Rain had been falling steadily for hours, sheeting grey across the city, soaking through clothing, drenching the crowds who stood almost silent, five deep along the narrow streets, where the water poured along the gutters, seeping into shoes.
They stood quiet, hollow-eyed and the guards, placed at intervals lining the route, hardly had to gesture to keep them back. All along the way folk could hear the single drumbeat approach, even muffled by the sound of rain it echoed down the narrow streets; and closer the heavy tramp of soldiers’ boots.
At the head of the column walked the magistrates, shuffling out of step, their robes, despite the pages who carried their trains, darkened with water at the hems; then the drummer, the standard-bearer and in the place where the headsman would have walked, an ashen-faced squire carried Anduril, blade down. As the procession passed men shrank away. Sometimes a muffled sobbing could be heard, sometimes a choked blessing was called out to the condemned man, who paced, neck bared, along the streets he had known from his youth, for the last time.
They are moving down from the citadel to the great market square on the first level and as each gate is passed Boromir feels himself slipping back and back into remembrance. Rain paints his face with tears, plasters his shorn hair to his skull, and his eyes lower to the cluster of white roses he carries.
The warm spring sunshine had brought out the first of the bumble bees onto the blossom of the peach cordons trained along the south-facing wall of the courtyard. Boromir was waiting in a shaded alcove cut into the wall. He could hear the buzzing loud in his ears, and louder still his heart thudding against his chest. He pressed his palms into the stonework, wanting the rough drag on his skin to anchor him to the gravel beneath his feet. He could no longer remember how he came to be there, but his skin crawled with a need that made him itch and pant.
And then she was there, not the sound of her feet, but the whispered drag of her train across the grass and a hiss as it swept across the pathway. He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments and her perfume surrounded him like a mist of flowers, clean and sweet. He could feel her breath short on his neck, and did not even open his eyes to catch her to him and crush her mouth beneath his. He would have forced his tongue between her teeth, but that her soft mouth sucked him in and an urgent body pressed against the length of him, curves fitting into his hollows so that he felt she supported him, falling, dizzy with wanting.
His hands slid the dress from her shoulders, mouth pressed against the soft skin at her throat and following his questing hands as they cradled small, heavy breasts, brushing her swollen nipples with his thumbs, until she moaned softly and drew his mouth down to her.
The ragged, ugly noise came from their right, one of the Queen’s women, rooted to the spot, screaming at the sight before her, drawing guards and onlookers to them and then the form beneath him began to struggle and as hands dragged him off, she had sobbed out her innocence.
Boromir was dazed, still aching hard and enraged, lashing out, so that it took six men to hold him, screaming defiance into the faces of shocked courtiers. He would have her, must have her and as they dragged him from the scene, all turned from the shameful sight of a hero fallen into darkness.
By the time they brought him before the court several weeks later, the dark fog had lifted from his mind, the bloody scratches he had gouged all over his body the only evidence of the madness, to be replaced by the dull, constant pain of his disgrace, the knowledge that he had betrayed his name and his lover, the one soul in all the world he valued most.
Aragorn had come to him once in his prison and they neither of them could find where to begin, nor words to say, so that they had parted after a very few minutes and this public arena of justice was now their meeting place.
The magistrates were busy that day, a robbery, an attack in a dark alley, and two men discovered making the obscene beast with the two backs, who now faced a choice of death or the knife. Gondor held to laws that generations of Stewards could not, and would not, seek to change. The days of the King would come in time to sweep the cruelty away, but not yet. It was too soon to think of challenging moral certainties, when they were all that seemed to have survived from a former ‘golden’ age, so that Elessar sat almost powerless, as judgements were given down in his name that sickened his stomach.
Once the ‘ordinary’ cases were done with the chamber was cleared of the common folk for this crime against the state in the person of the King. Arwen had not been required to appear before the court, but her statement, damning enough in its simplicity, was read out for all to hear – how Boromir had enticed her with sweet words and some tale of service to the King to meet him in the garden and how he had overpowered her, the evidence of her torn dress would speak to his violent lust. He had cursed Elessar, saying that the Stewards’ should still rule and he would see to it that her belly brought forth one of his line to reign. Men murmured at this and remembered his father’s final years of iron rule.
