00. Éowyn left Faramir in the kitchen, chatting enthusiastically to Hilde. Not for the first time, Éowyn reflected on his amazing ability to make himself comfortable talking to just about anyone, and the knowledge that he wasn’t faking it – he simply liked people in their infinite variety.

Given the shit-show of the previous days, Éowyn was surprised when the lesson actually went well. Elfhelm was particularly complimentary about the way she tackled the Gallay Étude which she’d initially thought (a few months ago) was unplayable on a hand-horn.

“Have you been trying the Beethoven too?” he asked.

“Yes. I mean, mostly I’ve been working on it on my Alex, because Faramir and I are playing it in a recital next month, but I’ve had a go on the natural horn too.”

“Do you think Faramir would mind coming through and running it with you?”

“Mind? He’d be delighted.”

Elfhelm disappeared through the door, then came back with Faramir on his heels.

“I hear you want to run the Beethoven on a natural horn.” He sat down at the piano. “It’s a shame we don’t have a fortepiano as well.”

“Bloomin’ students these days, no pleasing them,” Elfhelm said. Faramir grinned at him, and popped his i-pad on the music rest.

“I’ll just have to go easy on the pedals. Lighten the touch in the left hand. That sort of thing.”

“Can we start with the second movement?” Elfhelm asked. “Just that adagio to start with – don’t run it into the final movement. I really want to give Éowyn a chance to think about the variety of stopping she can use and what that does to the tone quality of the notes.”

Éowyn gave a beat with the bell of her horn, then came in with the up beat as quietly as she could, Faramir joining her with the first few notes on the piano. She found herself struggling to find her earlier fluidity, and when they got to the andante, she stopped.

Faramir looked over his shoulder at her, then said “Can you just run through that without me, so I can make some quick notes to remind myself where you’re stopping notes and the tone changes, so I can adjust my own playing?”

She ran it again, filling in the piano part in her head as she went. When she’d finished, Faramir beamed at her.

“That’s a revelation. It’s a completely different piece. So much more colour and variety. That second entry with the stopped note, then the lovely buzzy sound on the octave – that’s just fantastically mysterious. I love it... We have to find a fortepiano so we can do this properly.”

Éowyn grinned back: there was a puppy-ish enthusiasm to Faramir that didn’t often come out, but had definitely slipped its leash today.

They ran the piece together, and this time it really worked. Faramir seemed to have tuned into exactly when the hand-stopping was going to give rise to mysterious, veiled sounds, and brought inner bits of the harmony to the fore to reinforce them.

It was as if getting the middle adagio nailed meant the rest of the piece flowed. As Faramir moved seamlessly into the final rondo, the music took flight. The accents on the high stopped octave leaps came out dramatically, the singing counter-melody which Beethoven had cleverly written for the open notes sang out in a smooth legato. Éowyn was also aware of the way Faramir was now adapting his playing. She’d played this with him often enough on a modern horn to realise that he was deliberately lightening the higher parts of the piano part so they were almost staccato, and also toning down the rapidly moving arpeggios in the left hand so they too had a crystalline clarity. He was right – they had to try this on a fortepiano.

The penultimate return of the tune – like a mini-canon – bounced between them joyously. Éowyn felt a soaring sense of mastery as she played the fanfare-like motifs of the climax with a satisfying bravura, before the final descending arpeggios cascaded downwards to the finishing low notes.

Elfhelm gave them a round of applause. “If you play it like that in your recital, you’ll have them eating out of the palm of your hand.” Then his face fell. “When is it? I know you’re not allowed on college premises at the moment.”

“Two weeks time. But it’s in St. Anne’s in the city centre, not really affiliated with the college. So I’m hoping it won’t be a problem.”

Elfhelm nodded. “Are you going to play it on your Alex? Because listening to that, I think you should really give it a go on a period horn.” He walked over to the shelves in the alcove to the side of the chimney breast – bit, deep cubby-holes which accommodated a range of horn cases.

“Have a go on this one, it’s a Guichard from about 1840. There’s a 440 tuning slide, so it should sound okay with the modern piano.”

“Oh my God, it’s beautiful,” Éowyn said, taking it from him and tilting it in her grasp to admire the painted bell, swirls of gold shining against an ebony black background. She slotted her own mouthpiece into the lead pipe and picked up from the adagio once more. Unprompted, Faramir joined in. The high, singing counter-melody on the open notes sounded amazing. The stopped notes sounded wonderfully brash and brassy, and the tuning was much more secure than the instrument Éowyn had on loan from the college.

They ended up playing the whole sonata from start to finish, with Éowyn reluctantly handing the horn back at the end.

“That is fabulous. God, I’d love to have a natural horn that played like that.”

Elfhelm looked at her, thoughtfully. “I’ll give my insurers a ring on Monday. If I can arrange cover, you can borrow it for your recital if you’d like.”

“Oh.” Éowyn was speechless, but she couldn’t stop a huge grin spreading across her face. She realised Faramir was watching her, with a matching smile of his own.

“I’ll see if I can sort out a fortepiano,” he said.

Elfhelm looked thoughtful. “Thorin might be able to swing something.”

“I’m not exactly in Prof Stone’s good books at the moment.” Éowyn came back down to earth with a bump, her smile fading away to nothing in an instant.

“He’s angry about the general clusterfuck, not at you in particular,” Elfhelm said. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there isn’t a bit of him wishes he’d been there to see the punch-up. I certainly wish I’d seen it. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you can add him to the ever-lengthening list of people who wishes he’d delivered the punch. On the whole, I think most people are on your side, Éowyn.”

Éowyn shook her head sadly. “Yeah, the trouble is I’m not sure the law sees it that way.”

Faramir reached out and took her hand.

The door opened, and Hilde poked her head into the room. “Lunch is ready in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks dear. Éowyn, I’ve got something else for you to have a go at.”

“In that case – Hilde – do you want me to lay the table?” Faramir asked.

“Yes please.”

Faramir left with Hilde, and Elfhelm returned to the cubby holes and retrieved another instrument case.

“You know Dukas’ Villanelle?”

“Yes, I worked on it with Erkenbrand back when I was still at school.”

“With the hand-stopping?”

“No, he said not to bother.”

Elfhelm made a vague harumphing noise. “I’ll be having words with him next time I see him… Anyway…” He opened the case. “Unfortunately I can’t lend you this one, but I thought it would be interesting to have a go at. Raoux from 1890.”

Éowyn looked down at the horn, nestling in its case. Piston valves, very much less complex wrap than a modern horn.

“Perfect to try Villanelle on. But you have to do it as written. Dukas asks for the opening to be hand-stopped, so hand-stopped the opening shall be!”

Éowyn gave a mock salute, and managed a half-smile. “Yes sir!”

Twenty minutes later, they sat down to lunch. Éowyn had forgotten that Elfhelm was vegetarian. Not, she reflected, that it appeared they would be missing out. The whole selection smelled delicious. There was a mushroom Wellington, a dark, rich onion gravy, roast potatoes, and what seemed like endless varieties of vegetables.

“Thanks for the wine,” Elfhelm said to Faramir, opening the bottle and pouring everyone a generous glass.

Éowyn took a sip of hers and glanced round the room, trying not to smile. Everything matched her first impression of Elfhelm as a curious left-over from the seventies. Teak dining table, mid-century chairs to match, a waist-high sideboard (also teak, with sliding doors with oval wooden handles). There were a series of prints and black and white photographs in frames on the wall: architectural drawings, interiors. Éowyn liked them; they seemed all of a period with the rest of the room. Not to mention its owners. She made a mental note to ask Faramir about them later. There was even one which, to her surprise, she recognised – the “upside-down” house (as one of her schoolfriends had nicknamed it) in Selkirk.

Hilde pushed a bowl of roasted vegetables across the table, and she helped herself.

“Elfhelm told me all about what you’re going through. I’m so sorry. It all seems so unfair,” Hilde said.

“It’s been pretty awful. Thanks for having me over for lunch. It’s felt pretty lonely.” She turned to Elfhelm. “And thanks for the lesson – that means more than I can say.”

“Obviously I’m not meant to comment, what with being on the staff,” Elfhelm answered.

“You mean, more than you have already?” Éowyn couldn’t resist saying.

“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty obvious I’ve always thought the guy was a complete See U next Tuesday.”

Faramir laughed. “I think you were right with your earlier take – about the long queue wishing they’d been the one to deliver the punch. (Incidentally, I’m at the front of that queue.) I certainly get the feeling you and Erkenbrand aren’t the only members of faculty who thinks that. Thorin was… quite blunt on Friday. It does mean I have to hang around till Monday to have the lesson we didn’t have ‘cos I headed straight off to find Éowyn.” He reached across the table to squeeze her hand.

“Elfhelm told me about your brother. How is he doing?” Hilde asked.

Faramir shrugged. “It’s pretty shit, still, unsurprisingly. Though he is talking a bit more, and I’m pretty sure it’s still him, if you see what I mean. Having said that, it’s a bit of a struggle to follow him at times. He doesn’t have much control over one side of his face, so just making coherent sounds is a huge struggle. And the medics reckon he has some degree of aphasia. So I struggle to understand him, and he struggles to find the right words.” He gave a sad smile.

“He does seem to remember most of his favourite swear words, though. Which cheers me up a lot. The docs decided to move him at the end of last week – from hospital to the military rehab centre in Surrey. He’ll be there for at least six months, they reckoned. If Prof Stone can swing it with the college authorities, I’m probably going to end up spending four days a week in Manchester, and taking long weekends down in London so I can go to see him.”

Now it was Éowyn's turn to reach across and take Faramir’s hand. She held it for a few moments.

“You two really are being put through hell at the moment, aren’t you?” Hilde said.

Eowyn smiled sadly and nodded. Then, as if probing the painful gap after having a tooth drawn, she cautiously framed the question that had been nagging at her.

“How is college at the moment? I know I shouldn’t ask, but…”

“Nasty. There’s a hell of an atmosphere. Lots of bad feeling among the students because they feel, with a lot of justification, that King’s been allowed to bully students for years and no-one’s done anything, whereas you’ve been arrested and then suspended for self-defence. I’d say pretty much all the students and at least half of the staff are firmly on your side.”

“And the other half?”

“A mixture of people who’re pals with King, or who at least benefit from him professionally, and people who’re suffering either moral or bureaucratic paralysis.”

Faramir made a disdainful noise. “Bureaucratic paralysis and lack of moral fibre. I can think who’s top of my list for that one.”

Elfhelm took a sip of wine. “I couldn’t… or perhaps shouldn’t… comment.”

“And King?” Part of Éowyn didn’t want to ask, because she was sure the answer would be he’s just fine, swanning around like nothing’s happened. But another part of her had to ask, her tongue back in that painful tooth socket.

“To be honest? Completely losing the plot. Like big time paranoia, ramping up of his bullying, making wild accusations. The faculty are having to intervene a lot – he’s ranting in front of the students, the bullying’s gone up a notch. And keeping him away from potential witnesses. That’s a full-time job.”

Faramir made a disgusted sound. “You know, I’m really disappointed with Noldor. I really thought better of her. She needs to do the decent thing and suspend him too.” He glanced at Éowyn. “I don’t know if you realise, but it was my cousin he assaulted. I don’t know how he’s not had to suffer any consequences.”

“You’re not the only one wondering that.” Elfhelm looked from Faramir to Éowyn and back, then sighed. “In fairness, the bureaucratic paralysis is partly down to not knowing what the hell he’s going to do next, or how damaging it’s going to be. Trying to smooth things down, persuade him to take a few days of personal time in the – probably pointless – hope he’ll calm down. Appealing to his vanity and trying to get him to go and work on his latest project in Paris. I don’t think Noldor feels sure that she’s got the backing, or for that matter, the legal basis, to take him on. So she’s in damage limitation mode.”

“What do you think’s going to happen? To me, that is,” Éowyn added, by way of clarification. “I don’t care if King has a complete melt-down, in fact, if he crashes and burns, I’ll dance round the bloody bonfire. But at the moment, I’m worried about me. I feel like my whole life’s fucked. Sorry, pardon my French.”

Elhelm paused, and rested his chin on his hand. “Honestly? I think in the long run you’ll be okay. There are enough witnesses, in the form of a whole orchestra and chorus, to say it was self-defence. The trouble is the amount of time that’s going to take.”

Éowyn felt hot tears pricking at her eyes, and wiped them away angrily. Then, as if someone had let the air out of a balloon, all the fight went out of her, and she put her head on the table. She felt Faramir reach out and start to rub her back in small, gentle circles. She raised her head.

“Sorry. I’m all over the place at the moment.”

“I’m not surprised,” Hilde said.

“Look, for the immediate future, we’ll just try to keep some sort of continuity going. Erkenbrand and I are happy to keep giving you lessons at our houses, in our own time. And things like your dissertation and essays – you can use the central library for research. We’ll also keep an eye out for paying gigs you can do to keep your hand in at orchestral playing.”

“We’ve got our recital in St. Annes coming up in a couple of weeks,” Faramir said.

“If you need to come over here to use the piano, you’re welcome to,” Hilde said. “Just give me a ring – I have Elfhelm’s schedule on the kitchen calendar, I can tell you when it’s likely to be free.”

“That reminds me,” Faramir added. “Sam said he could organise recording the concert. And editing it into an audition video.”

“Like anyone’s going to look at my audition video when I’ve punched one of the foremost conductors in Europe.” Éowyn blew her nose noisily into a paper hankie, then tried to pull herself together. She dried her eyes on the same paper hankie. “I’m such a Luddite. I feel like I’m the only student in college who hasn’t jumped on this recording bandwagon.”

“You and me both,” said Faramir.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been rubbish company.”

“We don’t mind,” Hilde said. “When Elfhelm told me what had happened, I was really shocked and so sorry for you. So this was to try to cheer you up, not so you could, how would you put it, glitter socially? Ach, that is not the right phrase at all.”

Éowyn managed a small smile. “Yeah, I don’t think glittering socially is me, even at the best of times.”

“It is over-rated,” Hilde said, by way of a parting shot. She disappeared into the kitchen, and reappeared with a cake, a gleaming dark chocolate ganache glistening as it sat on the plate.

“Sachertorte – my grandmother’s recipe. Hopefully it will cheer you up.”

Beethoven horn sonata, second movement (Poco adagio, quasi andante), Anneke Scott (horn), Steven Devine (fortepiano).
https://youtu.be/KWEx_7hi1xI?t=550

And the same on modern instruments, Sergey Akimov (horn) and MinJee Lee (piano)
https://youtu.be/Xs7lrWtRZlc?t=361

And a vintage recording with Dennis Brain (horn) and Denis Matthews (piano).
https://youtu.be/iuQz9GV8H_s?t=517
Random anecdote of the day – my gran went to primary school with Dennis Matthews.

What is a fortepiano?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15R9KSLZvz0
and how does it differ from a modern piano?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o0HdeJp-lw

And what can you do on a fortepiano that becomes harder on a modern piano?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKvpqRmqkEU
More detail on those octave glissandi (right down to “How does this differ on a modern Steinway versus a modern Bosendorfer?” - I really did go down the rabbit hole on this one, plus, bonus, my Italian is improving ‘cos I could sort of follow this without the subtitles, yay, go me).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKBKQtASmm4
(I’m more familiar with the violin equivalent – how do you cope with, say, the harmony in Bach’s Chaconne in the 2nd Partita, when the tune is in the bass line but a modern concave bow makes you emphasise the upper parts?)

Bonus track – Scott and Devine playing Paul Dukas, Villanelle
https://youtu.be/_LtoEGJbLkY?list=RD_LtoEGJbLkY

And my ongoing fantasy French horn shopping: A Guichard horn.
https://en.stefan-blonk.com/product-page/guichard-natural-horn
On a personal note I have finally progressed beyond fantasy shopping, and been real French horn shopping – after struggling with sllightly leaky valves on my old horn for ages, I have splurged on a second-hand Hans Hoyer and I’m very happy with it. It’s so much easier to play than my old one. It is silver and shiny and pretty, and the upper register is fab, and the notes come out cleanly and accurately without a fluffity-wobble.

Sorry for the gap in posting. My concert didn’t happen in the end (well, not for me…) I came down with covid, and I’m really struggling with the after-effects. It’s completely wiped me out. This morning is the first Saturday in about a month I’ve managed my proper six mile dog-walk circuit.

Finally, a note re. accuracy of locations – the old DNRC at Headley Court in Surrey has now been replaced by the new one at Stanford Hall near Loughborough, but this story is set in an indeterminate but recent-ish past, so Headley Court it is. The "upside-down house" is Klein Studios, in Selkirk, as it is now
https://www.bernatkleinfoundation.org/journal/the-klein-studio
Currently on sale for a mere £18,000. The problem is, of course, the several million you'd need to restore it.

Chapter Text

Éowyn and Faramir had spent Sunday afternoon re-arranging her bedroom. The wooden bed frame – a single – was in pieces, distributed round the room. The slats were on top of the wardrobe. The headboard was tucked behind the chest of drawers. The mattress was now propped against the wall, covered in a brightly coloured throw and functioning as an impromptu headboard for the new addition to the room, a double mattress. As yet, it was on the floor. Éomer had mentioned (before heading out to see Lottie) that maybe it would be worth trying to get some shipping pallets to lift it off the floor, but for the time being, simply having more space was a godsend.

On Monday Faramir had disappeared for most of the day – a lesson with Stone, various bits and pieces in college. It had brought home to Éowyn just how thoroughly buggered her life was: she was bored, frustrated, worried sick and missing the opportunity to play with people. About 4.00, though, Faramir had rung up and said he’d meet her at Elfhelm’s – the latter had said they could use the piano. So at least she had got the chance to play for a few hours. They’d worked on the Beethoven and Hindemith for a bit, then headed back to Éowyn's flat.

The next morning, Éowyn woke feeling more rested than she had in days. She drifted out of sleep to find herself snuggled against Faramir anyway, but the extra space thanks to the new mattress meant that she did so without a cricked neck and pins and needles in one arm. She slid out from under his arm and scrambled to her feet, grabbing her dressing gown from the hook on the door, before heading for the bathroom. When she got back, Faramir was awake.

“Can I tempt you back into bed for a bit? We’ve got quite a while before I have to head to the station.”

He lifted the corner of the duvet.

“What time is your train?”

“Not till 11.00.” He gave her a smile. “Please? Pretty please?”

She gave a pretend sigh, then let the dressing gown slide from her shoulders. Faramir watched appreciatively, and something about the look on his face made Éowyn feel the first stirring of desire since the whole hideous business with King had kicked off. Faramir tossed the duvet to one side. She looked down at him – god, he was beautiful. Everything about him – those long legs, slim hips, the ripples of his abdomen, the solidity of his chest, the broad shoulders. But most of all, the look on his face as he watched her. She took her time, kicking the dressing gown out of the way, walking to the bed, then kneeling astride his thighs.

