Sam brought Frodo's supper in on a tray, then sat at the foot of the bed to see that he ate every bite. After supper, Frodo read the story of the Lady Aredhel aloud to his friend.
"I remember Mr. Bilbo reading that story to me as a lad," said Sam once he had finished.
"I've read it before too, or something like it. Doesn't it seem rather odd to you?"
"How d'you mean?"
"The quarrel that led to the Lady's death. Everyone behaves so strangely during it, as well as afterwards."
Sam shrugged. "Well... they're Elves. Who can guess what they'll do? You know how they are, like forces o' nature as much as people--bright and merry as a summer's day one minute, and fierce as a lightning-flash the next."
Frodo smiled at this poetical but apt description. "That might explain it. But all the same, there are a few things that seem strange to me, and I'd like to find answers to them, if I can."
Recognizing this tone, Sam regarded him with sudden suspicion. He had accompanied Frodo on enough cases to know what "I'd like to find answers" meant. "You sound like you're investigating."
"I suppose I am," Frodo admitted. "I've done so much of it lately, I've gotten used to seeing mysteries everywhere. Puzzles interest me. They need to be solved, even if they happened in the First Age."
"I won't have you tire yourself over something that happened so long ago," Sam insisted. "You're just getting over a bad turn. You should be resting."
"I will rest, Sam. I'll stay in bed, I promise! This isn't a real investigation, only play. I don't expect to discover anything momentous about Lady Aredhel's death--not at this late date! Think of it as an intellectual game, like riddles, that'll keep me occupied while I'm abed. You won't let me do much else. You might even help."
Sam relented grudgingly. He could never refuse Frodo anything and, after all, what harm could it do if Frodo played at solving a mystery out of some ages-old Elvish story? "What's so odd about it?" he asked.
"For one thing, I find it strange that Aredhel pled for mercy for her husband after Eol had wounded her."
"Why wouldn't she? He didn't mean to hurt her, and she knew it. She'd only got in the way, accidental-like. Besides, nobody was dead yet. The king wouldn't've been as hard on him if she hadn't died."
"But she was dying, poisoned by the spear that struck her."
"Did she know it?"
Did she? Frodo wondered. Maybe Aredhel hadn't realized that her wound was fatal. He recalled reading of Eol's skill with metallurgy and weaponry; would his wife know that he was capable of creating a poisoned blade?
"Sam," he asked, "can you look through Uncle Bilbo's books and see if you can find anything more about Eol? I'm sure I've seen other stories about him."
"I'll hunt it up for you in the morning," Sam promised.
"Another thing: even if it led to Aredhel's death, it strikes me as interesting that the dispute between Turgon and Eol seems to be over Maeglin. Neither seems as adamant about whether Aredhel stays in Gondolin or goes with her husband, but they come to murderous blows over her son."
"I suppose that's only natural," Sam said after thinking it over. "A wife's got a right to visit her family, and it seems like nobody was going to tell this lady to go or stay if she didn't want to. But a child's different. Your child's your own. This lad, Maeglin, wasn't yet twenty. That's barely half-grown for a hobbit, and Elves live so much longer'n we do. He must've been a baby to them! I expect this Eol was thinking that the king wanted to take his son away from him and if he let the lad stay, he'd never see him again. And then the boy says he wants to stay with his uncle." He turned to Frodo. "Now that's something that puzzles me--What's this 'sister-son' that the king calls the lad when he first meets him? Why not 'nephew'? Isn't it the same thing?"
"It's more than that." Frodo explained, "You see, while Elves inherit through their fathers, they count their family lineage through their mothers. Your sister's children are considered your nearest blood relation after your own. By calling Maeglin 'sister-son,' King Turgon is not merely acknowledging Maeglin as his nephew, but as a child of his bloodline, and telling his court that Maeglin will be his heir since he had no son."
"Well then, it looks like Eol was right to worry!"
"Yes, but he tried to kill his son rather than let him go."
"Did he?" asked Sam. "I thought he was trying to kill King Turgon."
"No-" Frodo began to correct him, then he realized that Sam was right. The last time he'd read this story, he remembered quite clearly that Eol had thrown his spear at Maeglin, and Aredhel had flung herself in the way--here, the matter was not so clear. It might be interpreted that Eol had attacked Turgon, not Maeglin, and Aredhel had simply been caught in the middle of their fight while trying to shield her son. Was this another mistake in Bilbo's translation?