A voice had been found to speak for Boromir, an old friend of his father’s, a clever and a just man who spoke eloquently of Boromir’s service to Gondor, of the sacrifices gladly made. More, he cast some doubt on the Queen’s evidence, pointing out that no one man, be he warrior or no, could overpower an elf, female or no. He cited the names of elleth warriors, as strong in battle as their fellows and reminded the court of Arwen’s own martial exploits in the recent wars. The balance likely swung toward a shared and illicit passion, but he could do nothing with the grave crime that remained, that Boromir had wronged the King. Onlookers wondered that the two men could catch and hold eachother’s gaze, thinking the King sorrowed at the brazen daring of this man, a former friend and comrade, who had defiled the royal bed, when in truth both knew that their knowledge of one another was the one piece of evidence that could never be heard…and both were wracked with doubt.
The deliberations of the court did not take many minutes and once again Boromir stood before the land he loved, Gondor in all the flawed glory of its history and tradition. From his seat above and behind the magistrates Aragorn sent forth a silent plea to any power that would accept his service in return for his love’s freedom, but there was no escaping this sentence, meant to protect the line of kings, now like to break its present heart.
Boromir heard the words of the magistrate as through a fog whispering. He knew the statute but was not sure if Aragorn realised the scope of the law. The magistrate was reading the sentence of the court “…and taken from your confinement to a public place where your head will be severed from your body - the blows to be struck by the man you have wronged. In the King’s name.”
In the silence that followed, he could not meet Aragorn’s eyes, else he would have seen the blood drain from the King’s face and inwardly he wept for him, for both of them.
When it had been suggested that he be placed in a cell in the depths of the keep, Elessar’s response had been almost savage, so Boromir had been housed in a suite of tower rooms cleared for the purpose. A single stone stair wound up to his day room on one level, a bedchamber above and higher still a tiny cell-like niche with a stone bench and an arrow slit window that looked out over Minas Tirith towards the sea. There were guards posted at the foot of the tower, but none ventured up. There were bars on the lower windows, but no chains on his feet, no iron collar. He came down to them once each day to collect his food and water to wash in. His linens were changed and he had books and writing implements.
Gradually that part of the palace emptied. Servants found other routes than along its corridors and courtiers allocated rooms close by found cause to stay under their own roofs. But one soul haunted its length. Like a sick ghost the King was drawn back again and again to wander the long galleries. Always he passed the foot of the turret stair with eyes lowered, but never climbed the narrow way, nor paused in his passage.
Delegations had come from far and near to plead for clemency. From the Shire Merry and Pippin had come and when Boromir would not see them, they had railed at Aragorn for a coward. Pippin had renounced his service to Gondor and they left grim-faced. Mirkwood had sent an envoy offering a home in exile if they would commute the sentence, but Gondor had had enough of other races meddling in its affairs. A storm of claim and counterclaim raged about Aragorn’s head and more, men still loyal to the Steward’s line, stirred into almost open rebellion. His ministers held firm, the decision of the court must be upheld. His reign was too new, too uncertain yet, to go against the laws of Gondor.
A sullen party had arrived from Lothlorien to escort the Queen from the city. They had left at dusk and through a side gate. Aragorn had watched her go from a high window, whilst their son wailed in his nurse’s arms behind him.
They had cursed one another, pouring out cold anger, with guilt on Aragorn’s side for having kept her when he knew his heart lay elsewhere, and a share of jealous madness as Arwen’s lot. And at the last, when both seemed to have exhausted their bile, she’d drawn her cloak tight around her and, smiling sweetly, had whispered to him “He drank it down, blessing your name…” Aragorn had grasped her tight then, but she’d fluttered and called faintly on her elven guards and he’d flung her from him, dazed. A few whispered words that could be made to seem anything carried no weight with the law.
As the day drew near, the magistrates had wine added to the prison fare and for a few days the flagons had been returned emptied, but as suddenly it ended and Boromir would not take the liquor up in the morning, leaving it for the guards.
Then Aragorn had the guards removed from their post. The food and the steaming bucket sat alone at the bottom step until Boromir came for them, leaving the soiled things for a servant to collect later. And now the men had that wing to themselves, the one chained to his keep by more than physical chains and the other dragging himself along the cold passages, heartsick.