A slightly cocky smile played across his face, and he raised those dark eyebrows. Éowyn tried and failed to keep a straight face.

“Like what you see?”

“Just thinking that I’m a lucky bastard.”

She leaned forward to kiss him, her breasts brushing his chest, then reached down to pull his boxers down. His skin felt hot beneath her fingers as she eased the fabric down hard, muscular thighs. His breath came out in a sigh against her lips, and he responded by sliding his hands across her back. He kissed her back, tugging at her lips gently, teasing at her with his tongue. Fire flared within her, and she cradled his head in her hand, tangling her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer still, her kiss hard and desperate.

Faramir seemed intent on slowing things down. He trailed his fingers up her spine, along her shoulder, then up the side of her neck before taking her face gently in his hands. But not quite gently enough – by some unhappy accident, his thumb caught the bruise on her cheekbone.

The flare of desire, which moments earlier had threatened to consume her, abruptly flickered, sputtered and burned out, leaving only cold embers.

Fuck.

She could feel him hard between her thighs. He wanted her so much. Mere seconds earlier, she’d felt the same. She… What should she do? He… He wanted her. She felt the weight of obligation settling on her, the obligation so familiar from growing up. Pleasing the people she loved. Even if… She could go through with this. She tried to lean forward once more, to kiss him again. She could…

He must have felt some change in her body, some tension, some stiffening, for his hands stilled, then fell to the mattress. She placed her own on the pillow either side of his head and levered herself up into a sitting position.

“I’m sorry. Oh god. I…” She felt tears begin to prick at her eyes. “Sorry. The moment sort of came and went.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. You… I do want you. I mean, I want to want you. And… Look, shall we try again, take it slowly?” Maybe she could make it all better, somehow. She looked at him, trying to second guess what was going on in his mind.

She was surprised to see a rare flash of annoyance cross Faramir’s face. “For fuck’s sake. I’m not with you just to get laid. I don’t want a pity fuck, or a duty fuck, okay?”

Her first thoughts were of hurt and betrayal. She was hurting and he was angry. Then a wave of guilt washed over her. It was all too much. She rolled away from him and lay down with her back to him. He was leaving in just under an hour and she’d fucked everything up. She’d known this would happen. Had said as much to Disa, what felt like an eternity ago. She’d said that didn’t know how to deal with nice. She’d seen this coming. Known she would alienate him, either by being too cold, or by coming on too strong. Of course, only she could manage the royal fuck-up that was a combination of both at once.

She was drawn out of her spiralling thoughts by his hand, on her shoulder, almost tentative.

“Look at me, please, Éowyn.” She shuffled round till she was facing him once more.

He reached for her face, careful to brush only the cheek that wasn’t bruised. He let out a breath, then looked at her, those grey eyes locking on hers.

“Please don’t ever try to pretend to feel something you don’t”

She felt the hot tears pricking her eyes again, then brushed them away angrily. He would feel like she was trying to manipulate him.

He pulled his boxers back up, then reached out and retrieved a t-shirt and pulled it on.

“I really wasn’t pretending. I did want to. Then it just… I know you didn’t mean to. You couldn’t have known. You just… You caught me on the bruise. Where he… And it all came back.”

“I know. I know, and I understand.”

Again, those grey eyes, looking into her, seemingly all the way into her soul. Dammit. There was no fooling him. He ran his fingers through her hair. When he spoke his voice was low, almost inaudible.

“I think… What’s worrying me most. There was a moment, before I realised you were upset. And I think you thought you could force yourself. To pretend.”

A look somewhere between distress and anger flitted across his face. He spoke a little louder, and all she heard in his voice was a profound sadness.

“Please, don’t ever do that. Not to yourself. Not to me. You’re worth more. And I don’t ever want to be that kind of man, even if only unwittingly.”

“I’ve fucked this up.”

“No. It was too much, too soon. I should have realised.”

“And I shouldn’t have even thought of faking it.”

“We’re both in a fucked-up place at the moment. Me with Boromir. You with this insane mess with King. Either one on it’s own would be enough stress to break a relationship. I don’t want to let it break ours. And the best defence is honesty. The only defence. At least, that’s what I think.”

The realisation hit Éowyn like an oncoming freight train. This mattered to her. Mattered desperately. More than she could have ever realised. She did not want to fuck this up.

“I want to give us the best chance I can too. I don’t want to mess this up.”

Faramir managed a relieved half-smile. “Good. Here’s to getting through this. Together.”

He reached out and grabbed his phone. “It’s 9.30.” His eyes flickered towards the other side of the room, towards his rucksack, ready packed. Then back to her. “Oh, bugger it, I’ll just get a later train.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I absolutely do. I’m not leaving with you like this, or with me like this. We need to spend a bit of time together, get our heads sorted out.” He reached with his arm and scooped her up to nestle against his side. “C’mere. I want to be close. No strings attached. Just holding you. Nothing else.”

Éowyn let the tension ease out of her, and he pulled the duvet over them.

“I really did want to.” She knew she was repeating herself. She didn’t seem to be able to stop herself. She was just going round in circles. “God, it’s weird. My emotions seem to go from one extreme to another like flicking a switch.”

“It’s okay. I get it. Really I do. I’ve been there.”

“Maybe I hoped… It would take me out of myself. Make me feel normal. Make me feel desired.”

“You’re always desired. By me, at any rate. But I don’t have to act on that. I can admire from a distance.”

“You’re not doing very well on this distance malarkey.” She put her hand on his chest.

“So? I am also able to admire while cuddling platonically. I’m very versatile that way.”

“Now you’re just being silly.” Éowyn managed a ghost of a laugh.

“Anything to cheer you up. Seriously though. I want to be with you. Bad times as well as good times. I think I said ages ago, this isn’t just about sex for me. It’s about being with you.”

He pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then cradled her head against his shoulder.

They’d stayed in bed for an hour or so, dozing and talking. Then Faramir had suggested grabbing a late breakfast before he finally caught an afternoon train. Partly by way of having something to do to fill in her day, and partly because she wanted to spend as much time with him as possible before he went back to London, Éowyn went to the station with him, and waved to him from the other side of the ticket barrier as he made his way along the platform.

She was glad he’d stayed as long as he had and got a later train. He’d been right – if he’d dashed off straight away, if they hadn’t taken the time to sort themselves out, she’d have been in a total mess right now. Even so, even though they’d got back to some sort of equilibrium, she still felt bereft, and unsure what to do with herself. Even if she broke the rules and contacted one of her friends, it was a weekday and they would all be in college. As she mulled this over, her phone rang. The number showed it was Indis.

“Hi Mrs. Khan. Have you got an update for me?”

“Yes, good news. We’ve got a hearing with a magistrate scheduled for Friday to try to get your bail conditions relaxed a bit.”

“That would be brilliant.”

“Is there any chance you could come into the city centre and go over some of the paperwork with me?”

“I’m actually already here – I was just seeing my boyfriend off at the station.” Éowyn wondered why she’d volunteered the information. Then smiled. Disa would be proud of her. She was… comfortable with talking about Faramir as her boyfriend. She supposed that’s what he was. And it felt… nice.

Then she realised she’d missed Indis’s next question.

“Sorry, what was that, I didn’t quite catch you.”

“Can you pop round in half an hour? I’ve only got about 25 minutes, so we’ll have to be really efficient.”

“No problem. Text me the address.”

“Okay, see you in half an hour.”

Moments later the text arrived, and Éowyn realised she’d have to walk very briskly indeed – the office was in one of the handful of Georgian streets off the far end of Deansgate, a good mile away. She set off at a jog across Piccadilly gardens, then decided she’d have to splash out on the tram in the interests of getting there in time. She saw the tram she needed hove into view and dashed across the tracks to get to the platform opposite.

“You want to be careful, love.” It was a middle aged woman with a shopping trolley, looking at her with concern. “You shouldn’t dodge across the tracks like that when the tram’s on its way.”

Éowyn felt a flash of irritation, then pulled herself up short. The woman clearly meant well.

“Sorry. Just in a bit of a rush.”

The woman made a slight tutting noise, which was drowned out by the approaching tram. It stopped, and the doors opened. Éowyn got on, and stared out the window as it rumbled off along the streets.

The meeting with Indis turned out to be more draining than she’d anticipated. Indis took her through what felt like a huge pile of documents, but was probably only a few.

“So, first thing, we file a form to the police – I’ll do that this afternoon. Then we follow up with forms for the Magistrate’s court. Our key arguments are you’re not at risk of re-offending because the incident was self-defence; you’re not a flight risk – would you be happy surrendering your passport? And finally, the bail conditions are disproportionate in that this is impacting your education – that you can’t attend college until these conditions are relaxed. To that end, I need you to contact your Head of School about that. Do you have anyone on the faculty who’ll act as character witnesses?”

“Yes, my two horn tutors.”

“Okay, text them right now with my email address while I dig out the next form we have to fill in. If they get statements emailed to me we can add them as supporting evidence to the forms. I’m very hopeful that there’s a case here in terms of your need to study – Garden Court Chambers brought a successful appeal against bail conditions that restricted a student’s access to his university a few years ago. And that was under the Terrorism Act, not just common assault.”

Indis set a new stack of forms on her desk. “We need to demonstrate that you are willing to comply with reasonable bail conditions. What steps can you take to make sure you don’t encounter King while in college, if we do get the bail conditions relaxed?”

“Well, I’ll have to persuade the college to lift their own internal suspension before that even becomes an issue, because at the moment they’ve excluded me as part of their disciplinary process.”

“Ah, that could make it tricky. On the other hand, has King had any sanctions for punching a student?”

Éowyn gave a grim laugh. “Are you kidding? Of course not.”

“I think a stiff letter to the college authorities is in order. To whom should I address it?”

“Professor Noldor, I guess.” Idly, it crossed Éowyn's mind that she’d never heard any one say “whom” in real life before. That was lawyers for you, she supposed.

“Right, so if we can get them to lift your suspension and come up with a plan so that you and King don’t have to cross paths, I think we can successfully argue for a relaxation in bail conditions. Nothing’s guaranteed, of course, but I’m quite hopeful.”

“What about contact with my friends? It’s a bit of a nightmare, because most of the people I’m close to are witnesses. I mean, the main witness, the woman who got assaulted, is my brother’s girlfriend, and he and I share a flat. And my best friend – she’s a horn player. She was there. And if you do get the college suspension lifted, I don’t see how I can avoid contact with her in rehearsals.”

“That one’s probably a bit harder. On the plus side, you didn’t go no-comment, you allowed the police to interview you immediately after the event, so from their point of view, it would be fairly low risk allowing you to contact witnesses, as any attempt to change story now – either yours or theirs – would be immediately apparent when it came to court, as the prosecution would be able to pick apart the discrepancies between your new version of events and the one given to police at the time. In fact, I can’t think of a faster way of ensuring a guilty verdict. On the other hand, it’s pretty normal to impose bail conditions which prevent you talking to witnesses.” Indis paused. “Incidentally, I am not going to ask, because lawyers never ask questions they don’t already know the answer to…” She gave a wolfish smile. “But can I just point out that if your boyfriend were to have been one of the witnesses, you spending time with him would be problematic, were it to come out in court.”

Éowyn crossed her arms in front of her defensively. “No, that’s about the only bright spot in my life at the moment. Fortunately, he was in London at the time – his brother’s in hospital and he’s been spending most of his time down there recently.”

Indis nodded. “That’s good. Well, obviously not good that his brother’s in hospital. But good that he’s entirely detached from the incident.”

She shoved the form at the top of the stack over to Éowyn. One by one she went through their contents and got Éowyn's signature. “Right, so, character statements from your horn tutors, let me know how you get on with Professor Noldor and whether I have to apply a bit of pressure. It’s amazing what a carefully worded letter from a solicitor can do. I think we’re good for the time being. I’ll be in touch if there’s anything more I need from you, and you can contact me if you need to.”

“Even though I’m not paying?”

“Even though you’re not paying. I do a certain amount of pro bono work, and I see doing public defence properly, rather than simply doing the minimum given their low pay scales, as an extension of that pro bono work.”

“Thank you. No really, thank you so much. I can’t say… I mean, I’m really lucky to have got you.”

Indis smiled, then stood up and shook hands. “Time waits for no woman, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to get on to my next client.”

Éowyn got up. “Thanks for your time. And I’ll be in touch with all the stuff you need.”

Éowyn was surprised to find Éomer lounging in one of the kitchen chairs when she got home.

“Not round at Lottie’s?”

“She’s gone out to dinner with her dad.”

“And you’re not getting to meet the family?”

“God no, not yet. In any case, they are having a family conflab about your little punch-up last week.”

Éowyn winced and shifted uncomfortably. Eomer continued as if he hadn’t noticed. (It was, Éowyn knew, quite possible he hadn’t noticed.)

“Unsurprisingly, Lottie’s family are furious with how she’s been treated. And even more furious that the police have ‘no-crimed’ the sexual assault.”

Éowyn sighed. “They no-crime most rapes. I was lucky mine made it as far as court; most don’t.” Her face twisted into a cynical sneer as she said lucky. “I’m not surprised – disgusted of course – but not surprised they don’t see a hand on someone’s boob as worthy of following up.”

“Yeah, well I don’t think Lottie’s dad is going to let it slide. He’s talking about a private prosecution for damages.”

“Good. I hope he takes King to the cleaners. How is Lottie doing, by the way?”

“Not too badly. In one respect, she’s kind of on the police’s side – keeps saying ‘well it’s nowhere near as bad as some things.’ But I think she feels… I dunno. Not so much traumatised as humiliated. I don’t think – given it was in a room full of people – that she felt it was going to escalate. It’s just that… Well, it wasn’t nice. And everyone saw what was going on. And she’s upset.” Éomer paused for a bit. Then added, in an uncharacteristically thoughtful tone, “Sorry, that sounds a bit crap. I mean, after what you went through. It’s not like the two things are comparable.”

“It’s not a competition.” Éowyn suddenly realised that was exactly what Faramir had said to her. “Of course it’s crap, of course she feels violated and humiliated – that’s what men like King want to achieve. And you can bet that if he’s prepared to do that in public, he’s done a shit-load worse in private. I wish I could sit down with her, let her talk it through. She probably could use another woman who knows what it’s like.”

There was a long silence. Éowyn suddenly felt guilty. She hadn’t meant to imply Éomer wasn’t doing his bit.

“I mean, I know you’ll be a massive support. You were for me. But someone who knows from inside.”

“Yeah. I get that.”

There was another long silence. To fill it, Éowyn reached for the half-eaten packet of chocolate biscuits on the table. She took one, then shoved the packet in Éomer's direction.

“There’s something else.” Éomer sounded slightly hesitant.

“Yeah?”

“I wasn’t sure whether to tell you. I didn’t want to freak you out. But King tried to get Lottie on her own, tried to push her into retracting her statement.”

“Has she told the police?”

“He said he’d make sure she failed the year if she did anything like that. And then pointed out there were no witnesses and he’d just deny it.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Fuck, indeed. She’s not going to, by the way. Retract her statement.”

“I’ll let Indis know, see what she says.”

“And there’s more. Last night – Lottie said she’s had this kind of prickling feeling, like someone’s been following her around for the last couple of days. And she swears that when we were going from the centre of town back to the hall of residence, she saw King behind us. By the time I turned round he’d gone. Or maybe he wasn’t there and she’s just really jumpy. I dunno. But it’s totally freaked her out.”

Eowyn felt a chill of fear run down her spine. She’d thought things were already as dark as they could get. Now she was worried she was wrong.

Schubert, Death and the Maiden, 1st Movement, The Viano Quartet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvE4qLxor5I

And the 2nd Movement, played by the Manchester Collective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWP0eYx69rA

Chapter Text

Wednesday was spectacularly dull.

Éowyn woke up, ate a bowl of cereal on autopilot and spent the morning practising. It was hard to get enthused when she had no-one to play with and no sense of her hard work going anywhere. She motored through the session on autopilot. After lunch (a pot noodle which seemed in tune with her mood), she got the bus into town, and went to Gamling’s gym.

“Hello, stranger. Long time no see.”

“Hi Gamling. Sorry, been busy with music. And other stuff’s kicked off. But I don’t want to talk about that. Just want to beat the shit out of the bag for an hour or so.”

She went into the grotty little cubby-hole which Gamling had repurposed as a women’s changing room. It consisted of a bench along one side, curling lino, and a grubby toilet and chipped basin in a small cubicle off to one side. She pulled her jeans off and pulled on tracky bottoms, then dug out a sports bra and a t-shirt. She spent a couple of minutes carefully binding her hands, then draped a towel round her neck and grabbed her water bottle and gloves.

When she emerged, Gamling was coaching a couple of young men. She stopped for a moment to watch them. Footwork not bad, ducking and weaving, landing the odd punch here and there – but there was a lot of work to be done before Gamling would be happy with them, she could see that at a glance. They stopped for a breather, and one of them clocked her looking. He wolf-whistled. Gamling clipped him round the back of the head with a pad.

Éowyn spent five minutes skipping to get warmed up, did a few stretches, then went over to the punch bag.

One-two, one-two, one-two. Jab and cross, jab and cross. Jab and hook. Jab, cross, duck, dive. Jab, hook, weave, dancing on the balls of her feet. The familiar rhythms and movements started to have a hypnotic, almost meditative effect on her, and gradually the tension drained out of her neck and shoulders, to be replaced by the warm glow of muscular exertion. Feeling herself beginning to tire, she moved over to the speed ball, and started to work there instead. Finally she moved over to the weights section and finished off with a set of weights that exercised all her antagonist muscles, the ones she didn’t use for boxing but which needed to be strong to stabilise the movements.

She skipped slowly for a few minutes before jogging gently round the edge of the gym a couple of times to cool down. Then she went into the little kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.

Gamling joined her. “Sorry about those cunts earlier. I gave ‘em what for. Boys these days. No bloody manners.”

“S’alright. Do you want a brew as well? Kettle’s just boiled.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He took the steaming mug from her, watched for a few minutes while it turned a dark mahogany. Éowyn wondered if the spoon would end up standing up of its own accord, or simply dissolving in the tannins. Gamling rescued it before it reached that stage, and used it to shovel three spoonfuls of sugar into his mug, before adding a homeopathic quantity of milk.

“How’s Julius Caesar? Did she manage to sing the part?”

“Not that convincingly. She was much better as the saucy servant a few weeks later.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

Éowyn remembered Lothíriel's second outing as a Roman emperor, and stiffened. She quickly took a sip of tea to wash the slightly sick feeling out of her mouth. Mercifully, Gamling didn’t seem to notice.