He said as much to Sam, who answered, "I think Mr. Bilbo got it right. It makes more sense for Eol to strike at the King instead of his son, if he wanted to take his son away with him. Maybe he thought he might get away with the lad if he did. Didn't the king say he wouldn't let any one of 'em go--not Maeglin, and not Eol? After all, when he let his sister go out, her husband found his way into the city by following her and look at the trouble it led to! Who knows who might've come in next?"
"Yes," Frodo agreed. "Turgon couldn't risk revealing the secret pathways into the city. He couldn't let them leave Gondolin."
"And none of them did! Did it stay secret after that?" Sam asked. "The end of the story says that it fell, but doesn't say how. It's not still there in the mountains, is it?"
"No, it's gone. Not even the mountains are there anymore." He would have to show Sam the map Bilbo had copied, which showed that Gondolin had lain to the northwest of the present-day Shire, beyond the Ered Luin--the Blue Mountains, as the hobbits called them--in what were now the desolate lands by the present coast of the sea. The great cities and kingdoms of that long-ago time had fallen into the sea in the Second Age, when the last Numenorean King Ar-Pharazon had tried to assail the Undying Lands at Sauron's bidding. "It was Maeglin, as a matter of fact, who betrayed the city to Melkor."
"Melkor? Who's that?"
"He was the great enemy of the First Age, the first evil power, before Sauron. In fact, Sauron was his apprentice. He was also called Morgoth by the Elves, who will not speak his original name."
Sam nodded; he had heard that name before.
"Maeglin was in love with his cousin Idril, but his father wouldn't hear of them being married. From what I recall, Idril herself was repulsed when she learned of Maeglin's feelings for her, and she spurned him."
"But why? What was so wrong with him?" Sam wondered. "I thought the King liked him. Was it because his father was this Dark Elf that killed his mother?"
"It wasn't that. As far I know, no one held Maeglin's parentage against him. The problem was that Maeglin and Idril were first cousins," Frodo explained. "It's taboo among the Elves for two people so closely related to marry. They seem to think it unnatural."
Sam was wide-eyed at the idea. First cousins, second cousins, and cousins to any lesser degree married every day in the Shire. Among the best families and local farm communities, it was almost impossible to find two people who were not somehow related.
"Besides, Maeglin was considered the King's son by this time, and it wouldn't do for him to marry the King's daughter," Frodo continued.
"What happened to her?"
"Idril? She married someone else..." Frodo took down one of the other books in the stack on the nightstand and found the detailed genealogy Bilbo had laid out in the frontispiece. He traced the family tree with a finger until he found the name. "Tuor. He was a Man, not an Elf. Their son was the mariner Earendil. After his cousin married, Maeglin went away from Gondolin and eventually fell into the hands of Melkor. He was imprisoned, and tortured. Melkor promised that he would become lord of the city and have Idril for his own if he revealed the secrets of Gondolin. Maeglin told him. Melkor besieged the city, and it was utterly destroyed. King Turgon was killed, and so was Maeglin for his treachery, but Idril and Tuor escaped with their son--who was Lord Elrond's father, by the way."
"So she's Lord Elrond's grandmother? And all this was in the First Age?" Sam was amazed. "How old is Lord Elrond anyway?"
"I've no idea." Bilbo's genealogy had no dates. Frodo recalled his own surprise when Elrond had described the Last Alliance of Men and Elves and their battle with Sauron as an eyewitness and participant. That was three thousand years ago, at the end of the Second Age, and Elrond had been a grown Elven-lord even then. Who could guess how old he might be?
The thought of lives that spanned who-knew how many thousands of years made Frodo feel how brief their own lives were; even the longest-lived hobbits were a mere blink of an eye in comparison to the ages-long lives of the Elves. When he considered his own life, which would be much shorter than the normal hobbit span, he suddenly, keenly, felt all that time he wouldn't have, and he abruptly shut the book and closed his eyes.
He had begun to feel much better, excited and interested, since he'd read this story and had been discussing it with Sam; now, it was if a dark cloud had passed over the sun, and he was in shadow again.