The builders moved into the great square to begin preparations and all over the city a fog of muffled whispering descended. Men moved reluctantly and although the streets were filling up with folk arriving from across Gondor, there was none of the usual energy that great crowds brought to the inns and markets.
On the morning of his last full day, Boromir turned the final corner of the tower stair to find a familiar figure hunched on the step beside his food. Arms wrapped tight around his knees, slumped against the wall, Aragorn looked as though he had slept on the cold stone. Boromir cautiously stretched out a hand to lay it on his shoulder and Aragorn flinched, turning to look up at him with eyes so dark with pain, that his first move was to embrace him, to kneel and wrap his arms around the man, nuzzling into his neck and breathing in his familiar smell. For a few moments they had stayed clasped together and then Aragorn had clutched convulsively at the arm encircling his chest and Boromir had pulled him to his feet, saying, “Come love, you’re chilled through. We’ll eat together and warm you up.”
Gathering up the food and water they climbed the stairs to the day room, where Boromir laid the food down on a long table that stood against one wall and tipped some water from the bucket into an iron cauldron that swung on a chain over the small fire in the grate. A square table stood under the window with two chairs and Boromir laid out food for them both. When the water had boiled he poured some into a bowl of grain and let it stand whilst he fetched down a pouch from a high shelf and placed herbs from it into a mug, to which he added more of the boiling water and a spoonful of honey. All the while Aragorn sat silently watching him. Boromir placed the mug on the table before him and gently clasped his hands around its warmth, leaning in to kiss Aragorn and telling him firmly to drink. As the King sipped at the tea, Boromir fetched two wooden bowls and spooned the grain porridge into them, adding a generous swirl of honey to each bowl. Then he sat down beside Aragorn, handed him a bowl and spoon and began to eat his breakfast.
Aragorn finished his tea, picked up his spoon and dragged it slowly through the honeyed mess. His hand shook and then stilled and he would have slumped forward, but Boromir quietly took the spoon from him and began to feed him. At first Aragorn struggled to swallow, but Boromir was so serious and so calm, that he caught his mood and after a few mouthfuls, covered Boromir’s hand with his own and took back the spoon to finish his meal. They ate in silence, but could each feel the heat of the other’s body beside him and the press of flesh from knee to hip.
When they were done, Boromir would have risen to take the bowls away, but Aragorn grasped his wrist and drew him back to his seat. They were sitting gazing out across the plain towards the White Mountains and Aragorn brought Boromir’s hands to his mouth, kissing each knuckle in turn and turning them over to kiss the palms and then bringing his lips to rest at the point where Boromir’s heart beat in one wrist.
Boromir went to speak, but words stuck in his throat and he leant in to brush his mouth across Aragorn’s brow and press a kiss to his temple. At his wrist, the press of lips had become a sweep with the tip of a tongue and a gentle nip as Aragorn caught the flesh between his teeth. A faint moan escaped Boromir’s throat and they were all-at-once pressed together in a tangle of limbs, their mouths joined in fevered breaths, trying each to draw the other’s soul into his throat.
Boromir pushed back his stool and without breaking the kiss, swept an arm across the table to clear it and hauled Aragorn up to lay him on his back, peeling back his shirt to feast on skin, ruddy at his throat and creamy, beneath its pelt of dark hair, across his chest. He laved along the collarbone and nipped gently at the round of his shoulder, before running the tip of his tongue back and forth along the line of each rib, pausing to coax the little brown nubs of his nipples to hardness with busy fingers and tongue. Aragorn thought he had never seen him so beautiful and when Boromir’s hair fell across his face to mask him from Aragorn’s sight, the sucking feel of his mouth, his flickering tongue, became all the sweeter. Aragorn twisted fingers in the silk of Boromir’s hair, pulling him back up his body for an embrace that left both men dazed. Then as suddenly as he’d laid him down, Boromir clasped Aragorn to him and led him out of the room and up the stone stair to the bedchamber above.
They loved well and hard, glorying in warriors’ muscle and sinew, in strength and grace, but also in true lovers’ tenderness with lingering caresses and gentle words. All through that day the men stored up the memories of a lifetime, taking and giving pleasure, stealing breath with passion and lifting up their hearts with a trust, one in the other, that seemed to say that no man nor deed could part them.