“And posh boy? Is he going to come and have a go?”

Éowyn felt herself blush a flaming red.

“Oh aye? I thought he fancied you. You got a bit of a thing going there?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“Seemed like a nice enough bloke.”

“You mean he was quiet and didn’t get under your feet.”

“Exactly.”

After the mug of tea, Éowyn went and changed back into her outdoor clothes, spraying herself liberally with deodorant. “Shower in a can,” Éomer had called it, back in their teens. “Stinky fucker,” Éowyn had called Éomer. Still, needs must. Gamling’s “ladies’ changing room” didn’t run to a real shower. As she shoved her stuff into her bag, her phone buzzed. An unknown number. She picked up anyway.

“Hi there.” It was Disa.

“Hi.”

“I’m phoning from Durin’s phone. Don’t save the number obviously.”

“You’re getting off on this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

“Yeah, well, ever since the Bond franchise re-cast Miss Moneypenny as black, I’ve sensed there’s an opening out there for a girl like me, if the horn-playing doesn’t work out. Anyway, how are things going?”

“Boring. Shitty. Depressing.”

“Glad to hear you being so upbeat.”

Éowyn managed a snort.

“You in Fallowfield?”

“No, in town. At the gym.”

“God, you at the gym? Can’t imagine you in hot pink lycra doing aerobics, somehow.”

“I’m not. It’s a grubby boxing gym down a back street.”

“Of course it’s a grubby boxing gym down a back street.”

Despite her general mood, Éowyn laughed.

“D’you fancy meeting up for fish and chips? Piccadilly Square in twenty minutes?”

“By the fountain in the middle?”

“Yeah. See you there.”

By the time Éowyn arrived, Disa was already waiting, sitting on a bench scrolling through her phone. Éowyn flopped onto the bench beside her.

“God, I am so glad to see you. I’m going stir crazy in the flat.”

“No Faramir?”

“He was here over the weekend, but he got the train back to London just after lunch yesterday. We…” Her voice tailed off.

“We what?”

“We kind of had a bit of a row.” Éowyn took in Disa’s worried expression. “It’s okay. We made up. But god. This whole thing just has me totally strung out. And he’s totally strung out over his brother. And it’s all shit.”

Disa rested her hand on Éowyn's shoulder. “It’ll be okay. You have loads of witnesses to back your side of the story. I’m not surprised you and Faramir ended up getting tetchy with each other – but he’s a nice guy. A genuinely nice guy, not a…” Here Disa sketched exaggerated air quotes. “Not a ‘nice guy,’ registered trademark. We’ve all met them. But no, Faramir’s genuinely nice, and has the patience of a bloody saint.”

“Meaning I haven’t, I suppose…”

“No, you haven’t.” Disa gave a chuckle. “You definitely haven’t. But it’s okay, because I suspect as well as being patient, he comes across as no pushover, and probably pulls you up short when you go off the deep end. And – though you’re not patient – you are also decent, which means when someone tells you you’ve been a twat, you apologise.”

Éowyn laughed. “Have you got my bedroom bugged? That’s more or less exactly how things went down yesterday morning.”

Disa gave a theatrical shudder. “Bug your bedroom? Urgh no. I do not want to know, girl. Because in between rows I know the two of you are bonking like bunnies and I really, really do not want to know.”

Éowyn got hit by a wave of sadness. “Not much bonking like bunnies at the moment. I’m too upset to get in the mood. And if I do get in the mood, it doesn’t last.”

“It’ll come back, I’m sure. Give it time.”

“So, how’s college?” Éowyn mostly wanted to change the subject, but she was also curious.

“Toxic. The faculty are fighting like rats in a sack. King’s got a small but noisy bunch of toadies. Elfhelm and Erkenbrand are publicly out and proud and on your side. Noldor’s trying to be diplomatic. Stone looks like he’s a hairsbreadth from exploding. Mainly I think he wants to kill King with his bare hands. But I think he’s also losing patience with Noldor, and basically with everyone.”

“And the students?”

“Pretty much solidly on your side. And getting mutinous with the way Noldor’s handling – or rather not handling – things. Plus Lottie’s father showed up yesterday, with a hot-shot lawyer in tow.”

“Really?”

“God I wish I’d been a fly on the wall. But Noldor was spotted afterwards working her way through a packet of fags with Thorin Stone, both of them looking like they wanted to inflict serious pain on someone. I presume that someone was King.”

“My hot-shot lawyer’s probably added to the pain – she sent a stiff letter to Noldor yesterday as she put it ‘drawing attention to the unequal treatment, whereby my client has been suspended while the man who hit her remains on the college premises, still teaching students.’ Did I tell you? I’ve got a bail hearing on Friday, see if I can get the police bail conditions relaxed a bit. Indis is hoping to pressure Noldor into lifting my suspension. I would imagine Lottie’s dad going apeshit may have added to the pressure.”

“Well, here’s hoping the pressure doesn’t prove counter-productive. From what I hear of some of the stuff Noldor had to overcome early in her career, she’s one tough cookie, even if she’s being a bit spineless at the moment.”

“Frankly, I could do with a bit more spine right now and a bit less past triumphs.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

Eowyn spent the late afternoon mooching around her flat. She couldn’t settle. She tried playing for a bit but couldn’t get in the mood. She did half the dishes, but lost interest before she got to the pots and pans. She thought about doing a bit of work on her dissertation, but that seemed like too much effort. She ended up cleaning the bath, but couldn’t face the thought of cleaning the toilet. By the time Éomer got home, she’d resorted to lying on the couch, carefully curled up to avoid the worst of the springs poking through the upholstery and mindlessly scrolling through her phone. He looked at her, sprawled out in the semi-dark.

“God, it’s like sharing with Kevin the teenager.”

“Yeah, well, I think I’ve got an excuse. And I’m fairly solidly out of fucks so don’t push it.”

“Hey, hey…” He held up his hands in supplication. “Don’t take it out on me.”

“Sorry. But… Things are pretty crap. And I’m a bit touchy.”

“No, you don’t say.”

She didn’t answer.

“I’m going to make sausage and chips. Do you want some?”

“No thanks. I had fish and chips earlier. I’m still stuffed. But thanks for the offer.”

Éomer switched the main light on, then started clattering around in the kitchen end of the room that functioned as all-purpose communal space.

“Lottie’s dad went to see Noldor today.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“How? You’re not meant to…”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell. But seriously, what went on.”

“He took a lawyer with him. Went ape-shit about why King hadn’t been suspended. Is threatening some sort of legal action against the college. And apparently the lawyer is getting someone to serve papers to King. The police may have ‘no-crimed’ his assault, but Lottie’s father is threatening him with a civil suit for damages. I don’t understand all the legal ins and outs, but something about a lower standard of proof – just balance of probabilities, not beyond all reasonable doubt. And financial damages, rather than the threat of prison. I think Lottie’s dad is going for absolute financial ruin.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke…” Éowyn gave her brother a look. “Does this mean you got to meet Lottie’s dad?”

“Yes, briefly.”

“How did that go?”

“I think I passed the test. He’s quite a scary bloke though. In that very English, upper-crust, steel-fist-in-a-velvet-glove sort of way.”

“You’ll just have to make sure you treat Lottie properly, then.”

Éomer grinned. “My intentions are honourable.”

“Oh bugger. Do I have to start saving for a hat for the wedding.”

“Fuck off. Not that honourable.” But there was a fatuous grin on his face which Éowyn smiled at.

Éomer turned the sausages in the frying pan, then glanced over at Éowyn.

“Hey, how about closing the curtains? This flat’s fucking cold at the best of times, and I can feel the draught from here.”

Éowyn got up and reached out to pull the heavy, dusty curtains with their cabbage-like roses across the ill-fitting sash windows. Idly, she glanced down at the street below as she did so.

“Fuck…”

“What?”

“There’s someone over the road, watching. I think… I think it’s King.”

Éomer dropped the spatula into the pan with a clatter, and moved over to the window next to Éowyn, but the dark figure had vanished behind a van and disappeared into the shadows.

“Are you sure it was him?”

“Yes… No… I don’t know.”

“Fuck, that’s weird.”

“Weird and really unsettling.”

Much later, when Éowyn finally headed off to bed, she paused in the hall of the flat. She made sure the chain was on the door. Not that that would do much good. The screws holding the metal plates in place looked like they were about as long as the nail on her pinky. Then something else occurred to her. There it was. A cheap rounders bat bought last summer. She picked it out of the base of the hideous old hat stand that always tripped her up if she tried to leave the flat in a rush, and took it into her bedroom, where she laid it down beside the mattress, conveniently placed to make a grab for in the night.

Britten – Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, WDR Symphony Orchestra, Ariane Matiakh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4gZrpuVBMI
These short pieces are fabulous – I’ve played them a couple of times now, and I never tire of them. Just so atmospheric. The opening of the final movement (the storm) is probably one of the most exposed second violin entries in the business. (I’m primarily a violinist who moonlights as a horn player – the horn-playing is back-up in case my ongoing shoulder problems get so bad I can’t play any more.)

And a little bit of all-female brass for you – the Seraph Brass Ensemble, with Raquel Samayoa playing Hora Staccato by Grigoraș Dinicu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx4wqPPU9gU

And now for something completely different. I was so, so tempted to go with this instead (my inner crack fic writer sometimes has to be pushed very firmly back into her box): Gilbert and Sullivan – I am the Monarch of the Sea, with Robin Lavies as Sir Josiph Porter KCB (the First Lord of the Admiralty), and the Ensemble of Bournemouth Gilbert & Sullivan Society
https://youtu.be/RiDsxbqV3rw?t=130s
I can really recommend listening to the lyrics – everything about the shortcomings of British institutional life (and probably institutional life in most countries) and the way the incompetent rise to the top because the other incompetents already at the top want to make sure no-one arrives who can show them up (the Peter Principle): it’s all here in this one short song. Gilbert was a bloody genius as a librettist and satirist (and Sullivan’s music is very, very clever too).

Chapter Text

The first part of Friday morning was over, thank God. Éowyn emerged blinking into the daylight. The magistrate’s court had been dark, forbidding, terrifying in fact. But through it all, Indis had remained her usual calm, unflappable self, and Éowyn had found herself responding to that. To her enormous relief, the magistrate had agreed with Indis’ arguments that the bail conditions were unnecessarily onerous in a situation where the key issue was self-defence and there was no flight risk, and where all witnesses had been interviewed at the time, so the police had contemporaneous records. Most importantly, the magistrate noted, no charges had actually been brought as yet.

Éowyn had ended up giving Indis a spur-of-the-moment hug. Indis had looked somewhat taken aback, but had smiled politely. Éowyn felt a bit of a plonker, and wondered what had happened to her former self, the prickly self that would no more touch someone else than fly in the air. She thanked Indis profusely, then set off along Oxford Road for the mile long walk from the city centre to the college.

The meeting in college turned out to be more of a mixed bag.

On the plus side, King wasn’t there. On the minus side, Noldor was in a combative mood.

Erkenbrand was there as support for Éowyn; Noldor was accompanied by a member of the college’s admin staff. Éowyn tried to zone out as Noldor droned on about duty of care (where was their duty of care to her, she wondered?), the college’s reputation (funny how that seemed to survive King groping one student on the tits then taking a swing at another) and the lofty ideal of professionalism (King’s ongoing bullying – which surely the staff had to know about – didn’t quite strike Éowyn as the epitome of professionalism, but what did she know?) She bit down an urge to fly off the handle. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Erkenbrand looking at her. He gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head, just enough to get her counting down backwards from ten.

After Noldor had completed her monologue, Éowyn was asked if she had anything to say. She managed to stick to the script Erkenbrand had coached her through beforehand. Mentally, she ticked off the list: bail conditions relaxed; acted in good faith to defend another student from what she perceived as assault; no intention of a repeat incident. She wanted to say much, much more, but fortunately Erkenbrand’s words, delivered in his office before they climbed the stairs – or the scaffold – reverberated in her head.

“You might – just might – win…” (In her head the echo of his words came out with his unmistakable Austrian accent) “The battle, but you would lose the war. Keep your powder dry, and above all, keep your temper.”

The upshot was that Éowyn was allowed back for courses and rehearsals only; no socialising in the shared spaces. Despite how far into the final year she was, she had to drop King’s course, which would leave her short of credits. For a moment, Éowyn saw a predatory gleam in the administrator’s eyes. He thought he had a way of tidying the problem – her – out of the way. A way of disappearing her by administrative fiat. Not enough credits, no degree. Dammit, she was going to be thrown to the wolves by someone who wasn’t even a musician, just some random who shuffled bits of paper.

Fortunately, Elfhelm and Erkenbrand had cooked up a plan between them. Elfhelm was working on an obscure late 18th century horn player who had written a tutor book and a handful of sonatas. They proposed an additional ad-hoc research module, with a bit of performance tacked on. Éowyn would spend a bit of time down in London – Fridays for the next four weeks. Erkenbrand sold this to Noldor as a convenient win since she wasn’t attending King’s classes – it would literally keep her in a different city while King was in college. (What he didn’t add was that he and Elfhelm were well aware that she intended to spend weekends down in London with Faramir, who was hoping to establish a pattern of four days a week in Manchester, three in London commuting out to Surrey and keeping an eye on Boromir’s recovery. Éowyn had a feeling this was best not mentioned to Noldor.)

Reluctantly, it seemed, Noldor bought this idea. Eowyn thought she saw disappointment in the administrator’s eyes. Erkenbrand looked quietly satisfied as if his carefully laid plan had played out exactly as he’d wanted it to.

Erkenbrand filled in the details, just to get everything on record. The mystery Regency horn player’s instruments had found their way into the collection at the Royal College of Music, and Erkenbrand had pulled some strings to get her to see them. The manuscripts for the tutor book and sonatas were in the British library. Éowyn's job would be to take photos and make detailed notes on the instrument and the manuscripts, then help Elfhelm produce a scholarly edition of the work, with a preface on performance notes on both horns of the period it was written and on a modern horn. Then, at the end of the semester, Éowyn would perform a couple of the sonatas.

Éowyn emerged from the meeting keyed-up and shaking slightly – adrenaline, she guessed, from keeping a lid on her anger and distress. Erkenbrand led her back down the staircase. She wasn’t particularly surprised to see Elfhelm waiting at the bottom for them, and the three of them retired to their customary coffee shop on the neighbouring university campus.

Elfhelm checked the time on his phone. “If you get the next train, you’ll get into London in time to head up to the British Library and do the paperwork to get a reader’s ticket.” He handed over an envelope. “Letter of introduction, since you don’t just want a general reader’s ticket, you want access to the special collections and archives too. If you get all the admin out the way in what’s left of today, you can get a flying start next Friday – specially if you travel down on Thursday night.”

“And don’t forget to keep working on the Beethoven and Hindemith. That recital is in two week’s time.” Erkenbrand sounded quite stern.

“Are you planning on doing it on the period horn I loaned you?”

Éowyn felt a pang of guilt. “Um… No… I…”

Erkenbrand came to the rescue. “She is not a specialist. I think the period horn has been very useful to help her refine her interpretation and get closer to what Beethoven would have wanted from his players. But – again I say – she is not a specialist. And she must be, how do I put this, absolutely on top of her game. This will be recorded for her portfolio, and also the assistant director of music from Opera North is in Manchester that day to discuss the upcoming performances at the opera house – so I have invited him to meet me to see the recital then have lunch.”

There was a bit of a silence. Then Elfhelm gave a smile. “Well, I’m a bit disappointed, but all things considered, I think you’re right.” He turned to Éowyn. “Top of your game.”

Éowyn felt more cheerful after her chat with the two horn tutors, and headed off towards Piccadilly with a lightness she hadn’t felt in over a week, not since before the catastrophic rehearsal. Her mood lightened still further as the train pulled out, heading towards London.

It was nearing five o’clock when she emerged from the British Library. She had her shiny new reader’s card, but (as yet) no permission to use the archive, though she’d left the letter of introduction with one of the archive assistants. The Euston Road was beginning to feel like quite a familiar stamping ground, between the station, UCL Hospital and now the British Library. She headed along the road towards the hospital; she’d arranged to meet Faramir in the cafe where she’d once waited for him, back when Boromir was in the neurosurgery department there.

His face lit up as she walked through the door – like the sun rising, she thought. When had she become so poetic? His way with words must be rubbing off on her. Not, she had to concede, terribly successfully, but nonetheless, there was some impact.

He got to his feet and wrapped her in a bear-hug, then kissed her.

“Do you want a coffee or something?”

“Thanks, but no. I think I’d just like to get back to the flat and flop.”

He finished his coffee, then they walked down the road towards the bus stop, and as they walked, they exchanged news. She filled him in on the morning’s developments, he told her how Boromir was getting on.

“Bastards…” was his reaction to the news that she’d have to change module at the eleventh hour. He added a few more reflections on the situation, with a particular amount of venom reserved for Noldor and the administrator, and a peppering of swearwords so inventive that Éowyn decided that, no, his way with words hadn’t rubbed off on her. He was still way out in front in that department.

“Thank God…” was her reaction to hearing Boromir was starting to manage more prolonged conversations, and had begun the slow, painful road of physical rehab, with daily gym sessions, focused on his upper body at the moment, with work on muscle tone in his remaining leg, and work on a set of parallel bars to start the process of eventually getting him onto crutches before being fitted with a prosthetic.

Faramir, she could tell, had mixed feelings, and gently, she probed a bit with further questions.

“It’s knowing what to say to him about what the doctors say. I feel like I’m acting as translator, because although obviously they talk to him, between the brain injury and the emotional state of handling it all, it doesn’t always go in. So I have to talk it through afterwards.”

“I’m sure you’re very good at it.” She gave his hand a squeeze.

“It’s the balancing act – how much to say, how upbeat to be to encourage him, versus how much to tell him about how bad it could be.”

“And how bad could it be?”

“At the moment he’s struggling with a whole basket of things. Aphasia – finding the right words. But more than that. The doctors talk about issues with what they call working memory.”

“You mean amnesia?”

“Not really. Well, that’s part of it. He doesn’t remember meeting you – the last two or three weeks before the explosion are a blank. Events further back, he’s fine on, though.”

“So he can remember your childhood, but not meeting me.” She looked at him, carefully trying to gauge his mood, then decided it was safe-ish to try a joke. “So he doesn’t remember my bra down the cushions. Small silver lining.”

She’d guessed right. Faramir managed a bit of a laugh, before he continued.

“No, this is something different. It’s the really short-term stuff you need for everyday life, like shopping lists, or doing tasks in the right order. He struggles with sequences of information. If I tell him A happened, then B, C and D, he’ll maybe remember A, then get D and C reversed, and forget B altogether. And – going forwards – the doctors are worried about something called executive function.”

