Orc in Ithilien

It was worse, far, far worse, than Eowyn could have imagined. Her husband was stooped down on the floor, kneeling unashamedly before the beast. Faramir’s fair hair was ruffled, and his tunic, shirt-front and shockingly, his breeches were open, for he had obviously been disporting himself brazenly – in broad daylight! - with – with the fell creature. The pair of them were in a wretched, disgusting, state of dishabille. Though Faramir’s face had blanched, taking on a dreadful look of dismay the instant he’d seen her, she knew she had not imagined the rosy, excited flush that had been covering his face and upper chest, or the highlights of merriment that had been sparking in his eyes. He looked happier than Eowyn had ever seen him, and even through the anger that suffused her as she gazed at the awful tableau being played out between Man and Orc, she felt a queer, heart-sick pang at the thought of it.

And as for the other – the monster! Until the moment when she’d first seen for herself, she realised that even after all she had heard she hadn’t quite believed the awful rumours that had reached her. But it was every bit as bad as they had said. A black-hearted Orc! Neither hale nor whole, the beast looked sick and was riddled with corruption. White-faced with rage, breathless with indignation, Eowyn turned on her heel, rushing to get away from them, and slammed the door behind her.

It was an incomprehensible situation. Her husband had always been correct, courteous and considerate in their marital relations, conducting himself with the utmost tact and delicacy. With if anything a little too much tact and delicacy, Eowyn found herself thinking, although she squashed that treacherous thought almost as soon as it occurred to her. But there had never been the slightest suggestion that Faramir’s inclinations lay in anything other than the accepted conjugal association between husband and wife. And even then, if he had chosen a worthier partner for himself, she could easily have turned a blind eye, for what he was doing was not unheard of in Minas Tirith – far from it. Though it was a standing joke among the Rohirrim that the Men of Gondor had invented sport of that type, even in the furthest backwater provinces of Rohan, it would be rare to find a horse-lord who had not enjoyed at least one tumble with a stable-lad at some point during his youth. Those kinds of association, whether between man and man, or woman and woman were not especially frowned upon, and indeed with an Elvish Queen and coterie of Elves in Minas Tirith, such relations had become rather fashionable, and quite the done thing. More than a few of Eowyn’s acquaintances at Court had a same-sex partner; several of them had more than one. But nobody she had ever heard of – no one in living memory - had ever taken an Orc as their lover, before.

Having left the pair of them, her husband and his vile companion, Eowyn, still shaking with agitation, paused to collect herself in the sitting room that adjoined Faramir’s study. A moment later her husband followed after. Red in the face, he smiled weakly at her.

“It’s a pleasure to see you Eowyn,” he said, “though - as you must see - I had not thought to expect you. Have you had a pleasant journey? What brings you back to Ithilien so soon?”

That he dared to speak such pleasantries to her, affecting a normal tone of voice, as if nothing untoward had happened, made Eowyn seethe with rage. And after the scene she had just been forced to witness!

“What else but news of your infamous conduct, my husband?” she replied. “Your friends at Court have done their best to suppress it, but it must soon be the scandal of the kingdom! I have had it whispered low to me, as a thing no decent person could speak of aloud!”

Faramir thought that was overstating the case, and said so. “I can understand that people might initially be a little –“ he paused, evidently searching for the right word - “squeamish,” he continued, “but there’s no reason for that. Really, I can’t see it as anything other than a matter between Shagrat and myself. It shouldn’t concern anyone else, because –“

“Squeamish!” Eowyn shouted. “Squeamishness, you call it! That everyone knows you’re slaking your lusts in such a low, bestial fashion! Shagrat! Is that what you’ve named him? And why not – it suits him well enough! What you’re doing is but a small step from bestiality – worse, perhaps, since that foul creature shares and abets you in your perversion!” Eowyn turned away, white-faced and shaking, feeling horrified. She had not meant to say so much.

With an edge in his voice, Faramir asked whether the problem was that he was slaking his lusts in a supposedly low and bestial fashion, or that everybody knew about it. Eowyn did not deign to answer.

“As I was saying,” Faramir continued reasonably enough, “it’s nobody’s business but his and mine. We’re all adults, aren’t we? He is single. I am unattached. You remember of course that I am unattached, do you not, Eowyn?”

“You’ve done this as a ploy? As a trick to bring me back and bind me to your side?”

Faramir shook his head sadly. “No, Eowyn, I had not thought, and would not think of doing such a thing. But you can agree then that since you and I have separated, the matter concerns myself and the Uruk, only?”

Regardless of that, Eowyn insisted, no right-thinking person could ever accept it. Faramir did not immediately reply and pushing what she perceived as being her advantage, she continued, making many good and reasonable arguments against the folly of forging alliances so completely with dark, corrupted creatures such as Uruk-hai from Mordor. The more the Lady talked however, the more obstinate Faramir seemed to become. Once his wife had talked herself out, he replied to her quite calmly.

“We’re in love,” Faramir said. He spoke quietly enough but there was a slightly crazed and antic gleam in his eye.

Eowyn snorted with disgust. “Love, you say. What could a creature like that know of such emotion? I would have never taken you for a fool, Faramir. Have you become so eager to receive ‘love,’ so despairing of its receipt through any normal channel that now you seek it, abjecting your person in the most hateful ways to the pursuit of it, where it cannot possibly exist? You must realise that you are deceiving yourself.”

“We’re in love,” Faramir repeated through his teeth. “We’ve decided we want to be together always.”

Eowyn gazed at him in wonderment, as if she was seeing him for the first time. How could she have failed to notice before now that her husband had gone demented? But really, was it any surprise? Because there was madness enough in that line. Was it not said that Faramir’s brother Boromir had been consumed past all sanity with greed and lust for the One Ring? And considering the stock from which both brothers had come: their Father’s conduct as Steward of Gondor was notorious, and he had himself perished in madness at the end of the war, in a shameful bid to take his own life and that of his younger son. The despair that had come upon Denethor – Faramir never spoke of it, but with a feeling of dread, Eowyn recalled what she had heard - that it had begun with the death of the old Steward’s wife. Eowyn swallowed down her anger, as a terrible thought occurred to her; that she herself must have played some role in causing Faramir’s present derangement. It was her desertion that had left Faramir unhinged, so that a filthy Orc had been able to make easy prey of him. Her poor, poor husband! He was to be pitied, but he was not to be blamed in any of this.

With an effort, Eowyn composed her features, suppressing the disgust that she now must feel whenever she considered her husband’s recent conduct. “Come, Faramir,” she said soothingly, reaching for his hands. “Let us not fight.”