And yet, there were things not said that finally would not be denied and with sorrow and shame Aragorn told Boromir of his last meeting with Arwen, of her words. He held his lover as Boromir cried softly, in relief that he had not betrayed Aragorn and in grief for their lost lives.
With burning anger Aragorn cursed everything that had brought them to this place and as he grew frantic Boromir began to fear for him, for the good man who could be broken by the politic needs of his role.
“An innocent man…a drugged man…this is not justice! I swore I would do justice, took a vow to my people – this is not justice…”
“It is the way of Kings…”
“Of Kings…” Aragorn almost spat the words.
“You needs must reign secure. The peace of more than just us two depends on it…” Boromir rested his head on Aragorn’s shoulder, “What we have is an abomination in the eyes of Gondor, proud and narrow as she stands today…before you have had the years to soften her ways…and we both love our stubborn, hurting land…so perhaps the sacrifice…”
“And what is the goal worth that asks of us that we betray all we hold dear along that way?” Aragorn’s voice as he lifted Boromir to look at him, was shaking with emotion, “The guards are gone and a good horse stands in your stall. There is too little time left and if I must command you to go Boromir, I will.” Boromir shook his head sadly,
“I am beyond your command now. A condemned man owes no allegiance.”
Aragorn cried out and beat his fists on Boromir’s chest.
“Do you value your life and what it means to me, so little? Would you stain my hands with your blood?
Boromir took in a shuddering breath and caught Aragorn’s face gently between his hands.
“Do you think I have not looked at each path? We are caught up in a tangle, love, that neither of us can unravel. There is no escape for me, for us, from this sentence. I cannot stay here with you and I do not wish to wander without you. I cannot escape my desire and you cannot come with me. Your place is here and hard won, on all sides. I will not live to hide, always moving, never at peace.”
For a moment they stared deep into the other’s eyes and saw there all that they meant one to the other. “I want you to go – tonight. I am begging, on my knees, please Boromir, I can’t do this…” Aragorn whispered brokenly and now he was weeping, sobs torn from him in agony, arms wrapped around his lover’s body, clinging so tightly that he felt as though he would break in pieces if Boromir tried to move him.
Instead he laid his cheek on Aragorn’s shaking back and rocked them both back and forth, gentling him, trying to fight down his own rising panic. If he could not find it in him to give Aragorn the strength for the morrow, they were both of them lost. And from somewhere deep within an aching and a fearful heart, Boromir, who had always been the silent one, poured out his passion and hope.
“Oh my love, you are stronger than you know and you will take us both home. My place is not here, I should be waiting for you in another bourn and I will, until we meet again in sunshine I will wait, and you will come to me some day.”
“I can’t do this…I won’t do this…I can’t do this…”
“Hush, love. I will not see the blade because I will see love in your eyes, I will not feel its passing because it is your hand that wields it. This is a last sweetest caress you will give me in this life and it carries me over the sorrow to stand ready for you when the day comes…and then there will be no more tears and your arms will hold me close until the end of time.”
And with that he could speak no more and held Aragorn close as he choked on the tears and the pain in his chest.
After the tempest, they had slept, exhausted, wrapped in eachother’s arms and stirring only when moonlight slanted across Aragorn’s eyelids to wake him. He rubbed his face into Boromir’s chest like a great cat, sinking into the spiced scent of him and when Boromir wakened, Aragorn murmured into his ear and together the men arose and walked, naked as they were, from the room, down the turret stair, along the deserted corridor and out into a courtyard garden.
At the doorway Boromir hesitated and Aragorn realised he had not been outside for months. With an arm around his waist he led Boromir out into the garden and onto the grass plot at its centre. Although the night was still, there was a faint chill in the air and they pressed bodies full-length, wrapping arms tight for warmth and to reach well-loved planes of the other’s skin, cocks straining between them and for the first time in their lives stood quite still and whispered one to the other, with all the desire stored up for the years that would not come, and passion rose and still they spoke of want and need and what they would do and did not move even as desperate need swept over them, but breathed deep of their climax, smothering eachother’s cries with kisses. When all was spent, Aragorn knelt and lapped the seed smeared across Boromir’s belly and Boromir knelt in his turn, laid his King down on the grass and cleaned him with supple licks that ended in a twist of tongues that would not end.