Éowyn looked at him quizzically.

“It’s the ability to do the mundane stuff in life on autopilot. Remembering to pay bills, getting places on time, that sort of stuff.”

“Crap. I’ve always struggled with that. Boromir can join my club.”

Faramir smiled, but then almost immediately his expression became sad.

“It’s knowing how much of this is temporary and how much is permanent. And what possibility to prepare Boromir for.”

Éowyn felt a momentary wave of frustration. It was so like Faramir to agonise over doing the right thing – but she wasn’t at all sure that this was the sort of situation where ‘the right thing’ was top of the list of importance. Just getting on with it and being practical seemed more to the point. Then she reminded herself this wasn’t her brother they were talking about. But even so… She blurted out “Why would you feel you had to tell him a worst case scenario that might not happen?”

“Well, that’s precisely what I keep telling myself. The more positive he feels, the more he feels he can do, probably the better his recovery will be. But…”

“I’m not seeing the ‘but’ here.”

“I just feel uncomfortable. Like I’m withholding information. Like… I’m lying by omission. I hate that feeling. And I feel like I’m taking away his ability to make informed choices by not giving him the full picture, the worst case as well as the best.”

Éowyn looked up at him. He looked worried, his brow drawn into vertical lines above the bridge of his nose. She wanted to reach up and smooth them away. Carefully, she framed her next question.

“What choices do you suppose he has to make? I mean, what could he do with that range of information, between best and worst?”

“I don’t know. I suppose, realistically, there isn’t much of a choice. There’s do the best you can in the shitty circumstances you’re in, or give up. And Boromir’s definitely back to being himself enough that giving up isn’t an option.”

“Well, there’s your answer. In practical terms, it makes no difference. Either he gets better, in which case telling him the worst case scenario would only have upset him for no reason, or he struggles, in which case, he’s going to find out the worst case scenario for himself, though hopefully when he’s a bit more recovered and a bit stronger emotionally, and can cope with it better.”

Faramir was silent for a bit.

“It still feels… Dishonest. I don’t like feeling dishonest. Even if it’s lying by omission.”

Now it was Éowyn's turn to mull things over for a moment or two.

“Sorry, this is going to be a bit blunt. But you know me. About as subtle as a brick. Is this about him and what he needs? Or about you, and removing your worry about feeling dishonest?”

Faramir looked sheepish. “When you put it like that. Yes. You’re right. I need to think about what Boromir needs, not what makes me feel comfortable. Subtle as a brick, but right. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

“And I like your honesty and… I dunno. Desire to do the right thing. All the bloody time. They’re two of the things that are really special about you. Even if you do overdo it sometimes.” She stopped for a moment, turned to him, then stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

He smiled, a relieved smile, then asked if she wanted to come with him the next day to visit.

“Yes. I think I’d like that.” She gave him a sidelong look. “If he’s forgotten everything, I can make him laugh by reminding him.”

“You wouldn’t.” Faramir feigned shock.

“Well, you said one of the first things that came back was his sense of humour. I bet he’d like the ‘when did you last get laid?’ story. By the way, does he even know about me?”

Faramir gave a quiet laugh. “I have told him about you, yes.”

“All about me?”

“All about you. Well, maybe not…” He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Maybe not every detail.”

Four words. How could he make four simple, innocent words sound… Alluring. Seductive. More than that... Like the dirtiest four words in the English language. In a good way. He ran his hand through her hair and stooped to give her a kiss. Brief, snatched, but somehow searingly hot. She felt her cheeks flush.

They finally got to the bus stop, and amazingly, a bus arrived within mere minutes. Even more amazingly, a couple got up in preparation for the next stop, and they managed to get seats side by side. Éowyn supposed fate owed her a bit of a break, though. Even if it was only a seat on a rush-hour bus. She felt she’d earned it.

She took a sideways glance. For all his attempts at good humour, and the relatively good news about Boromir’s improvement. Faramir looked drained. Exhausted. He apologised for not being good company, then stared vacantly out the window. She looked at his profile.

It was almost like seeing him anew. The hawk-like nose and the line of his jaw, with a dusting of stubble. His grey eyes, with their long lashes. The deceptively slender line of his body – if you knew where to look, you could tell the shoulders were broad, the thighs muscular. But it wasn’t a showy strength. It was a private, hidden, deceptive strength.

His hair had grown longer, so much so that he’d tied it back in a pony tail. She made a mental note to pull his leg about man-buns. Preferably in front of Boromir. Then felt guilty; Boromir who didn’t know her from Adam. Didn’t remember any of the relatively friendly conversations they’d had in the run-up to New Year. Certainly didn’t remember almost catching them shagging. She decided she’d have born any amount of embarrassment rather than have someone forget about an incident through such catastrophic circumstances. But the decision wasn’t in her gift.

A few stray locks of dark hair had escaped from the pony tail. Faramir absent-mindedly brushed them back from his cheek. Long, beautiful fingers. That was another item on the inventory. And ridiculously high cheekbones. He was wearing a hoodie and the zip was open. Under it, he had a shirt. She found herself following the line of his neck, down over his Adam’s apple, past the hollow at the base of his neck. Was that his pulse flickering beneath the skin, or was she just imagining things. Her gaze drifted further down towards his chest. The shirt didn’t open far enough to see any of the dark hair on his chest, but she knew it was there. Instead, she found herself studying the tiny constellation of freckles where the sun had caught him in some past summer. She could imagine tracing her fingers over them, trying to map meaning into the arrangement of them.

They sat side by side, him gazing out the window, contemplating the cityscape passing by, her watching him. As the bus neared Victoria, he came out of his reverie.

“Let’s get a takeaway and watch a crap movie.”

An hour or so later, Éowyn found herself on the couch, curled up against Faramir, shaking with laughter. She’d seen this film countless times, but it still reduced her to helpless hysterics. The current scene featured a moment of high drama coupled with the hapless heroes singing the world’s most inappropriate choice of cheesy pop song.

And then… Faramir joined in. Rather more tunefully than the leads in the film. And… Oh god. Éowyn simultaneously loved and hated how he could do this. His warm baritone wrapped round her like a blanket. That voice. Even singing something so cheesy. She loved that voice. Just the right pitch and timbre to send spark to all sorts of places. How the hell could just his voice do that to her? She was suddenly struck by the absurdity of the situation, simultaneously bloody hilarious and also hot as fuck… Her laughter redoubled until tears were running down her cheeks.

He nuzzled into her neck, now humming the tune. She could feel his lips vibrating against her skin

“Stop it,” she gasped.

“Why? Don’t you like my singing?” He drew back and looked at her with a hang-dog, puppyish expression. She recognised this one. The fake ‘wounded feelings for comic effect’ expression. He had it absolutely perfected, and it never failed to make her laugh. She brushed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Your singing is lovely, and very, very silly…” She struggled to get her laughter under control. Her stomach muscles were beginning to hurt.

“Which is kind of the point.” He broke into another rendition of the chorus, lingering on the final note. She lost it all over again, clinging to him and making a sort of helpless whooping sound. He gave a triumphant grin and moved back to her neck, this time trailing hot kisses below her ear. His hand slid round her waist, and found a sliver of bare skin where her jumper had ridden up.

“Are you trying to laugh me into bed?”

“Maybe…” Another couple of kisses, open mouthed, his tongue exploring, asking, demanding. “Perhaps…” His fingers, now sliding under her jumper, leaving trails of liquid fire across her skin. “Quite possibly in fact…” More kisses, the sort that sent electric currents down every nerve in her body, leaving her acutely aware of all the places she needed him, needed his hands, needed his cock. Then he moved his head again so he could look at her.

God, that puppyish look he could summon at will. Those eyes, pupils blown till they were almost dark. The look of eternal hopefulness.

“Is it working?”

She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him onto his back, then rolled over, straddling him.

“Hell yes.”

Suddenly their hands were all over one another, a frenzy of tugging at clothing. Jumpers pulled over heads, her hands on the buttons of his shirt (oh yes, there was that lovely dark hair she’d been thinking about), his hands on the clasp of her bra. (Where was it going to land this time? Did she even care?) His hands unzipping her jeans, hers on the buttons of his flies. Then – his hands on her breasts, a happy sigh coming from him. Her hands running over the ripples of muscles across his abdomen, running down that v-shape in the muscles, wrapping round… Oh yes, he wanted her.

“Hang on…” He reached out for the remote and switched the TV off. She grinned and shook her head.

“Embarrassed at the thought of an audience?”

He laughed back. “I like combining sex and laughter, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Now… where were we?”

He slid his hands down her waist and over her hips, cradling her buttocks. His cock pressed up against her. Then… he just held her there.

“Stop being such a big tease.”

“But what about foreplay?”

“Screw foreplay. Just… Screw me. Okay?”

“Your wish is my command…” And he held her hips, pulling her down slightly, as he thrust upwards, burying himself deep within her. She let out a noise, half-way between a groan and a grunt of satisfaction. She loved this moment so much, the moment when he first filled her. She let her weight rest on his thighs, then started to rise and fall in a steady, almost slow motion to start with. His hands roved back upwards, stroking the outside of her breasts.

“Have you any idea how gorgeous the view is from this angle?”

She laughed again, pushing herself down.

“You know your tits bounce beautifully. I could watch them all day. And even when you’re fully clothed, I spend quite a lot of time thinking about what’s underneath your clothes.”

“Pervert…”

“Ah, but you knew that. Horned helmets and shiny boots and shiny breast-plates. You can’t say you weren’t warned.” He slid his hand over to stroke her breast, teasing the nipple into a peak.

She let herself lean forwards and kissed him, nipping at his lip with her teeth. “Still a pervert.”

“But your pervert… And admit it, you like it.”

In answer, she ground her hips down on him, moving her body sinuously, exploring all the ways she could get more of him inside her. Then kissed him again. Then rested her head on his forehead for a moment, and stilled, just letting the sensations overwhelm her for a moment. That feeling of fullness. The feeling of him being hers, of her being his. He turned his head to whisper against her ear.

“You remember the kitchen. When you started to stroke yourself.”

“Mmm hmm. Is that your way of saying you’d like me to do that again?”

“Yes. Please… Yes.”

She sat back up, and looked him straight in the eye as she slid her hand down. She took her time, making sure he was watching her every move, gradually moving her fingers closer, till they found their target. Firm beneath her fingers. She started to circle, agonisingly slowly at first, watching for his reaction. Oh god! The look on his face. Pure lust. And yearning. And need.

He reached and cupped her breasts. She started to rise and fall, letting him fill her over and over again, circling with her fingers in time, picking up the pace, faster and faster. Need built up inside her. God, she was on the edge, so very, very close. She didn’t want to let go just yet. She wasn’t sure she could stop. She wanted…

He came first, just by a fraction, his hands dropping to her hips to clench her in place as he thrust upwards, again and again, his face… Oh, his face. She loved that she could do this to him. Make him lose it so completely, so utterly. And then, with one last thrust from him, and one last press of her fingers, she was over the edge too, tumbling into velvet darkness, sliding forwards onto his chest.

They lay entwined, bodies glued together with a sheen of sweat, their breathing coming in heavy gasps. Gradually they relaxed. Faramir stroked her hair; she reached up and cradled his cheek in her hand, feeling the slight stubble against her palm.

“You are…” He paused, and kissed her again. “Fantastic. Marvellous. Incredible.”

She kissed him back. “You’re not so bad yourself.

Sibelius – Violin Concerto, Camilla Wicks, Stockholm Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sixten Ehrling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gwjkFoBX4Y

Chapter Text

The garden was really quite lovely. In the distance was the old house repurposed as a clinic, a grand Victorian mansion, its dark red brickwork glowing against an early spring blue sky. The air was cold and crisp still, but the sun was just beginning to promise the warmth to come. Closer, the scene was the vivid green of newly opening leaves: trees, shrubs, carefully tended borders with some of the early spring flowers just beginning to come into bud. There were clusters of daffodils and narcissi beneath the trees, with patches of crocuses and the occasional snowdrop. Dotted around, some of the cherry trees were already in blossom, and Éowyn felt her mood lift.

A lot of thought had clearly gone into the smooth paths – ideal for wheelchairs – and the gentle inclines. Faramir had brought Boromir out in one of these wheelchairs; he’d stopped beside a bench, and Boromir had dropped the side down and levered himself out with his remaining leg and his arms so he could sit on the bench. It was obvious that the effort involved in moving himself without help was currently near the limits of what he could achieve, not just in terms of strength but in terms of coordination. It was equally obvious that he brought a steely determination to the task and wasn’t going to give up.

Once settled onto the bench, he shifted slightly and turned to look at Éowyn.

“Hi. You must be Éowyn.” The sounds weren’t entirely articulated and her name came out as something more like Ay-win, but it was clear enough. “Far-mir says we’ve met. Sadly I don’ remember.”

“Hello. Yes, we spent a few days together between Christmas and New Year. Nice to meet you again.” She held out her hand. Boromir grasped it.

“Sorry. Left hand shake. Right not as good.”

He smiled. It was slightly wonky – one side of his face didn’t quite work properly. Éowyn was reminded of when her granny had had a stroke, not long before she eventually died. She shoved that unhappy memory firmly into a locked cupboard in the back of her brain. There seemed to be fewer conveniently lockable cupboards in there these days, but nonetheless, she could still conjure one when it was needed.

Faramir sat down on the grass at the other side of the path, facing them.

Boromir gave another wonky smile. “You are playing out of your league, little brother.” (It came out as something closer to You playin ou’ of y’ lea, li’l bruh-er but the meaning was clear enough.)

“You said exactly that back at New Year.

“S’ true.” He looked at Éowyn. “How di’ you meet?” Then added “Sorry. Mou’ doesn’ work well.”

“Not a problem. Faramir tells me you’re making huge progress with the speech therapy.”

“Not ‘nuff. Still fuck’n ‘nnoying. Mou’ dun’ work. B… b… brain dun’ work either. Forgeh wor’s.”

“It’ll come back.” Faramir looked at him, and Éowyn recalled the previous night’s conversation, about honesty. Faramir stretched out a toe and kicked Boromir’s foot gently. “You’re too stubborn a bastard not to make a recovery.”

“An’way. Got dist… distr… Lost the thread. How’d you meet?”

“We’re students together.”

“Tha’ tells me why you were in th’ same place. Not how.” Despite his trouble articulating words, he managed to put slight stress on ‘why’ and ‘how’. So, how d’he?” Boromir gestured at Faramir with his left hand; the right lay on the wooden planks by his side. “How d’he find the courage to get a girl like you?”

Éowyn grinned. “I laughed at him. During a rehearsal.”

“This sounds interes… ting.”

“No, you don’t need to bore Boromir with the details,” Faramir said, hastily. His brother picked up on it immediately.

“If you say it like that. Yes, she does. Def’ly does.”

“His piano tutor said his playing lacked passion. Asked him if he’d ever got laid. He said ‘Not recently.’ I got the giggles.”

Boromir let out a bark of laughter. “You took pity. That’s…” He frowned and paused. Another word lost. Éowyn could see the mental effort as he found another way of phrasing the same thing. “Only way he could get a girl like you. Pity.”

“Thank you for that massive vote of confidence,” Faramir said.

Éowyn knew Boromir was just pulling his brother’s leg, but nonetheless felt this sudden urge to defend Faramir. “He does have his moments, you know.”

“Votes of next-to-no confidence from my brother and damning with faint praise from my girlfriend.” Faramir rolled his eyes. “Moments, indeed.”

Éowyn shot him a wicked grin then turned back to Boromir. “You nearly walked in on one of his moments.”

Boromir tried to raise his eyebrows. One went up, the other stayed resolutely immobile.

Faramir put his head in his hands.

“He had to yell at you to stay in the hall while we made ourselves decent. Then you found my bra down the side of the cushions on the kitchen bench.”

Boromir gave a bark of laughter, then said, “The kitch’n, Fara? R’ly?”

“Yes,” said Faramir, in a tired tone of voice. “That is indeed exactly what you said at the time.” Then he gave a faint smile. “So don’t give me any of that bullshit about not getting back to your old self. You are already tiresomely back to your old self.”

Boromir gave another lopsided smile. “He’s ver’ goo’ to me, y’know. Spent weeks wi’ me in hosp-tal. Comes ev’ry weekend.”

“I know.”

“Sorry to take him away fr’ you.”

“It’s okay. You need him more than I do at the moment.”

“Debatable,” Faramir muttered.

Boromir shot him a quizzical look, then turned to Éowyn.

“Ah. I kind of fell out with one of my tutors. I’m in a spot of trouble over it.”

Faramir rolled his eyes.

“Fell out? That’s an understatement. Broke his nose with a perfect jab-cross combination more like.”

“Impress… ve. More than… spot of both’r, though.”

“Yeah, just a bit. He did hit me first, though, so my lawyer thinks we can probably go with self-defence.”

“Why?”

“Why did he hit me?” Éowyn asked. Boromir nodded.

Faramir chipped in. “He tried to grope Lottie under the guise of ‘coaching her acting.’ Éowyn pulled him off her, and he took a swing. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

“Fuck.” Boromir’s speech may have been slurred, but he sounded horrified. “Well done you. Far’mir, nail this wom’n down. ‘Fore she ‘scapes. Best girl you’ll ever get.”

Faramir laughed. “I know. I’m doing my best.”

Later, on the train back into London, they sat side-by-side holding hands.

Éowyn had genuinely enjoyed her afternoon with Boromir. Faramir was right; there was still enough of him recognisable as himself. Sometimes there were long silences as he tried to work out where he wanted to go with a line of thought. Often there were short silences as he struggled to find an alternative way round the word he’d forgotten. But the sense of humour, the overall approach to life – all of that was still unaltered.

Towards the end of the afternoon, one of the nurses had come to collect Boromir. Apparently there was a mini-bus booked to take the more mobile patients into the nearby town to go swimming as part of their rehab.

Boromir had smiled. “Swimming. Highlight of m’ week. My righ’ arm’s still weak. But it sort of moves. Getting used to wonky arm. And missing leg. Hard to swim straigh’. But love doin’ it. Pool’s th’ place I feel most normal.”

Faramir had moved the wheelchair back next to the bench, and Boromir had levered himself back onto the seat. Then he had looked at Éowyn.

“Nex’ time I see you. Have prosthetic. Maybe walk a few steps.”

Éowyn had said, “I’ll hold you to that.”

Boromir had beamed. “See, tha’s why I like you. Another woman’d say ‘I hope so.’ You… you think I can do it.”

“I know you can. You’re brother’s right. I don’t know you well, but I can tell you’re a bloody minded bugger.”