"Are many Elves from the olden days still alive?" Sam wondered.
"A few," Frodo answered after a moment. "Most of the eldest have gone to the Undying Lands in the West, but a few still remain here in Middle-earth. The Lady Galadriel was living then. Aredhel was a cousin of hers." He wondered if Galadriel had been anywhere near Gondolin at the time of the tragedy. "Do we have any stories about her--where she was, what she was doing in those days?"
"I'll look, I'll look," said Sam, "tomorrow. That's enough for tonight." He picked up Frodo's dinner-tray and rose to leave the room. "If you're going to be investigating, you'd best get a good night's sleep. I'll come back after I do the washing-up to sit by you." He had been sitting at Frodo's bedside to watch over him during the nights since he'd fallen ill, and had been getting little sleep himself.
Frodo set the books aside. "I don't want you to 'sit up' tonight, Sam. Sleep with me, please." With thoughts of his own mortality haunting him, he did not want to lie here alone in the dark.
Sam smiled at the invitation. "I won't be disturbing you?"
"Not at all! In fact, I think I'll sleep easier if you're near."
"All right. I'll be back as soon as I can." He leaned down to give Frodo a kiss, and blew out the candle on the nightstand.
Frodo lay down, pulling the blankets up over his shoulders, and kept his eyes on the glowing embers of the bedroom fire. He lay awake, waiting until Sam returned.
Once Sam had undressed and climbed beneath the blankets beside him, Frodo snuggled closer. With Sam's arms around him and the sound of that strong heart beating against his ear, he found comfort enough not to think about the past... or what must come.
He slept.
Frodo dreamt that he was walking along a beach. Water washed around his ankles and receded as rapidly and, with each step, his toes sunk more deeply into the wet sand. Tall, chalk-white cliffs rose on one side of his vision, and on the other... lay the sea.
The sea. He had never seen it in his waking life, but he often found himself on its shores in his dreams. Was it like this in reality? Wave upon wave tumbled forward in a foamy spray, and beyond them lay a vast, flat blue-green expanse that sparkled from the glints of sunlight that broke through the clouds and stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. He'd never seen so much water. It might cover all the world.
"Do you seek the truth, Little One?"
He turned; behind him stood an Elven lady dressed in long green robes. Although she was not as tall and her hair was ashen rather than gold, Frodo thought he saw a resemblance to the Lady Galadriel.
"I have ridden far and wide," she said, "seeking that which was lost in another age. All remains dimmed in the mists of time, long-remembered, yet forgot. At last, it seems I have a champion for my cause--though one I would not have thought to look for."
"I will do whatever I can, My Lady," he promised her.
The waves were washing higher now, over his knees, and then up to his waist. He had to brace himself to keep from being knocked over by them. The Lady's skirts flowed about her like water-lily leaves on the surface of a pond. She smiled at his words.
"That is all I ask. Seek the truth, and you will find it."
The next wave swept over his head, and he was thrown off his feet and tumbled head over heels into the onrushing water. He opened his mouth to cry out, but before he could make a sound, another, more familiar voice spoke near his ear:
"Frodo?"
He awoke with a startled jolt to find Sam leaning over him. "Oh, Sam!" Frodo sat up and threw an arm around his friend's neck.
"What is it?" Sam asked as he gathered Frodo close. "What's wrong? You were squirming about and whimpering in your sleep. I thought as you were having a bad dream."
"No, it wasn't bad," Frodo answered, his face tucked into the hollow of Sam's collar, "but it was odd." As they settled down, still holding each other, he told Sam of his dream.
"The Lady you saw--d'you think she was this Aredhel?" Sam asked when Frodo had finished. "And she wants you to find the truth about how she died?"
"I think so. She never said so precisely, but that's what she must have meant when she spoke of finding something lost in time, remembered yet forgotten."
"But if she knows the truth of it, wouldn't she've done better to tell you what is it plainly instead of making you guess?"
Frodo laughed. "If she knows it, Sam! But that's the way of dreams. They never say anything plainly." His dream might not be a portent--Aredhel's death had been so much in his thoughts today that it wasn't unusual he should dream of her--but he had made a vow to aid the lady, if only in his own mind. If there was a long-lost truth, he would do his best to find it.
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