In time they stood, arms around waists, still in the shadows of a small balcony, gazing out over the city, picking out scattered lights and far beyond the faintest tinge of blue at the horizon. Aragorn turned then to his love and would have spoken, but that Boromir caught his mouth in a sucking kiss and after stilled his lips with gentle fingers laid across them.
For a long moment Aragorn rested his head against his love’s shoulder and then reached out and pulled down a spray of snow-white roses from the wall, whispering,
“These are for innocence. Carry them for me.”
Boromir looked at the pure, clean blooms amidst their glossy leaves, and took them from him gently. He turned up Aragorn’s bleeding palm, where the thorns had torn at his flesh and kissed each hurt, pausing once or twice to take out barbs that Aragorn hardly seemed to feel. “Come, love. We’ll put these in water and drink a cup of wine together.” His voice shook a little, saying, “The dawn will be upon us too soon.”
None saw their final moments together in the tower room, the last kiss not fevered, nor desperate, but tender and loving, for that would last longer than passion, and sight and touch and smell. They did not say farewell, for they would meet again and soon, but as Aragorn swept down the turret stair, Boromir leant against the stone arch and strained to hear his footsteps for as long as he was able.
Mid-morning, they came to prepare him with water and fresh linen, cutting his hair short, so that the blade might pass cleanly. Boromir sat quiet as they worked, gazing out of the window across the city to the sea, as though he would see beyond the horizon.
As he left the room for the last time, Boromir trailed his fingers along the tabletop and looked for a moment as though he would have clutched at it to stand upright. A guard went to take his arm to steady him, but Boromir waved him back. He looked around him once more, his gear was neatly piled in a corner and a packet of letters lay on the table, beside two wine-stained cups. Boromir nodded to himself and walked firmly from the place.
The rain had slackened to a soft drizzle as the procession reached the great square and a murmur ran around the crowd at the sight of him. A wide platform had been built in the centre of the square, carefully prepared, draped in black, the close-fitting boards covered in sand to soak up the blood. The White Tower companies stood in ranks around the platform and as his procession halted to allow the magistrates and the trembling squire to go ahead up to the platform, Boromir found himself almost face-to-face with an old comrade who had tears running down his face, even as he stood erect, on guard. Then the drum beat out and the phalanx of soldiers parted to let them through.
Slowly he climbed the steps to the scaffold. His King stood waiting for him and as the magistrate read the sentence of the court he moved to stand before Aragorn and when the words were done, Boromir knelt in the sand to kiss his hands folded over the pommel of Anduril. The scent of the roses drifted up to Boromir. When Aragorn stepped back and the drumroll began, he raised his eyes once more to gaze on the face of the man he loved, to take strength from him and to give it back.
From their vantage point above the square, Legolas and Gimli could see all. Legolas snatched an arrow from his quiver and fitted it to the bow, but Gimli laid a restraining hand on his arm, saying “Hold, laddie. This is not the way.” Legolas shrugged him off and re-sighted his aim on the kneeling figure.
“I can do this, Gimli. He will die quietly even as the blade swings and then his blood will not be on Aragorn’s hands.”
“It is between those two, meleth-nin,” and Legolas had never heard Gimli use Sindarin before, “There breathes a love strong enough for even this…” and he clasped the elf’s shaking form tightly to him, as below them the drum fell silent and the blade swung true.
When they took up his body from the bloody sand, coffined it and would have turned to carry him, dishonoured, from his city, the King seemed to waken from a daze and stepped forward to command the party.
As the procession re-formed to return to the citadel, Aragorn picked up the roses from where they had fallen and laid them a-top the box. They shone pure and unblemished and when he passed to take his place at the head of the party, leading his man homeward, a faint echo of their perfume overlaid with a soft spiced musk that Aragorn knew for his love, curled around his heart – and he motioned the drum to beat out again.
Drum by Alex Quine
Summary: Arwen's revenge
Rated: R
Categories: LOTR FPS Pairing: Aragorn/Boromir/Arwen
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 4736 Read: 924
Published: 29 Jul 2009 Updated: 29 Jul 2009
Story Notes:
DISCLAIMER: "These characters originate with their copyright holders. I borrow them for entertainment, not profit."