They’d accompanied him back along the smooth path, walking one either side of the wheelchair. By the entrance to the house, Faramir had bent down and given him a hug. Then Boromir reached out for Éowyn's hand. She thought he was going to shake it again, but instead, to her surprise, he kissed it. “Think of it as like a kiss on th’ chee. Can’t stand up to reach. But seems like a brotherly thing to do.”

Éowyn really hadn’t known what to make of that.

And now, Faramir’s palm was warm against her own. His head was back against the seat cushion, his eyes closed. She didn’t think he was asleep, but he certainly needed a bit of down-time and rest. She stared out of the window.

In all the chaos of the previous weekend, she’d missed the hour change. Now, suddenly, the early evening was still light. The London suburbs flickered by, 1930s semis giving way to terraces of stock bricks and plane trees and then to a mixture of terraces on narrower streets, dotted with shop fronts, low-rise housing blocks and towers of flats.

Through it all, she mused on the afternoon. Boromir seemed to have cheerfully accepted her into his life. He seemed to be of the opinion that not only was she good for his brother, but that she was in fact doing Faramir an immense favour by deigning to go out with him. Funny, that. She always thought of it the other way round – wondering what a cultured, talented man like Faramir saw in her. How would an outside observer describe her? An uncouth border farmer’s daughter with a pugilistic streak. No, what he saw in her remained something of a mystery. Other than the bloody obvious, namely (and here she smiled to herself) the fact that they were dynamite in the sack together.

She on the other hand. She was bloody lucky. Because not only was he good in bed, and endlessly interesting to talk to, and funny in that kind of understated, self-deprecating way he had, he was also… Kind. That had been Disa’s take, way back before Christmas. ”Just let him be kind to you.” It had taken quite a bit of getting used to. But she decided she liked it. There was, however, a corner of her mind that was still somewhat worried by this development. Having got to like it meant that, on some level, she’d become dependent on it. On his kindness.

Faramir finally opened his eyes as the train passed through Battersea.

“Sorry. Have I been asleep?”

“Yes. Most of the way. Don’t worry, I think you needed it.”

Faramir looked at his watch. It was endearing the way he still wore one – one of the first quirks Éowyn had noticed about him.

“It’s only 6.30. Do you want to go and have a look at what’s on at the ENO, see if we can get any last minute ticket returns?”

“What’s on?”

“Not a clue. Fancy living dangerously?”

“Go on then. Life on the edge…” She laughed.

And that was how they came to spend the evening watching Handel’s Ariodante. The plot, of course, was absurd. The king of Scotland’s daughter was in love with one man but then forcibly betrothed to another for political reasons that were never really explained (not that she remembered any of this from her history at school; she suspected certain liberties might have been taken with the actual historical record). The opera unfolded in the typical way operas did – characters in disguise, perfidy, threats of betrayal, unwarranted accusations of infidelity, love triangles among the minor characters, much swooning from the heroine, love spurned on a misunderstanding, tears, characters on the brink of death from despair, false imprisonment (that bit hit home a little too much for comfort).

By the time the interval arrived, Éowyn was thoroughly confused. Faramir’s explanation didn’t entirely help; Éowyn found herself wishing for one of Disa’s pithy plot synopses. The only big surprise of the evening was that somehow everything came good in the end and the goodies lived happily ever after. Éowyn, by this point, was rather more used to the idea of the hero and heroine dying tragically. It was really quite refreshing to see the hero and heroine kiss and make up at the end, cheered on by the chorus and welcomed back into the bosom of the family by the stern king.

But however ludicrous the plot, the music… Oh! The music. It was simply ravishing.

Her mind returning to the plot, Éowyn couldn’t help but think if her father had imprisoned her for ‘being a harlot’ on the false testimony of someone else, she wouldn’t feel particularly pleased about him then recanting. In fact, as the applause rang round the opera house, she whispered into Faramir’s ear “I think I’d tell him to go fuck himself.”

“Are you kidding? It wouldn’t have got that far. You’d have grabbed Lurcanio’s sword and run Polinesso through yourself. Then probably punched Ariodante for doubting you. Thrown a goblet of wine in your father’s face and publicly disowned him. Then ridden off into the sunset and set yourself up as a soldier of fortune.”

Éowyn suppressed a quiet snort of laughter. “I like that version. One day we’re going to have to commission someone to do a re-write along those lines.”

“Of course, somewhere in your subsequent adventures as a soldier of fortune, you’d come across a poor wandering minstrel who would woo you with his music then pledge his allegiance to you forever…”

“This wandering minstrel… he wouldn’t happen to have dark hair and grey eyes, would he?”

“Maybe.”

“You know, you are a total idiot. If it’s not me as a soldier of fortune, it’s me as a Valkyrie. You are completely nuts, you know.”

“I love making you laugh. The world is a better place when you laugh. And I’m prepared to be as much of an idiot as it takes to make you laugh.”

As they wandered out into the London evening, Faramir slid his arm around her waist and pulled her against his side. They fell into step together and, by unspoken agreement, decided to walk back to the flat.

The next morning, Éowyn woke first. There was a grey light creeping between the curtains, and she could see Faramir’s face, lines of worry smoothed by sleep, his head on the pillow next to hers. She lay there contendedly, looking at him. It was one of her favourite views in the world. He had shaved yesterday (‘make myself presentable for the military man…’) but 24 hours later there was a faint shadow on his cheeks, just the beginnings of where a beard might grow. She wanted to reach out and touch it, but didn’t want to disturb him.

She realised that during the night, their fingers had entwined and she looked at his hand, so much larger than hers, wrapped comfortingly round her own. She was warm, and comfortable, and luxuriated in the feeling that there was nothing she needed to do, nowhere she needed to be. Other than here. And here felt like the perfect place.

The light gradually brightened, its colour warming from the grey pre-dawn to the first warm pinks and yellows of the rising sun. It caught Faramir’s skin, making his face almost seem to glow. Again, she felt that urge to reach out and touch him. Again, she resisted.

Lurking just out of reach was a faint feeling of something that she didn’t want to interrogate. Questions about the future. And even the present – what the present meant. She shut her eyes for a moment. She didn’t want to go looking for meanings. Or worrying about what next. She just wanted to live in the here-and-now. Enjoying being warm and comfortable next to Faramir, tucked up in the warm bed with him, her hand in his, his arm around her waist, their legs intertwined, their skin warm against each other.

Warm, contended, happy. With all the time in the world to do whatever she wanted. To look at him. To study him. To admire him.

She should have known. He seemed to have a sixth sense, even in sleep, for those moments when she took to staring at him. His eyes opened, and he smiled at her.

That smile. Every time. It made her insides turn somersaults. It made something inside her… soar.

God, that was a bit dramatic. Ridiculous, even. Where the fuck had that thought come from?

But he kept smiling, and pulled her hand gently towards him, and kissed the backs of her fingers.

“How did you sleep?”

“Really well. The best I’ve slept in ages.” Then the nagging memory of the rest of her life, never far away at present, intruded. “Despite everything.”

He kissed her hair. “We’ll get through it. Really we will.”

She sighed. “You haven’t exactly picked the easiest of girlfriends.”

“Why would you think ‘easy’ was top of my list of what I wanted?” Then he gave a smile. “You know…” There was a long, long pause. “You’re almost starting to get the hang of admitting you’re my girlfriend.” His voice was serious, thoughtful.

Éowyn stared at him intently, trying to read his face. Dammit, he was so much better at this than she was. He had always seemed able to read her thoughts; she was rubbish at deciphering his. She had to ask.

“So, why do you put up with me?”

He rolled over and propped himself on his elbow. “Truth, not public consumption?”

She remembered the bleak, windswept day on Kinder Scout. “Not if public consumption is a polite lie.” She repeated his words – as far as she could remember them – back to him.

“It’s high risk.”

“High risk?”

“The truth. It involves talking about emotions. Big emotions. The sort that scare you…” He gave her a friendly nudge. “The sort that scare you shitless.” A faint smile played across his lips. “I’ve got to know you pretty well. You might run away.”

“To become a soldier of fortune?”

“Something along those lines, yes.”

“Whatever it is. You don’t have to say it, you know. I don’t want you to say anything that… I don’t know. That you don’t want to. Or that you worry can’t be unsaid once it’s said.”

“Except that increasingly I’m feeling like not saying it is almost…” He gave a faint, inscrutable smile. “Lying by omission?”

Éowyn made a noise that was half way between a laugh and a sigh. “Not this again. We went through this. No, you don’t need to tell everyone everything. Not if it’s driven by some crazy urge to, I dunno, ‘do the right thing’.”

“I get that. But in this instance I think I do have to say something.”

He let himself roll onto his back and took a deep breath, and stared at the ceiling.

“This is offered up as information only. No expectations on you. I just want to make that clear.”

She lay on her side, staring at his profile. Waiting. Just waiting for where he was going.

Eventually…

“I love you.” He continued to stare at the ceiling, as if he didn’t dare to look at her, then eventually let out the breath he’d been holding. “And, more importantly, you deserve to be loved. Which I don’t think you realise.”

And now he did roll over so he could look at her, his face no longer inscrutable. There was tenderness in his expression, and uncertainty, and worry, and… she thought, hope.

All the whirling, confusing emotions of the last few months seemed to swirl around her in that instant. A maelstrom. He was right. Emotions did terrify her. She didn’t understand them. Yet…

Somehow she was at the calm centre of the storm. Next to him, in the eye of the hurricane. Looking out at the swirling emotions, able to decipher them, rather than being tossed helpless on the storm swell they drove before them.

And suddenly it all made sense. And the truly remarkable thing was that it was all surprisingly easy. She finally knew what she was feeling. What, in hindsight, she realised she’d felt for quite a long time now. What she hadn’t had a name for till now. She found herself smiling, then laughing, a merry, cheerful laugh.

“I love you.” She watched as a huge smile spread across his face. “I think… I think I may have loved you for quite a while. I just didn’t know what to call it.”

And there it was. The soaring feeling. The ‘playing Bach’ feeling. Comfort. Kindness. Happiness. Warmth. Above all, a feeling of coming home. Of finally knowing where home was.

And he rolled towards her, and took her in his arms, and kissed her.

The rest of the day seemed almost unreal to Éowyn. She floated through it, buoyed on an immense swelling wave of happiness. To her embarrassment, it seemed like now she’d finally found the words, she couldn’t stop saying them, and the more she said them, the happier Faramir looked.

He made her a late breakfast (unsurprisingly, it took them several hours to get round to emerging from bed), then they did some work on the programme for their upcoming recital.

In the afternoon, he went to see Boromir, and she settled down on the sofa with her library book, a history of the musical scene in London in the 18th century. Some of it went in. Most of it did not. At least, for once, her concentration was shot to bits by happiness rather than anxiety, though. Every so often she would get up and potter round the flat, lingering over things that made her think of Faramir – the piano, the smell of him on the pillows, his scruffy old jumper, tossed onto one of the armchairs. Eventually, she put the jumper on and went back to her library book.

When he finally returned, shopping bag with ingredients for the evening meal in hand, he looked at the jumper and raised an eyebrow.

“You could have put the heating on.”

“That’s not why I’m wearing it.”

He pulled her into a hug and kissed her.

They’d somehow agreed without really talking about it that they’d both get the early morning train on Monday. (God, the cost. Éowyn had a feeling that fairly soon she would have to switch to the bus and bugger the longer journey. Even then, she needed to do quite a bit of busking to catch up with her spending.)

It was slightly more than half way through the journey, somewhere round about Wolverhampton, that her phone blew up.

First a number she recognised as Durin’s (carefully unsaved), with a text demanding she ring as soon as she could.

Then a number she didn’t recognise, with a message saying it was from Poppy, and to ring as soon as she could. Why the hell was Merry’s girlfriend wanting to get in touch?

Then a number she did have saved. Indis’s number. Again, saying “Ring me as soon as you can.”

Her stomach did some sort of complicated somersault, nudging her heart into skipping several beats in the process. She showed the messages to Faramir, then, wordlessly, got up and went to the vestibule between carriages to get a tiny bit of privacy.

Dry mouthed, and with a slightly shaking hand, she hit the dial button on Indis’s number.

Dun dun dun… Yes, sorry, another cliff-hanger.

Handel – “As steals the morn,” Amanda Forsythe & Thomas Cooley, Voices of Music, Marc Schachman and Anna Marsh, baroque oboe & bassoon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVCtCxnJyKY

Handel, Scherza infida from Ariodante, Joyce DiDonato as Ariodante
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVYRisETkoM

Chapter Text

“Hi Indis.”

“Ah, Éowyn. Thanks for calling. Where are you?”

“On the train back to Manchester. We’ve just passed Wolverhampton.”

“Okay, that’s good, so about an hour and a half away. There’s been a development. Don’t worry, I think it will work in your favour. I’ll tell you the details when you get here. Can you get a taxi straight to the police station when you get to Manchester.”

“The one I was taken to before?”

“Yes, Greenheys. It’s where the investigative team dealing with your case are based.”

“Is this going to be bad.”

“No, quite the contrary. I think – can’t guarantee it – but I think they’re going to drop charges. Oh, and the other thing – don’t talk to your friends about this until after we’ve been to the station and talked to the police and the CPS lawyer.”

“CPS?”

“Crown Prosecution Service.”

“Can I tell my boyfriend? He’s with me.”

“Yes, that should be fine as he’s not involved in the case. Oh, and text me as soon as you get to Manchester so I can head over to Greenheys too. See you in an hour or so.”

Éowyn went back to her seat and relayed the conversation to Faramir.

“And she didn’t say what it was all about?”

“No, not yet. She’s being all cloak-and-dagger about it, but she seems fairly confident that it’s all going to work out okay.”

“Thank god,” Faramir muttered. Then leaned over and kissed her, a quick, comforting kiss. She managed a slightly wavering smile.

Faramir insisted on coming too. (“What about Stone?” “Screw Stone.”) He also insisted that they got a taxi. He walked her up to the steps of the police station.

“I saw a cafe about 100 back that way.” He gestured back down the route their taxi had taken. “I’ll wait for you there.” He gave her a quick kiss. “Love you.”

“You too…” Éowyn realised she felt absurdly embarrassed making protestations of love on the steps of a police station. She pushed the door open.

Indis must have known a more efficient taxi firm, because she was already there. She rose from the visitors’ bench beside the booking sergeant’s desk, and shook Éowyn's hand.

“We can use the solicitors’ room.” She ushered Éowyn into the room where the two of them had first met. Éowyn couldn’t help a slight shudder at the memory. Indis steered her with a gentle hand on her elbow, and led her to the chair, then shut the door.

“It’s good news, mostly. King has completely messed up the CPS’s case for them. He tried to tamper with witnesses. Apparently he approached several, but the thing that really sinks their case beyond help is your friend Poppy, the violinist. He tried to talk to her in one of the practice rooms in the college. What he didn’t realise was that her boyfriend Merry had helped her set up a camera to record her playing for an audition tape.

“So the whole thing is on camera – him telling her he’ll give her an internship with his orchestra in Paris if she will say in court that he didn’t hit you. That all he did was try to shake you off because you’d grabbed him, and you punched him unprovoked.

“Poppy got my contact details from Lothíriel's father and forwarded me the recording at the same time as she sent it to the police.”

“Bloody hell.” Éowyn couldn’t really think of anything else to say.

“Perverting the course of justice. It is, needless to say, a very serious offence. I’m glad to say your friend came out of it pretty well. When he first started to talk to her, she immediately said ‘But I did see you punch her.’ Which matches her statement given to the police back at the time. That was the point at which he started trying to make inducements, in the form of a job offer.”

“So what happens to me?”

“Well, we’re just waiting for the representative from the CPS to arrive, then we’ll meet with him and the detective sergeant on your case. But I’m pretty confident they’ll drop charges, because they have no realistic chance of a conviction now. They would get absolutely shredded in court if they were stupid enough to go forward with it.

“However, from your point of view, there’s a technical problem. It’s to do with DBS checks in future. You’ll need a DBS if you ever want to teach children or young people – and I gather almost all musicians end up supplementing their income with teaching. So, the catch. If it were to go to court, you’d be found not guilty, and there would be a clear end to everything. However simply dropping the charges means you never get your day in court. So I need to make sure we get a note put on your records to say that the charges have been dropped because the CPS didn’t think they could get a guilty verdict, and that the complainant was subsequently investigated on suspicion perverting the course of justice. That way, if you apply for a DBS, the arrest and night in the cells shows up, but so too does the fact that they didn’t try to take it further, and that (reading between the lines) the complaint was malicious and sufficiently unfounded that the complainant resorted to trying to offer inducements to witnesses.

“I’ll also make sure we get a couple of copies, one of which I can keep on file in our records room, so that if in future selective bits of your record as held by the police get lost…” Indis sketched air quotes with her hands… “We still have a separate record.”

“Do you think they’d do that?”

“I spend half my time in court having stuff adjourned because the other side hasn’t provided all the paperwork they should have done.” Indis shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes. “Nine times out of ten it’s simply incompetence, the tenth it’s a deliberate attempt to withhold vital information. But it’s the bane of my life.”

“What happens to King?”

“Not our circus, not our monkeys.” At first Indis’s expression seemed to convey a certain world-weary irritation at the discussion dragging on into issues not directly concerned with Éowyn's own defence, but then she looked at Éowyn, and must have registered the level of hurt and worry she was feeling, because she relented and continued to outline what she thought might happen.

“Okay, I’m not a prosecutor. But, based on having been on the other side of this on quite a few occasions, I would say he ought to be prosecuted. I’ve certainly seen people end up in court for less. And it’s not looking good for him, I’m glad to report. The fact that he approached not just one, but several witnesses, establishes a level of premeditation which establishes what legally you’d say is ‘high culpability.’ And the fact that you spent a night in custody puts it in the highest category of harm. So I’d say the CPS ought to charge him. And if it were to go to court, the starting point for sentencing for high culpability and high harm is four years.”

“Ought to?”

“Of course, whether they will is another matter. Professionally successful, famous white guy…”

Éowyn shook her head. “Bugger. He’ll walk out of court. If he ever sees the inside of one.”

Indis gave a dark laugh.

“Sadly, yes. I’d say the odds on him ending up in court are slightly less than 50-50. But – I know you want to see him get what he deserves and I get that – but seriously, the thing that matters is sorting this out for you. And, even if what’s on offer here feels a bit flat and a bit administrative, just take the win here. You walk out of here with a note on your file, which we have a copy of, to say they couldn’t take it any further because the complainant was untrustworthy. It’s not exactly American court room drama, with the foreman of the jury saying ‘Not guilty on all charges,’ and the judge saying ‘Let the record show the defendant walks free without a stain on her name,’ and the public gallery erupting into cheers. But for a Manchester police station on a wet Monday, this is as close to a win as you’re going to get.”

