Orc in Ithilien

Shagrat stared out of the window and down into the palace grounds. It was so foggy outside that night seemed to be falling early, and darkness was already creeping out from under the branches of the trees, and settling through the chilly, greyish dusk. A dank tendril of mist skeined its way in through the open casement and past the unclosed window-drapes, before it evaporated in the comparative warmth of Shagrat’s bed-chamber.

The royal estate in Ithilien was, in the Orc’s opinion, sited in a wholly godforsaken spot. The estate was comprised of a narrowish tongue of land, east of the river and west of the Mountains of Shadow, sandwiched between the two, in an unfortunate placement that meant it was subject to a cloying miasma of heat, damp and humidity for most months of the year. There were altogether too many trees, and they encouraged an intolerable diversity of wildlife – the night-time exuberances of which, from the nearby summer swamps, were almost too noisy to be borne.

There was something Shagrat was finding to be even worse than the incessant frog and cricket noises, however. Now that the seasons were changing, and autumn was on its way, the air was filled with the wailing cries of water-birds, which called mournfully all through the day and night, as they passed over on their way to the great river delta in the south. Their haunted, eerie notes, so similar to the lamenting cries of forsaken prisoners, would rouse Shagrat from the depths of sleep, and send him down paths of dark recollection, scaring up dismal memories that his Orcish mind would sooner forget. And it was growing cold, there was such a chilly dampness to the place now in the evenings and the mornings, that Shagrat fancied he could feel it in the insides of his bones.

Just Goldilocks’ luck to get landed with such a second-rate billet, Shagrat thought to himself. Story of the poor bleeder’s life, really; he’d never been exactly what you’d call a fortunate son. Second best at everything from the outset; everybody’s stand-in choice, perennial winner of life’s consolation prize. And as for matters of the heart, he’d made some truly dreadful choices there, too – but with that the Orc sighed mightily, and shook his head, being unwilling under the circumstances to keep pursuing that particular line of thought.

It was time to light the lamps indoors, but Shagrat, ordinarily, would not have bothered about that. He didn’t trouble himself about that sort of thing because usually at about this time, Faramir would turn up at the Uruk’s rooms for a visit. He’d arrive under the pretext of making sure the lamps were lit, or that the fire was banked. He would find some general excuse to sit with Shagrat for the rest of the evening, and then more often than not he’d stay with him, all through the night. It was a comfortable charade that had been replayed every evening without fail, since he had first begun travelling with the Prince. The old Orc had resolved to try not to wonder what – if anything – all this might have meant.

The first time it happened, Shagrat knew, or thought he knew, exactly what Goldilocks wanted from him. What else but sex - for the time had come, he’d wearily surmised, for him to sing for his supper. Given previous events between them, and as far as he could tell, sex was the foundation of the only real kind of relationship that he and Goldilocks had ever had between them. Other than that, there was nothing else Shagrat could think of that would explain Faramir’s interest in him. The Orc was not a particularly fine-looking fellow – quite the reverse, if truth be told - and moreover at that point, he had been in an especially ruinous physical state. The long months of ill-treatment that Shagrat had endured at the hands of the travelling showmen had weakened him, and the hours spent travelling on horseback had worsened those effects, leaving Shagrat so sore and exhausted in body and spirits that at that point, if push came to shove, he doubted whether he’d have been able to raise even so much as a smile. In Shagrat’s experience however, those sorts of details had never deterred any prospective sexual partner of his in the past, and so he’d tiredly prepared, if not simply to lie back and think of Mordor exactly, then at least to feign every appearance of enjoyment - in a royal command performance, as one might call it.

Quite frankly he’d expected to be buggered senseless whether he wanted it or not, and in anticipation of this, Shagrat had begun to prepare himself as best he could. He hadn’t realised how much his shoulders had hunched and his hands had shaken as he made himself ready, or how dejected he’d looked - but Faramir, who had planned nothing more than to check on the well-being of his companion, had noted it all too clearly. It was a measure of the changes that had been forced on the Uruk, and Faramir had been taken aback, thoroughly shocked, to see how meekly and with so little attempt at protest he had prepared to serve himself up for further abuse. At that moment, unbeknownst to Shagrat, Faramir had resolved to devote the bulk of his free time for the foreseeable future to caring for and cosseting the Orc.

But ever since Faramir’s return to Ithilien with Shagrat in tow, the royal household had been severely under-staffed, for the arrival of a former servant of Mordor as a permanent houseguest had provoked an immediate, mass staff walkout. Even those attendants who had found themselves able in principle to tolerate the Uruk’s presence had refused to have any kind of direct dealings with him. It had fallen to Faramir, then, to tend to Shagrat, day to day, and he had lavished care and attention on the Orc, taking pleasure in treating his new companion with such kindness and forbearance that Shagrat, at first suspicious and then thoroughly bemused by his host’s ministrations, had eventually had no choice but to blossom under it.

That was all over and done with now, though. The Lady of the House had made that clear enough. Shagrat had listened in on a bit of it, the dialogue between Goldilocks and his Lady, after he’d been given his marching orders earlier that afternoon.

“Wanted the chance to speak with her husband in private,” her Ladyship had announced. As it turned out, after catching them at it, she’d stormed off not very far at all – only to the next room in fact, into which Goldilocks had – of course – run chasing after her immediately. She’d not been speaking to Shagrat directly, and so Goldilocks, blushing as he said it, had asked Shagrat if perhaps he couldn’t see him later on, in his room? She’d given poor old Goldilocks a proper tongue-lashing after that, once she thought Shagrat was out of earshot, and though the Orc hated to admit it, what she’d said made a kind of sense: the shame and disgrace that would be heaped on Faramir, when news of his sordid, unnatural association with Shagrat became public - how no right-thinking person could accept it, that it would never be justified. And so on.

She wouldn’t rest till she’d managed to talk Goldilocks into seeing her point of view, Shagrat was sure of that. No doubt Faramir would be persuaded round to his wife’s way of thinking soon enough because in all honesty, the Orc was under no great illusion about the strength of the Prince’s attachment to him. After all Faramir had – apparently, with not a second thought or qualm of conscience - abandoned Shagrat to an uncertain fate on more than one occasion in the past, and his regard for Shagrat could at best be said to come and go. No, Shagrat hadn’t really expected that whatever he and Faramir had between them would ever last, but painful as the thought of separation from his beloved Goldilocks was to him, that was not what was worrying him especially at this point. As things stood, it seemed unlikely in the extreme that he would be allowed to continue on his way.