The meeting with the CPS lawyer and police went exactly as Indis had predicted. Afterwards, Éowyn offered to get her a cup of coffee in the cafe up the road, but Indis politely declined, saying she had to get back to work. Her parting words, as her taxi drew up, were slightly unsettling however.

“Watch yourself with King. From having watched the video footage and seen the transcripts of the police interviews with the witnesses he tried to suborn, he is not coming across as a sane man at the moment. And he may be about to be charged with perverting the course of justice, plus in his warped world view, he’ll see you as having got off scot-free. I think he could do something dangerous. I’m reminded of a colleague who does a lot of work with domestic violence victims: the point at which the victim starts to break free is the most dangerous point. So be careful.”

Éowyn assured her that she would be. But as she watched the taxi disappear down the road back towards the city centre, she felt an uneasy churning in the pit of her stomach. She set off down the pavement towards the cafe where she’d agreed to meet Faramir. As she walked, she pulled out her phone and called Disa.

“Hi. ‘Bout bloody time. Huge, huge news… King has…”

“I know. I’ve just been with my solicitor at the police station. Sorry I didn’t ring earlier. Indis told me not to talk to anyone else till we’d got the stuff with the police out the way. They’re not going to take any charge against me forward, and they’ve put a note on my file to say what King’s done. Hopefully that’s the end of it.”

“Bloody hell, though. Wait till you see the video. Merry set up the camera – okay, by accident, but he got the whole thing recorded. King trying to persuade Poppy to lie, by promising her an audition for L’Orchestre Ancienne.”

“I heard he tried to get to other witnesses too.”

“Yeah, a cellist, and a couple of members of the chorus. The cellist also got an offer of an audition, the chorus members it was threats – you know, ‘If you don’t do this, I’ll make sure you fail the course.’”

“Bloody hell.”

“It’s not meant to be public knowledge, but of course it’s leaked and it’s all anyone in college has been talking about for the last couple of days.”

“What’s happening with King?”

“I dunno. Rumour has it he’s taken off for Paris before the police could go to interview him. I mean, they could get him back, I suppose, but it’ll take time. Fuck knows what the college is going to do. There’s a whole load of students on his course.”

“Not to mention those of us he kicked off his course in one way or another.”

“Yeah.”

“Good that he’s not around though. Indis seemed quite worried that he’d lost the plot entirely and might do something… I dunno, she just seemed to think he was a bit unhinged.”

“Very unhinged. Poppy and the two singers all said that being cornered by him was really scary.”

By this stage Éowyn had reached the cafe. She pushed the door open and waved to Faramir, all the time holding the phone to her ear.

“Gotta go,” she said. “I’ve got to tell Faramir how things went.”

Disa made fake smoochy-kissy noises down the phone.

“Fuck off.”

“You love me really. Talk to you soon – in fact, presumably, see you in college soon.”

Éowyn stuffed her phone in her pocket, and walked up to the corner table Faramir had bagged. He stood up. One of those old-fashioned, chivalrous gestures he seemed to do without thinking. Then he gave her a hug and a relatively chaste kiss.

“How did it go?”

“I’m not going to be charged. Turns out King’s been trying to get witnesses to lie for him, either using threats or promises of auditions. And some of it’s been caught on tape, thanks to Merry and Sam’s obsession with helping all and sundry make audition tapes.”

“Thank fuck for that. Seriously. That’s bloody brilliant.” Faramir paused, then frowned. “What’s going to happen to King?”

“Well, he seems to have done a runner to Paris. But there’s a possibility he might be in big trouble with the police.” She let herself sink into a chair, and felt the tension ebb out of her body. Suddenly she felt limp. Faramir looked at her.

“Tea or coffee? You look like a woman who could do with a hot drink.”

“Coffee would be brilliant.”

While Faramir went to the counter, Éowyn quickly texted Poppy.

Sorry I didn’t ring. Had to see my lawyer first. Thanks so much. You are a complete star. Everything much better this end. I owe you, big time.

She was about to hit send when she suddenly had a moment of paranoia, and thought “God, will this look like collusion if anyone looks at our phones?” and deleted the words. Then she rang instead.

“Poppy, it’s Éowyn. Thank you so, so very much. The police have just dropped the charges.”

“No problem – I’m just glad it worked out for you.”

“And sorry I didn’t ring back straight away – I had to see my lawyer first, and go to the police station.”

“I’m really relieved it’s all okay.”

“I owe you, big time. I’ll get you a pint next time we’re down the pub – in fact, I probably owe you pints for the rest of your life.”

Poppy laughed. “Well, beer is always good. I’m sure we’ll be down the pub soon. Anyway, gotta go. I’ve got a quartet rehearsal.”

“Bye. And – thanks again.”

Faramir put a coffee down on the table, then sat down next to her.

“Thanks. I was just ringing Poppy.”

Faramir reached out and took her hand. “I’m so glad things are sorted. At least on the legal front. I know the emotional stress won’t have gone yet.” He circled his thumb on the back of her hand, and Éowyn felt an immense wave of comfort wash over her.

By Thursday, things were starting to show signs of turning round. Noldor and the senior teaching staff had got together, partly forced by King’s disappearance, and decided the only fair way to handle the situation with King’s course would be to take the students’ other modules, average them, and award that as the mark for the early music course.

“I guess this means I won’t be helping you with the horn sonatas,” Éowyn said to Elfhelm, earlier that morning. Part of her was relieved, part was almost sad.

“Well, if you’re still around in Manchester over the summer, I’d be happy to take you on as a research assistant for a bit to do the work anyway. I’m hoping I can get a small grant from the Arts Council to pay for the research.”

But now Éowyn was standing next to Faramir in the vestry of St. Ann’s church.

“Ready?” he asked, with a smile.

She nodded.

He gestured for her to lead the way out into the nave, and followed behind her as a polite murmur of applause floated upwards towards the high ceiling. Éowyn was gratified to see that about half the pews were full; not bad for a weekday lunchtime. They were opening with Dukas’ Villanelle. She quickly scanned the sea of faces; yes, there were Elfhelm and Erkenbrand. And there, towards the side aisle of the church, were Disa, Hama and Théomund.

Faramir sat down at the piano and made a few last-minute adjustments to the stool. Then he looked over to Éowyn, and she raised her horn.

Two strong chords from the piano, then her opening fanfare, ringing out, echoing off the walls. Then the quiet repeat of the same phrase, before she settled into the sublimely romantic theme, the subtle changes in mood gradually unfurling, the ornamentations. She was aware of Faramir watching her, fitting in perfectly with her playing, capturing and reflecting her changes in articulation and attack. The middle section with its rapid arpeggios and raspy hand stopping grew perfectly from the more elegaic opening, the notes sparkling with life. The music relaxed back into the final reprise of the slower passage, Then she gathered her breath and launched into the bravura ending, every note perfect.

She held her horn motionless, letting the last reverberations die away, before lowering it, half turning to Faramir with a sweep of her hand. He stood, and stepped forward beside her, and they took their bow as applause filled the space once more, this time enthusiastic rather than polite.

They bowed again, then as the audience settled back in their seats, Faramir returned to the piano.

Hindemith. This, Éowyn knew, was the hard piece to sell to the audience. Somehow, people came at his work expecting it to be difficult and abrasive, unfairly, in her opinion. She and Faramir had had endless good-natured arguments in rehearsal. Faramir argued that there was a lyricism in much of the music, in between the brashly percussive passages. Éowyn (perhaps inspired by having played the Metamorphosen in the NYO as a teen) argued for plenty of brassy attack, and also for the existence of a light-hearted, humorous side. In the end, they had found all these aspects in the work as they put it together gradually. Above all, Éowyn had been determined that they should be equal partners in playing; Faramir was not accompanying her – it was a work for two instruments together.

They glanced at one another, and Éowyn gave the upbeat with the bell of her horn.

The opening phrase, with its slightly odd intervals, came soaring out, just the way she’d intended. Brassy enough to be unmistakably modern in feel, but smooth enough that the intervals fused into one long musical line that made complete sense, with Faramir’s off-beat rhythms punctuating her notes. Then he repeated the melody, the piano perfectly matching the mood she had set. Éowyn loved the way they were able to pass phrases too and fro between them. Faramir also seemed to have a sixth sense (honed by the hours of practice, but still somehow going beyond what you’d expect from practice alone) of when to give her a bit more space. He had been right (of course: the annoying bugger that he was...) Large stretches of the horn part were lyrical, balanced by the percussiveness of the piano, and set perfectly against the occasional clarion-calls which echoed out like a hunting horn, or a warrior’s horn calling for action. The second subject called for a more thoughtful, contemplative, almost introspective quality, and again, she and Faramir passed ideas between each other, gentle, caressing phrases, before the clarion calls built once more to carry them through to the end of the movement.

They paused for a moment (Éowyn seizing the opportunity to tip water out of the more obscure reaches of her horn), then she turned to look at Faramir. He gave the faintest of nods, then started to play the opening of the second movement, the piano introducing the melody in an extended solo. Again, they’d listened to countless performances, and argued in rehearsals, and Faramir had won out with his suggestion for a more legato approach which emphasised the continuity of the melody. And now, Éowyn was so glad he had; it seemed so right, in this space, in this moment. Her low entry came in and she placed the notes, quietly, smoothly, singing through the phrase, aware of the antiphonal way Hindemith had written the two parts, the moments when her part moved more rapidly dovetailing with Faramir, so one would hold a long note while the other moved the tune forward, then they would swap roles. They had practised how quietly they could risk going. Now, in this large space, it seemed a huge risk. But she remembered a piece of advice – had it been Erkenbrand? – that what filled a space was intensity, not volume. And she held the muscles of her stomach, maintaining the air pressure even as she let the sound fade almost to nothing, while Faramir lightened his touch until there was only the faintest of haunting sounds. And it worked. The audience were silent, transfixed. She could almost feel them straining to hear the quietest of notes.

Then from there, they could build the sound back up, the phrases swelling and growing, Éowyn letting her whole body join in the production of a glorious sound that filled the church, Faramir allowing the piano to become more percussive at last. And again, he had been right (dammit). The added attack in his playing, the staccato, all made sense as a reaction to what had gone before. It was the contrast that prevented the audience feeling they had been bludgeoned by someone hammering out the notes.

With almost no break, they moved into the final movement, its rapid allegro opening almost scherzo-like, before again the music slowed and became elegiac once more, culminating in long held notes in the horn while Faramir played almost bell like phrases below her in the piano part. Then they returned to the rapid-fire opening, just for a moment, before a moderato passage with long phrases in the horn soaring above rumbling rhythms in the piano, before a reprise of the bell-like phrasing. And Éowyn felt one of those magical moments, all too rare, where a piece formed in its entirety in her mind, and became a matter of feeling the whole, rather than knowing it to be a whole. The tempo changes, the different moods, they were all part of one larger narrative which came into being through her lips and beneath Faramir’s fingers, each supporting or counterpointing the other perfectly.

They reached the closing moments, Éowyn punctuating Faramir’s tune with downward runs of notes, which then flowed into a horn phrase in a succession of fifths which rose upwards, before they drew the piece to a close with a series of tight rhythms, dropping repeatedly from dominant to tonic.

Éowyn could tell from the moment’s silence, then the wave of applause, that they had done what they’d set out to do. The had convinced an audience that Hindemith was a joy to listen to, not an exercise in steeling oneself for the more difficult aspects of mid-twentieth century German music. She beamed at Faramir in relief, and again, he got up from the piano stool and came and stood beside her so they could take their bows, this time taking her free hand in his. To an outsider she hoped it would simply resemble the way singers at the end of an opera often held hands as they took the curtain call, but the warmth of his palm on hers, coming on top of the wave of achievement of a job well done, sent a shock of excitement through her.

They’d agreed on a brief moment between pieces, and Faramir, ever chivalrous, gestured for her to move ahead of him, back to the vestry, where she took a few sips of water. Just enough to dampen her mouth, which was a little dry with nerves, but not so much that she slobbered into the lead pipe of her horn. She took a moment to collect herself, mentally running through the opening and what she saw as the key moments in the Beethoven.

Like the Hindemith, they’d had lively – she thought that was probably the best euphemism – discussions about how to approach it. She realised what a rare gift it was that they could argue – vehemently, heatedly, passionately – but without rancour, each simply wanting to press for their interpretation of the music they both loved. Faramir had pointed out that it was a relatively early work – the same year as the first symphony, half way through the string of violin concertos, and only a third of the way through the composition of the vast sequence of piano sonatas. Thus, he argued, it called for a light, almost Mozartian touch. Éowyn, who revelled in the drama of the symphonies, especially the third (what horn player could resist?) and the intensity of the seventh and ninth, wanted to foreshadow the emotionally charged, tempestuous Beethoven yet to come. In the end, they had found a compromise, partly informed by the dark, intense recordings of the cello sonatas by Du Pre and Barenboim. There, the darkness and emotional storminess worked and felt natural, despite those being even earlier in order of composition. Faramir reluctantly conceded that date of composition wasn’t the whole story. But he fought back, gaining a touch and a point, by noting that even if one likened early Beethoven to Mozart, Mozart’s later piano concertos and quartets, not to mention the Requiem, had an emotional depth and power which was far from the drawing room elegance people often associated with him.

She was drawn out of this reflection by Faramir gently touching her elbow. He flashed her a smile and quickly snatched a kiss. Despite the door between them and the audience, she felt herself blush.

“Time to go back on.”

Right from the first falling arpeggio, Éowyn knew that the Beethoven was going to work. Fresh from the previous two works, they started it buoyed on a wave of confidence and a feeling almost of invincibility, and for once this proved to be an accurate presentiment. Éowyn found herself simultaneously in the moment, and remembering the rehearsal at Elfhelm’s, where she’d played it on a period instrument, found herself instinctively adjusting her sound to mimic the variety of colours the natural horn had afforded. She could hear Faramir doing the same – that Alberti bass lightened as if played on a fortepiano rather than the Steinway he currently sat at. But despite this flowing lightness of touch, he allowed their playing to grow to a more epic scale as the piece unfolded. More than that – the rapport they shared, the intensity of their connection, emotional, physical, intellectual, came out in the music. Once again this was a million miles from soloist and accompanist. Instead they shared the space, inhabited it, soared within it, commanded it, as two equal partners, playing a piece where the whole became greater than the sum of the parts.

They’d put the Beethoven last on the programme as a crowd-pleaser, a compensation for the Hindemith. But it took on a life of its own, Éowyn finding echoes within it of other pieces she knew and loved – the third symphony, the cello sonatas, and, yes, that piano sonata which had had such an effect on her in the privacy of Faramir’s college room. If she hadn’t been so focused on playing, she would have blushed; as it was, the passion somehow infused her playing.

As the final notes died away, the audience broke into applause once more. Éowyn, who had been completely wrapped up in the music, became aware of the sea of faces, some smiling, some serious in their appreciation, but all focused intently on her and Faramir. They took several bows, before retiring to the vestry. When they emerged, Faramir with his battered leather satchel in which he carried his i-pad and foot pedal, she with her Alex back in its case, she found Elfhelm and Erkenbrand waiting, with a youngish man, blonde, slightly above middle height, and an older man with greying hair.

“Peter Mablung,” said the younger man, holding out a hand. “I play with the orchestra of Opera North.”

Eowyn felt herself turn slightly pink as she shook his proffered hand. “Yes, I know.”

“Fantastic performance,” said the older man, then added, “And I’m Jonathan Haldir, the artistic director there.”

Erkenbrand beamed, and Elfhelm looked smug. Éowyn realised with a rush of adrenaline that she was being… What was the football term? “Tapped up.”

She stumbled through the ensuing conversation, desperately hoping she wouldn’t blow it by making an idiot of herself or simply freezing with shock.

Haldir eventually drew things to a close, saying “Well, we’d better get back to the Palace” (Manchester’s opera house) “but it’s been lovely to talk to you, and hear you play. I’m sure these two…” He gestured expansively at Elfhelm and Erkenbrand. “Have told you about the assistant principal job, but do send in an audition tape.”

He and Peter turned, and headed off down the nave towards the door to the square. Faramir waited till they’d disappeared, then picked Éowyn up and whirled her round.

Before we get on to the music, an apology. Yes, we are nearly at the end. But I am insanely busy with work at the moment, and likely to be so for the next month. The first draft of the denouement is written, but I really, really want to get it right, and I’m not going to rush it. So there may be a slight gap before it gets posted.

Dukas, Villanelle, Ben Goldscheider and James Baillieu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbZYDqqf7Ss

Hindemith, Horn Sonata, first movement (Mäßig bewegt), played by Anneke Scott (on Dennis Brain’s Alexander horn, now in the collection at the Royal Academy of Music), and Christopher Williams:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8PIFQaIhvM
The Dennis Brain connection: though the sonata was written in 1939, Hindemith later wrote his horn concerto for Dennis Brain in 1950. Here’s Brain playing it with the Philharmonia, with Hindemith conducting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ7AI5i6L-Y
And for those wanting the whole piece, here’s Jennifer Montone and Meng Cheih Liu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMZ4PdJThe8
Personally, much as I love Montone as a player, I think Scott edges it for two reasons: I prefer the more typically European sound (the American horn world favours a slightly brassier noise – not a criticism, just a matter of different taste – and also Montone is trying to fill a much bigger hall); and I think Scott and Williams gel better and have a more equal partnership. Though I think Montone is fabulous in the second movement (unfortunately, the clip of Scott is only the first movement).

(And like Éowyn, I am a huge fan of the Metamorphosen, played here by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony with Alain Altinoglu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrJBzUsI7Iw
Just so much fun – and the brass do get the best bit, in the form off this jazzy fugue, just after the 8 minute mark in this recording.)

Finally, Dennis Brain and Denis Matthews, playing the Beethoven sonata, in a very Mozartian performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLfRowNmtG4
It’s a fascinating piece of historical footage. I love Denis Matthews as a pianist – this genuinely is a partnership at work. And watch out for the Alberti bass, the kind of rippling arpeggios under Brain’s horn playing. Brain was one of the greatest horn players of all time (I don’t think it’s just me who thinks that – I think that’s a fairly universally held opinion). And I love the clipped accents of the era when he’s talking to camera about the instrument. I’d love to know where this clip comes from.

If you go a few chapters back, you can find a link to Scott playing the whole sonata on a hand horn.

Finally, a propos of… Well… Just look at the way Barenboim looks at Du Pre as she’s playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOLc1VGacq8

Chapter Text

Éowyn walked into the college on Friday morning to find Disa waiting for her. Disa flung her arms around her friend.

“Fucking hell. It’s over. Thank fuck. Please don’t put the rest of us through this again – we’ve been worried sick.”

“Believe it or not, I don’t want to go through it again. Not that it was exactly my choice.”

“No, I know. But you know what I mean.”

“So King’s buggered off.” Éowyn felt all the muscles round her shoulders and neck relax as she said this. Muscles she hadn’t even realised were tense, they’d been knotted for same time. But at the same time a little part of her felt the need for… What? Some sort of showdown? Closure. That was the word the media shrinks in the glossy mags in doctors’ waiting rooms used. Disa’s words cut this train of thought short, though.

“So it seems. Reliable sources say he’s sulking in Paris, telling anyone who’ll listen how he’s been stitched up by ‘PC gorn mad.’” Disa rolled her eyes, then continued in a blustering voice which she also used for her celebrated Boris Johnson imitation. “I mean, who wouldn’t feel hard done by that a little bit of harmless tit-groping should be so wilfully misunderstood.”

“Yeah.” Éowyn decided to channel her inner Guy-Ritchie-style Cockney villain. “And time was when when you gave a woman a well-deserved slap, she went down and stayed down. Now the bloody bitches are hitting back.” Éowyn gave a shrug of mock disbelief.

Disa shook her head in disgust, and her braids swung in time. “But he’s gone for now, thank god. Your Cockney accent is terrible, by the way.”

Éowyn shrugged. “Biter bit. I’ve been putting up with your terrible fake Scottish accent for ages.”

“So, symphony orchestra today.” Disa abruptly changed the subject.

“Hope you’re on top form. Mahler 5. A bit of a marathon for the brass.”

“And Merry’s moment of glory.”

“Glory’s one way of putting it. It’s the ultimate trumpet brown-trousers moment, if you ask me.”

“Yeah, but a hell of a buzz if you nail it. What have you got on this morning?”

“Lesson with Erkenbrand, then a piano lesson.”

“See you for lunch?”

“Yeah, 12.30. I’ve got sandwiches. Trying to save money again.”

Disa gave her another quick squeeze of a hug, then they headed their separate ways.

The Mahler went well, despite its complexity. It was an enormously demanding piece for the brass, and took all of Éowyn's concentration. By the end of the afternoon, it seemed like Disa had picked up on the fact that Éowyn was feeling slightly deflated by the release of tension, almost a bit depressed, because as they put their instruments away she looked at Éowyn and gave her an encouraging smile.

“C’mon. Durin’s got a gig tonight – a few hours in a club will do you good.”

“Is this his jazz band?”

“No, he’s got a freelance gig. Filling in for a drummer who’s come down with covid. Sixties jazz and soul. Women singing about how screwed up their relationships are. This time last year, it would have been just your thing.” Disa gave a wicked laugh. “Now you can hold out for the end of the set and give us a belting rendition of R.E.S.P.E.C.T.”

Éowyn managed a laugh at that. “I think I’ve finally got a man who has R.E.S.P.E.C.T. running through him like the words on a stick of rock.”

“So, you’re missing him.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yeah.”

“Have you told him that?” Disa gave her one of those sharp looks that clearly showed she was anticipating an evasive non-answer. It was with a certain delight in proving her wrong that Éowyn uttered her next word.

“Yeah.”

Disa raised her eyebrows. “Fuck me sideways. ‘You’ve come a long way, baby…’” The last words were delivered in a sing-song voice.

“Sod off.”

Disa gave her a friendly shove, then said “Come back to ours. Durin put a chilli in the slow cooker this morning. We can have a quick meal before we head out, and you can leave your horn at ours. You can even kip on the sofa after the gig if you want.”

“Sounds good.”

They headed out onto Oxford Road together.

“So, Faramir’s gone down to London again.”

“Yeah. I think he thinks it’s really important to spend as much time with his brother as possible. Basically keeping him going, keeping him talking, reminding him of memories.”

“You met him last weekend, didn’t you?”

Éowyn nodded.

“How’s he doing?”

“Pretty well in the circumstances. He gets his words messed up. But I think – I mean, I’m not a doctor or anything – but I think the thought processes underneath are still okay. And he still rips the piss out of Faramir.”

Disa grinned. “How so?”

“Well the recurring theme seems to be that I’m too good for his little brother, and he can’t quite work out how Faramir pulled it off – dating me, that is – and that all things considered, his little brother has played a blinder, presumably by accident ‘cos he can credit the idea that he did it on merit…”

Disa laughed. “Quite right too. I think I’d like to meet this guy.”

“Funnily enough, I think the same. I mean about him being too good for me.”

This time, Disa did roll her eyes. “Hey, less of the ‘I don’t deserve anyone being nice to me’ crap. Course you do. And Faramir agrees. He isn’t doing this out of charity, you know, he’s doing it ‘cos he thinks the bloody sun shines out of your arse. And each thinking that about the other one seems pretty healthy to me.”

Éowyn had a moment of uncertainty, that almost instinctive moment of disbelief that she habitually got, that moment where she couldn’t quite believe the world could be as others saw it, then decided to cover it by goofing around. “Why do you think I never drop my trousers in public? I’m worried about my mates’ eyesight.”

“That is an image I do not want to have to carry around in my head.”

Disa had scored a really good spot – a table only a few feet or so from the band. Quite how Disa routinely pulled this sort of thing out of the bag was a mystery to Éowyn. But she settled for basking in the proximity, enjoying the sense of being close to the action. The lights were dim, but the club was a nice one. A sort of vaguely Scandi vibe to the décor. And a floor your feet didn’t stick to. This, in Éowyn's books, was the height of sophistication. She said as much to Disa.

“Knock it off. No-one’s buying the country hick act.”

The gig was really good. The band were tight. They’d obviously played together for a long time, the way they bounced off one another and anticipated each other’s every move. Even so, Durin slotted in just fine. To Éowyn's ear (admittedly not that refined when it came to jazz, as she would have been the first to admit), he built an instant rapport with the bassist and giving the set a rhythmic foundation that the others could riff off. He cut a slightly odd figure – a red-haired mountain troll amid a group of achingly cool players with street-cred oozing out of their every pore. Éowyn mulled over the annoying fact that the aching coolness appeared to come naturally. It wasn’t an affectation, dammit. They just were cool in a way she would never be.

The highlight of the evening, though, was the singer. She was a tall, imposing woman with hair cut close to the sort of elegant skull that could take it (Éowyn suspected she’d have looked like a tattie if she’d tried the same), cheek bones that would have graced a Greek statue and skin the colour of dark honey. She had a huge stage presence and a powerful, smokey voice that could switch from silky smooth to raising the roof on the turn of a coin. That voice sent shivers down Éowyn's spine. Three songs in, and she was tackling Break another little piece of my heart now.

Éowyn knew the Dusty Springfield version. Her granny had had that, on an old 45 which fascinated Éowyn as a kid. Watching it drop onto the turntable, the picture in the centre whirling in dizzying, ever faster circles. She used to watch, fascinated, as Granny Morwen carefully dropped the needle into place. Éowyn would bounce along to the sheer driving energy of the piece. But when she reached her teens, it had started to annoy her. Woman as the eternal doormat. Then, when she was older still, she’d discovered that this was entirely the studio’s construction – Dusty herself was no man’s doormat. The sisters, it turned out, had been doing it for themselves all along, while this sister play-acted the part of a woman standing by her man. The irony of this discovery appealed to current Éowyn, who could now listen to the energy once more, and bounce like her five-year old self, knowing the singer had been quietly taking the piss out of the words. Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she was just a consummate actor and story-teller, slipping into another woman’s life, seamlessly and convincingly.

Her mum, on the other hand, had had Janis Joplin’s take on CD. Back in her teens, Éowyn had preferred that version – angry rage and a rasping voice that came from the bottom of a bottle of something forty percent proof. Or perhaps from a wrap of something bought from a dark street corner (or, with the benefit of hindsight, the band’s manager). The growling, howling intensity of it… There was a point where that spoke to her. Several points. The point coloured by an inexorable, inescapable wave of grief when she lost her mum. The point of despair, where her body and her soul had seemed so broken, broken by a man who barely counted as human. Joplin’s raging voice felt like it gave her a way – maybe not a healthy way, but at least some sort of way – to put those broken pieces back together.

The most recent point was probably not so long ago, she reflected. As little as a year ago, even weeks ago in that police cell, she might have listened to Joplin sensing a kindred spirit in a downward spiral. How different the place was now that she inhabited. And Joplin was ancient history, Springfield almost pre-history.

The aching, almost edgy intensity of the singer anchored her in the current moment. This take on the song, this live take… Éowyn leaned forward, elbows on the table, cupping her chin in her hands.

Neither rage nor passivity – somehow here, in the building of the lyrics, was a sense of a woman keeping score. “I’m gonna show you that a woman can be tough.” It wasn’t the fatuous claim that female strength lay in putting up with the unforgivable. Nor was it one of the Furies raging like a stormy sea against the destructive power of loving the wrong man, a version where the wrong man became a passive force of nature, like a flood or an earthquake.

Instead, this tale of a heart breaking was a tally, a careful accounting, a reckoning of each piece of behaviour. Each piece of the heart, once gone, wasn’t coming back. The song became a countdown; when there was nothing left, she would walk. There was toughness in this rendition, and also dignity, and the promise of escape from the chains of romantic love gone bad.

She tried to frame this train of thought to Disa, eventually saying “Sorry, I’m probably not making any sense here.”

“Yeah, you are. Yeah. Closer to the original version – Emma Franklin.” She grinned. “Remember – I said I’d have you singing along to R.E.S.P.E.C.T. by the end of the night. Other Franklin, her sister, but you get me”

They applauded, and the band started to play the intro to another song. The singer shifted, smoothly changing gears from Soul into a Nina Simone classic, I put a spell on you.

“Bloody hell, that’s fabulous,” Éowyn whispered. She gave a wicked grin. “If I could sing like that… God, what it would do to Faramir.”

“I don’t think you need to sing to him. I think he’s already putty in your hands.”

“Still, that sound – God, forget opera. This is sex in music, right here.”

“Start as a Gospel singer, discover sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” Disa replied with a grin. “That sort of internal conflict gets you to a sound world nothing else can.”

The set was nothing if not eclectic – Durin put down his drum sticks in favour of snapping his fingers to the bass player’s riff as the singer gave a pitch-perfect version of Fever, quietly understated until... Bam! It wasn’t. Then back to Soul with a slow build of sexual tension through Son of a Preacher Man.

This time, Disa produced a passable imitation of the plummy tones of the parody academic on a sketch show they both liked. “You see that preacher man leading you through the back yard… that’s you and Faramir, that is…”

“Fuck off,” said Éowyn. She checked her wallet – still a twenty – and went to get another round of drinks. She felt obliged to stand her round, having had a nice dinner at Disa’s, and the promise of a sofa-bed later. She’d have to go busking again soon to replenish her funds.

The next morning Éowyn got the bus back to her flat. She’d agreed to meet up with Disa for a shopping trip – Disa had admitted that it was going to be a girly shopping trip, but had promised faithfully that Éowyn's participation could be limited to passive bystander. Reluctantly, Éowyn had agreed. It turned out that her desire for human company after her forced separation from college life outweighed her distaste for dress shops. However, she’d said she needed to go home for a change of clothes, but said she’d round up Lottie (if she was there) and meet Disa at her favourite greasy spoon near Piccadilly at 12.00.

She got a hell of a shock when she climbed the stairs to the first floor flat she shared with Éomer. The door was hanging half off its hinges. She made her way towards the entrance cautiously.

“Éomer?”

Her brother appeared from the kitchen, backlit as the inner door opened.

“What the fuck happened here?”

“Someone tried to break in last night. There was a god almighty bang, and I shot out of bed. Went sprinting into the hall, grabbing your old rounders bat as I went. Whoever it was, he was half way down the stairs and out the door before I could catch up with him.”

“Bloody hell. That must have been scary.”

“Yeah, Lottie was absolutely terrified.”

“You look bloody awful.”

“Haven’t slept. The door wasn’t secure. Had to make Lottie feel safe.”

“Police?”

“What police? They’ve given me a crime number over the phone for the insurance.”

“Fuck me. They can hold me in a cell overnight after self-defence, but give ‘em an actual burglary and…”

“Yeah, about as much use as a fucking chocolate tea pot. I’ve phoned the landlord – he’s sending a carpenter round.”

“Where’s Lottie?”

“Gone back to hers to crash out – she’s knackered.”

“Ah. Sensible. But Disa’s expecting her to go on some sort of girly shopping trip this afternoon.”

“Drop her a text to say where you’ll be. She’ll find it when she wakes up. Though, to be honest, she might cry off. She was really rattled.”

“I’m not surprised. Still…” Éowyn looked back down the stairs towards the grubby hall and front door. “It’s a shit flat in a shit area. I’m always amazed we haven’t been burgled already. Two doors down got done last month.”

“Yeah. But they had shit loads of electronics,” Éomer said.

“You can’t tell that from outside.”

“The local bawbags keep an eye out for what they can see through people’s windows. Plus I reckon that guy who does the window cleaning round is half running a protection racket – y’know, ‘Pay me twenty quid a month to do a half-arsed job of your windows and I’ll make sure I don’t put you on the list… the list I pass to the local gangs for another slice of money.’”

“I reckon there’s enough thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds for the odd bit of opportunism too.”

“Did I tell you about my mate in the engineering department? Came home to find they’d been burgled – the bastards had taken a single DVD – as in the actual disk, not the player – a couple of pizzas and a six-pack of beer from the fridge. They’d literally stolen their Saturday night in in front of the TV.”

Éowyn laughed. But Éomer poured cold water on her brief respite.

“You don’t think… You don’t think it could have been more targetted? That bastard King?”

Éowyn felt a chill, but she brushed it off. “No. He’s in France. And he’s a bastard. He’s not unhinged. No, it’ll just be a particularly useless kid. The one too dim to case the place, and so dim not even the gangs want him.”

When Éowyn got to the cafe, she found Disa sitting with Arwen. Arwen stood and gave her a hug.

“Thank god it’s all sorted out at last.” Éowyn felt Disa’s earlier words echo in her head, and resigned herself to an afternoon of well-meaning hugs. She just wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened.

Éowyn slid into the seat next to Disa. “How are things going?”

“Pretty well. Disa’s advice was on point. I’ve put out feelers, got a series of recitals lined up. Kind of second-tier venues – haven’t scored St Johns Smiths Square yet.” Here Arwen paused and gave a grin. “But I’m working on it. And I’ve got a couple of understudy roles lined up in small-ish opera companies. And I’m auditioning next week for a stint as maternity cover for one of the chorus singers in ENO, which hopefully will get my foot in the door there.”

“That’s brilliant,” Éowyn said. But in her head she could hear Elfhelm and Erkenbrand saying “don’t sell yourself short.” This collection of bits and pieces felt like exactly the sort of piecemeal start they’d warned her against. Settle for being a bit-player, the danger was you might stay a bit player. But Aragorn’s mighty legal career on the side of righteousness… She felt a quick stab of anger. And a pang of something else. What? This dim, nagging feeling that she and Faramir had never talked about how they’d juggle two musical careers, especially if he managed to pull off the impossible and get a career as a piano soloist. The sort of career that would have him flying all over the world. Away on tour for ages.

But again, that (if it happened – there was a long route of doing the competition circuit and establishing yourself before anyone got to that stage) was a long way off. Disa was always telling her to live in the moment. And Granny Morwen’s voice was never far away: “Don’t borrow trouble.”

“When did Lottie say she’d get here?” Disa asked, getting down to business. The important business of trawling round every trendy clothes shop in central Manchester. Éowyn asked herself why the hell she’d volunteered to do this to herself.

She filled the others in on the attempted burglary.

“Christ.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Anyway, Éomer said text Lottie letting her know where we are. She’ll catch up with us when she wakes up.”

They chatted for about fifteen minutes before Poppy arrived. Then Éowyn's phone buzzed. She glanced at it.

“Lottie says she’ll meet us in King’s Street about 2.30.”

“Okay, what do you say we start with Haleth this time?” said Disa.

They finished their drinks and headed out.

Piccadilly to Deansgate was heaving with Saturday shoppers, as always. So it wasn’t till they got into the slightly narrower streets leading to Haleth’s little tucked-away boutique that the crowds thinned enough for Éowyn to pick out individual people. And she got this curious, prickling feeling that she was being watched. She couldn’t put her finger on it – the people in background seemed unremarkable enough. A middle aged woman with bags from M&S’s food hall. A couple of young men, hand in hand, carrying bookshop bags. Further away, an unremarkable business man in an overcoat and hat. An older man, his back to them, walking towards a small tailor’s shop. No-one to worry about. But it still made her feel uneasy.

Just jumpy after all the shit of the last few weeks. Plus the bloody burglary. Anyone would feel jumpy. Mentally, she told herself to get a grip.

Haleth’s was the same as Éowyn remembered it – and, to her surprise, Haleth remembered her.

“How’re the outfits going?”

“They’re nice…” Éowyn trailed off, feebly.

“They’re great. She wore the green jumpsuit to the concert where she was soloist – looked bloody fab. And it’s such a relief at regular gigs not feel like some kid’s wandered in wearing school uniform, and taken the seat next to me” Disa said.

Éowyn gave her a friendly shove.

They left with Arwen carrying a bag with a black evening dress (“Perfect for evening recitals”) and Poppy carrying a bag with a pair of satin trousers which, when she’d tried them on, had looked like they’d been painted on (“Trumpeter’s girlfriends should always have an outfit for going clubbing.”)

As promised, Lottie was waiting for them on King’s Street, and the now (painfully) familiar round of fancy shops there and in St Anne’s square began. Éowyn trailed along at the back of the group. There were more people now, but strangely, she still couldn’t shake off the weird sensation that they were being followed. She turned a few times, trying to pull off the impossible and make the move casual, yet rapid enough to catch anyone. She failed. No figures ducking into doorways, or suddenly stooping to tie a shoe lace.

Dammit, she’d been watching too many spy thrillers. She firmly told herself to give her head a wobble. But the nagging feeling wouldn’t go away.

“What now?” asked Arwen, as they emerged from what felt like the hundredth shop of the afternoon. They’d managed to make their way all the way up to the town hall in their lengthy ramble.

“How about a change from clothes. Second hand vinyl?” Poppy mentioned a very hip record shop way down towards the cathedral. “They have a cafe, really good slices of pizza. Boba tea.”

“Pizza and boba tea? That’s what I call cultural fusion,” Arwen laughed.

“All the way to the cathedral? In these heels?” said Lottie, plaintively. “I’m not sure I can make it that far.”

“Bloomin’ opera singers. They’re just so fragile,” Poppy replied. “C’mon. We can get the tram.” She gestured to the stop fifty yards or so away, over the other side of St. Peter’s Square.

They gathered on the low platform beside the tram line. Éowyn watched as Disa and Lottie goofed around. The tiredness and vague sense of unease she’d been struggling with lifted, and was replaced by a rare and precious feeling of being part of a group of friends, being accepted. Along with an equally precious sense of relief that the huge burden of the last few weeks had gone. Either that, or it was the prospect of a record shop instead of yet another sodding clothes shop. Yeah, that was probably it.

Her friends seemed to be re-enacting a scene from a movie. She thought it maybe had started as a kid’s movie, though (unsurprisingly) Disa’s choice of language had strayed at least as far as 15+. Lottie pretended to strut up and down the platform like a model on a runway, twirling her shopping bags, while Disa crouched to one side, taking snapshots on her mobile phone and coming up with ever more ridiculous photography clichés.

“That’s it darling, love that camera, love it. I need big animé eyes, I need a pout, I need fucking attitude.”

Éowyn shook her head at the clown show, then grinned at Poppy. “This is the first time I think I’ve ever enjoyed a girly shopping trip.”

“That’s because those two didn’t get to make you buy anything.” Poppy was nothing if not shrewd; Éowyn began to realise why she and Merry were such a good fit.

“They gave me hell last time – bullied me into two outfits. At least this time, they’ve only bought stuff for themselves.”

“Two outfits? Good god, how did they pull that off?”

“Like I said, bullying.” Éowyn pulled a face. “It scarred me, I’m telling you.” She reached around in her mind for the most absurd image she could come up with. “I’ve needed an emotional support gerbil ever since.”

Poppy laughed.

“I mean, a gerbil…” Éowyn said, warming to the subject. “Have you any idea how unsuitable a gerbil is? As an emotional support animal for a horn player? I lost the bloody thing up the bell last week, took me an hour to lure it out with sunflower seeds.” Her giddy feeling of happiness and relief seemed to be expressing itself in a madcap surreal sense of humour.

Meanwhile, Lottie’s runway strut brought her a bit too close to Disa. She accidentally clocked her with one of the many fancy, branded shopping bags. Disa lost her balance and toppled over, landing on her bum. They both started to giggle helplessly. Lottie held out a hand and pulled Disa to her feet. Then slumped against her, snorting with laughter. Arwen watched from the edge of the shelter, a benign smile on her face.

Out of the corner of her eye, Éowyn spotted the tram approaching. They were at the end of the platform nearest to it, and it rolled down the rails at a fair speed. A little bit of her mind recalled the moment, what now felt like an age earlier, when – desperate to get to Mrs. Khan’s on time – she’d sprinted across the tracks and been told off by a random middle-aged woman for her risky behaviour. As she watched the front of the tram loom nearer, she got a sense of what it must have looked like from the perspective of the woman who’d taken her to task. A chill crept over her. Back then, she’d not been taking proper care of herself. The deep shit she’d landed in had been in danger of overwhelming her. She’d nearly drowned. And if not exactly deliberately taking risks, she’d certainly been careless. Not caring enough about herself. She shuddered.

Then, as if the shudder had been not so much brought on by a bad memory, but more a premonition of danger to come, out of the corner of her eye she saw a man’s figure. It was such a nondescript figure she wondered why she’d registered it at all. Except that now she did a double take, and realised she had seen it before. On Deansgate, when she’d turned to talk to Disa, just behind her on the pavement. She’d seen the figure duck down a side alley between shops. And in St Anne’s Square. She thought she hadn’t seen anything – her conscious mind hadn’t seen anything. But some primeval part of her, on the lookout for danger. That part of her had seen a figure dodge behind a tradesman’s van, unloading goods to one of the shops.

The figure wore a bulky rain coat, too warm for the day, and old-fashioned hat pulled down, obscuring his eyes, with a scarf round his chin. Something was off. Something didn’t seem right.

“Lottie, Disa…”

When she tried to recall the events afterwards, the thing she remembered more than anything was Lottie’s face. Lottie looked up from Disa’s shoulder, and suddenly her complexion went chalk white, her eyes widening with shock. Éowyn could see her mouth opening – to speak? To scream? She reacted before any noise reached her.

She sensed rather than saw the movement. The man’s figure barrelling towards the group of them. She could see the bulky, shapeless mass in her peripheral vision. She sprang forwards, somewhere between a jump and a dive, pushing Poppy, trying to get her out of the way. It didn’t work.

All she managed to do was put two of them in the path of the man. He charged, making a feral growling noise as he came. It was an inhuman sound. Éowyn felt her blood turn to ice. It was as if the sudden freeze slowed her movements. She knew she had to get both of them out of the way. She tried… God, she tried. But it was too slow. Too late.

All three of them… Éowyn, Poppy, the man, tumbling inexorably towards the tracks, in front of the oncoming tram.

Yes, I’m back. Work trip abroad done and dusted. Evil cliffy accomplished (I hope not to leave you hanging for too long).

R.E.S.P.E.C.T., Aretha Franklin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FOUqQt3Kg0

Take another little piece of my heart – Dusty Springfield (in 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIaPiw4p234
The Janis Joplin version (also 1968)
https://youtu.be/7uG2gYE5KOs?list=RD7uG2gYE5KOs
And the original version – Emma Franklin (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0QAxIKf8G4

Nina Simone – Put a spell on you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua2k52n_Bvw

Preacher Man – Aretha turned this down, so Dusty Springfield did the original version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAZLgsDRUv4
But Aretha covered it later
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua2k52n_Bvw

Chapter Text

The tram hurtled towards them, so close now, horn hooting desperately.

She was pitched into a nightmare. That nagging feeling – the one that had haunted her. The half-glimpses of someone in the back streets, following them. The prickling sensation down the back of her spine. Her senses had been right. Precious little comfort now. To have been right, but to have ignored it.

He’d tackled them low, at hip height. His shoulder had caught her on the bone, and Éowyn felt pain burst outwards from the point of impact, like a grenade exploding. His other arm had been outstretched, almost as if he was trying to scoop Poppy into a brutal travesty of a hug. His momentum carried all three of them onto the tracks.

They hung, almost suspended in time. Éowyn's mind must have been running at lightning speed – so it was true: things really did feel like they were in slow motion when you were about to die. She was aware of Poppy, just to the side of her, the man, just behind and above. Aware of Poppy’s scream. Was she screaming too?

All falling. All going to die.

They hit the ground with an agonising crash. Pain shot through her, bursts of explosive flashes where the most damage had been done. All melding into one conflagration so she couldn’t tell what was what. Shoulder. Legs. Head.

Worst, in the moment, all the wind was knocked out of Éowyn. She lay flat on her back, gasping. In that instant, she lost track of where she was, until the hoot of the tram, louder than she’d ever heard before, echoed around her. She turned her head slightly. There was a thundering, rushing noise, and a scream of brakes, but the tram was almost on top of them, and not slowing anything like fast enough.

In that instant, she could see the driver’s face. Frozen, like her own movements, terror etched into every line. He knew he couldn’t stop in time. There was an inevitability to the laws of momentum and machinery that no amount of human agency could alter.

She gasped to no effect – there was no air in her lungs, and none seemed able to enter. Desperation hit her. This was it. There was no way out of this. She couldn’t move. The tram couldn’t stop. She was going to die. With a superhuman effort, she managed to wheeze and drag just a tiny breath of precious oxygen through her mouth. It wasn’t enough. It had to be enough. She pushed with her hand with all her waning strength and rolled to her side, then onto all fours.

There was pain everywhere. Her shoulder. Her leg. She fought through it and forced herself into a kneeling position. And all the time, the front of the tram got closer. Jerkily. Like some sort of time lapse photography. Pain. Close tram. More pain. Even closer tram. More pain.

To the side of her she saw Poppy try to get up, then give a yelp, more animal than human. Her ankle gave way. The sight of Poppy’s panicked face brought the world back into sharp focus. Her vision was clouded by black spots from effort and the hypoxia of being winded, but she pushed through it and half rose, now making it onto one knee. She grabbed Poppy’s arm and pulled for all she was worth, hauling her over onto the other set of tracks. Poppy gave a scream of pain, her foot trailing at an odd angle as Éowyn yanked her towards her.

Almost spent, she let Poppy fall to the ground, and turned to check that she’d got them far enough. The tram was mere feet away now.

And there was the man in the coat, his hat now rolling across the dirty tarmacadam between the tracks. That face. She’d known, even before she could see his face, who it had to be. King, sprawled on the track, face contorted with hate.

Her brain was still in that curious state of overdrive, processing events in milliseconds.

The tram was still coming, still slowing, still not slowing fast enough. King spat words at her. She couldn’t hear them above the shriek of the tram’s brakes, the helpless hoot of its horn.

She could see King trying to move towards her. To escape? It wasn’t fear on his face. It was fury. If he was moving, it was to try to do more harm. His hands scrabbled across the ground, trying to get some sort of purchase.

Should she grab him? Should she leave him? She wanted to leave him. Fuck him. She felt a wave of intense hatred, all consuming hatred.

It hit her: whatever she did, she’d have to live with the decision. He would be there in her nightmares, along with Grima and the courtroom. She crouched, suspended between courses of action. Her brain competed with the noise of the tram’s brakes screaming. Another hoot rent the air, pointed, pointless, warning of a danger that was inescapable.

He reached out. The monster who’d tried to destroy her. The man who was going to die. Monster. Man. Monster.

She hesitated. Again, fuck him. Then… The instinct to help a fellow human seemed hard wired in. She started to reach for him.

From beside her, she heard Poppy moan with pain. He’d tried to kill Poppy. She froze, her hand half extended, millimetres from his, paralysed by indecision. The words came, unbidden.

“You murdering bastard.” She looked him straight in the eye.

“You fucking bitch…”

He reached out. But not seeking rescue. His hand almost made contact with hers.

“I’m taking you with me…” A hiss of pure malevolence. “Die, you bitch...”

She felt like a statue, turned to stone. Her conscious mind overrode the instinct to help. He wanted to kill her. She squashed the impulse to save him. Again – fuck him!

He tried to close the distance, but misjudged. His fingers brushed hers, trying to wrap around them, but slipping clear. His hand closed on air.

“Bitch…” There was no mistaking his intention. As he closed his grasp, he pulled his hand back towards his body. If he’d caught her, he would have tried to pull her under the tram.

The impact was sickening. Éowyn felt the wall of air as the front of the tram passed inches from her. There was a heavy thud, and then… Oh God. She’d give anything to unhear that. That crunch.

Behind her, she heard Poppy.

“Oh Christ.” Her voice was a whisper, shaking. Followed by the sound of retching, the splatter of vomit hitting the ground.

Éowyn's legs sagged and she sat down on the track. She was half aware of figures lifting Poppy onto the far platform. Then someone came up behind her and put hands under her armpits, and steered her to her feet.

“Here, love, let’s get you safely off the tracks.”

She wasn’t quite sure how many of them there were; she was just dimly aware of a group of people pulling her up, then half-carrying, half-dragging her, helping her over to a bench.

The tram had come to a halt maybe twenty feet further up the platform. She presumed King was… Either underneath? Or in front? Thank fuck she couldn’t see from this angle.

She leaned forward and put her head between her knees. She sucked in vast gulps of air. That crunching noise. The sound of bone shattering. The sound of a body being destroyed. The sound of a life ending.

She tried not to think about it. She shut her eyes, and the moment where his fingertips brushed hers played like a movie on the back of her eyelids. Die, bitch. The movie even had a sound track. She opened her eyes – there was the tram. Her mind replayed the crunching noise. She shut her eyes again. The bloody movie. Die! That crunch. She felt sick.

Eyes open once more, she stared fixedly at the pavement.

In the distance she heard the sound of sirens.

“Éowyn…” Disa’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. She tried to stand, to move towards the sound. A searing pain shot through her head, starting from the back where she’d cracked her skull against the tarmac on landing, and piercing like daggers, radiating through the rest of her brain. Her vision swam, blurring. She half rose, then staggered, legs crumpling underneath her. How had she not felt this before? Now it was the whole of her consciousness, the central thing about her being. This pain. She was aware of a whimpering noise. Poppy? No, it seemed to be coming from her. The pain pulsed in waves, and her brain gave up on the struggled, sinking beneath a dark wave of unconsciousness.

Only bits and pieces of the next hour registered. The paramedic talking to her, trying to get her to say her name. Asking her really stupid things like what day of the week it was. What year it was. Who the fucking prime minister was, for Christ’s sake.

Being put in a neck brace. Again. Why? Her neck didn’t hurt. Her head did. Like a bastard. She still couldn’t see properly. The world had narrowed to a field of dark grey fuzz.

They lifted her onto a trolley and next thing she knew, she felt the sensation of being lifted jerkily upwards.

Disa’s voice: “It’s just the lift on the ambulance. We’re going to hospital.”

“Why? Have you been hurt too?”

“No, I’m coming with you, you daft lump.” She felt her hand being taken, wrapped in another, comforting, warm hand.

The lurching journey. The sound of the siren. A wave of sickness. The paramedic holding a cardboard bowl while she puked.

“Sorry.”

She was dimly aware that Disa had been holding her hair. She had a feeling some of the puke had got splattered there anyway.

Then the sensation being wheeled along a corridor. The grey fuzz began to clear, slowly. Her vision was sort of coming back but it made no sense. Patches of colour. She kind of knew they were in the right places relative to one another, but they didn’t connect. Didn’t form themselves into objects. Just stayed resolutely patches of colour. Squares of light flitted overhead.

She realised Disa was still holding her hand. Touch made more sense than the patches of light and colour.

A new person. Scrubs. That’s what the green shapes were. Scrubs. She felt a weird sense of triumph that her brain had processed something. It hurt from the effort, though.

Bright light being shone in her eyes, one at a time. The spotty after image, just another confusing, disconnected shape on her visual field.

The same drill as before. Name. What day of the week was it? What year? The doctor’s voice was a middling tenor, she thought.

Her answers were interrupted by the need to throw up again.

“You’ve got a bad concussion Éowyn. Éowyn, can you hear me? Do you understand? You’ll have to go for a head x-ray. Are you okay with that?”

Éowyn tried to nod, and promptly threw up again.

Then she heard the same tenor voice speaking, but not to her.

“Can you stick around?”

“I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry.” That was Disa.

“Keep her awake. There’s a stack of sick bowls in the corner. The porter will be here to take her for an x-ray and CT scan soon. If she loses consciousness, if she does anything out of the ordinary, pull that red emergency cord.”

She felt Disa take her hand.

“C’mon. Open your eyes. Look at me.”

Cautiously, she tried. The lights were so bloody bright. Disa swam before her. But it was Disa. Not a Disa-shaped patch of colours. That was new. A bit better.

By the time she got back from the X-ray and scan, the world was made of objects again. But god, her head hurt like fuck. And she was still throwing up at intervals.

Disa was waiting for her. So, to her surprise, was Indis.

“The police showed up,” Disa explained. “Wanting to question you. I told them you were getting X-rayed, then called Indis.”

“Given your past history with King, I’m not having you interviewed without me around. Even if what happened is pretty bloody obvious, has multiple witnesses and is all on CCTV.”

“My head hurts,” Éowyn said. It was about all she could manage.

She settled back down on the pillow, then winced as the massive bruise met the pillow.

She was in the middle of throwing up when the police arrived. Indis took control of the situation.

“You clearly can’t interview her. She’s concussed and not able to give a coherent statement. Here’s my number. Give me a ring tomorrow and I’ll be able to give you an update on her medical situation.”

The doctor came back.

“Good news. No fracture, no sign of any bleeding. Of course it’s early days, and we’re going to keep you in overnight to keep an eye on you. And you’ll need someone with you for the next week – delayed concussion is a thing. Rest. No screen time. No reading.”

“Playing the French horn?”

“Bloody hell, no.”

He left. She winced at the bright lights. Disa went to close the curtains, but a nurse appeared as if from nowhere and stopped her.

“We need to be able to see she’s okay.”

Éowyn curled up on her side. It kept the massive egg-shaped bruise forming on the back of her head away from the pillow, which might as well have been made of bricks. It also helped a bit with the nausea.

Disa scrolled through her phone.

The time stretched out in that endless limbo that characterises hospitals. Éowyn was sore, sick and bored stupid. Every so often she started to doze, but it seemed that Disa was paying attention to her as well as her phone, and every time, she would give her a shake, and demand she made conversation for a few minutes.

Eventually, she began to feel a bit more coherent.

“How’s Poppy?”

Disa looked up from her phone.

“She’s got a broken ankle – she’s in surgery at the moment. I think they’re going to have to pin it. But she should be okay.”

“And King?” She knew the answer, but still had to ask.

“Very much not okay. Dead at the scene. It was not pretty.”

“Are you okay?”

“Well, I’d rather not have seen that, but yeah, compared to you and Poppy, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

Éowyn curled back up on the narrow bed. She could hear footsteps approaching. Yet another medic coming to ask her what day of the week it was?

“Oh God, Éowyn.”

Faramir! She tried to turn her head, but it hurt too much. It didn’t matter; he came round the bed and crouched down, so his face was level with hers. Bloody hell – he looked awful. Chalk white, drawn, lines of worry on his face. He took her hand in both of his.

“How? Aren’t you meant to be in London with Boromir?”

“Disa texted me. I got the first train I could.”

“What was it, some sort of supersonic train?” Éowyn tried to laugh, but it was forced. And it hurt her head.

Faramir managed a faint laugh. “It’s five hours since Disa texted.”

“What?”

“You’ve lost track of time,” Disa said. “Here, have this chair, Faramir. I’ll go and find another one. Actually, while I’m at it, can I get you a cup of tea.”

“Yes please.” He sounded sat down.

Disa’s warm hand was replaced by Faramir’s larger one. She started to drift off to sleep. Warm. Comforting hand hold. Faramir nearby. She was fine.

Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder, giving her a gentle shake. She winced. Something was wrong with that shoulder. Bruising? Worse? She opened her eyes.

“Piss off.”

“Love you too,” said Disa. Then, “You’ve got to keep her awake, Faramir.”

“Sorry…”

She shifted her head slightly to look at him. More daggers.

To her surprise she could see his cheeks were wet, trails of tears down them. He caught her looking and brushed the tears away with the back of his free hand.

Disa patted him gently on the arm.

“She’ll be okay.”

“I know. Sorry. Stupid. Making this about me.”

He gave her hand a squeeze, and Éowyn felt a wash of warmth at the thought that he cared.

Mozart, Don Giovanni (final act – the arrival of the Commendatore’s ghost),
Samuel Ramey (Giovanni), Kurt Moll (Commendatore), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Leporello).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioc9shJa_lI

Work deadline dealt with (just), work trip abroad done. So hopefully I should be able to focus on the few remaining chapters. Well, apart from the next work project and a string of concerts and gigs coming up.

I think I forgot to put the link to Mahler 5 in the last chapter, so here it is:
Mahler 5, Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvXhyldUko