fic: the untitled Valacar & Fíriel backstory, part 1/?
So, guuuuys. I get back on LJ and then I write more in the past three days than I've written, probably in the last three months? Maybe LJ is magic! I've been going through a bunch of my old stuff, trying to recall what I was last working on/thinking about. And then I just started writing--it makes me really happy!
A little bit of background on this one: a number of readers (well, a few, at least) over the years have asked me for some more about Valacar (talented surgeon, gay, pathologically repressed) and Fíriel (talented healer, ex-prostitute, emotionally competent), a pair of original characters who have figured into my stories about the Houses of Healing for the past decade and change. Like: "How did Fíriel end up working in the Houses of Healing?" " How did they end up meeting for the first time?" "Why does she continually put up with Valacar's bullshit?" and "Has he always been this intent on wrecking his own life?"
Thus, I bring you the first part of (I don't know how many) of the currently untitled backstory. It takes place about fifteen years before the main events of LoTR, and you don't need to know much else. (Rest assured that future parts, if/when they appear, will also feature heavy doses of pre-modern medical practice, encroaching warfare, internal politics, and sex. I mean, more sex.)
(All feedback welcome all the time of course, but maybe even more welcome than usual, if possible, since I don't have a beta reader at the moment.)
Part 1: "The Girlfriend Experience"
Characters: Valacar, Fíriel, Valacar's dirtbag friends
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Prostitution; what the youths these days would probably refer to as "toxic masculinity"; also, really, really awkward, largely terrible sex
Word Count: ~7,000
Summary: ...he realized that he was going to need to do something, soon. This had, after all, been his decision. Not at first, of course, but the two of them, now, in this room: that was his fault.
The Girlfriend Experience
One of the peculiar things about the tavern on the west side of the second circle was that, even in the driest days of late summer, there was a heavy air of damp inside. It was a condition that no amount of open windows-not that there were many--could remedy. The inside walls were dark with caked soot, and the surfaces of the tables-all, it seemed, of a mismatched height, and none entirely level-were always sticky, no matter how many times the barmaid swiped a rag over them in the course of an evening. Even after less than an hour inside, Valacar would walk out the door with a strange clamminess on the back of his neck, on his forehead, and between his shoulder blades, as if something of the place had seeped beneath his clothes.
Still, the tavern-if it had ever had a name, or indeed, a sign declaiming such, both were now long forgotten-had other things to recommend it, namely, drinks that were cheap but tolerably strong. And since apprentices, even those stationed on the upper circles, could not afford to live extravagantly, it was where they found themselves, more often than not.
“The Butchers’ Guild,” the proprietor addressed them with a mock-grave nod as they entered, and made his usual show of leading them to a table in the far corner, beside a now-dormant hearth, yanking out mismatched chairs. “Well met, young sirs.” Valacar would have liked to think that the man’s manner was more jesting than anything else, but he couldn’t help but read into it a slight edge of a jeer-or was it simple wariness?--from time to time. Well, no matter-they drank his liquor without fail, and usually in no small amount, so if he did harbor any ill thoughts towards the four apprentices, he’d do well not to air them too openly.
“My liege,” Callon answered the proprietor with an exaggerated, courtly bow before sinking into his chair. Even in the dim lamplight, it was apparent that his pale face was flushed a shade or two redder than usual. He’d probably already had a few drinks before heading out for the night, perhaps at his master’s table. Or, more likely, pilfered from his master’s liquor cabinet.
“‘My liege,’” Heril muttered, whacking Callon on the shoulder, after the proprietor had headed back towards the bar with their orders. “What’s that, now?”
“I only figure,” Callon said, suddenly expansive, folding his hands behind his head-yes, Valacar decided, it had definitely been the liquor cabinet this time-“I can add a touch of polish to this place.”
“And what would you know about that?” Raunor snorted. He was sitting across from Callon, next to Valacar. He was the biggest of their lot, broad in the chest and shoulders, nearly a head taller than Valacar. He always hunched over in his seat, even when there was plenty of room.
“More than you, I’d wager.” And they fell back again into the by-now familiar rhythms of their talk, half-heartedly jesting and feinting at whatever topic floated into view. Valacar had already taken the pack of cards out of his pocket, started dealing them out.
“Again with the cards, Amroth?” Heril groaned.
“Say the word if you’d rather not,” Valacar replied, glancing first at Heril, then at Callon and Raunor. Valacar was always the one with the cards. He liked having something to look at and something to do with his hands. “I’d understand, seeing as you got thrashed so soundly the other night.”
“Fine,” Heril grumbled, and picked up his newly-dealt hand from where it lay on the table. Raunor smirked.
“I am very polished, at least in here,” Callon said at the same time; he’d either missed the exchange about the cards, or chosen to ignore it altogether. He twisted in his chair, made a show of surveying the rest of the patrons in the dim room: men, mostly, in dark or undyed workers’ clothes with telltale smudges of ash and dust from the smithy’s or the mason’s or the mill. “I mean, how many of this lot do you suppose are lettered?”
“Or numbered, even?” Heril inclined his head towards the bar, where the proprietor had headed. “That might explain why the drinks cost so little.”
“They cost so little,” Raunor said with a grimace, “because they’re terrible.” Valacar laughed, studied his cards. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t all go blind by the time the year is out.”
As if on cue, their terrible drinks arrived. This time, it wasn’t the proprietor who came to their table, but one of the barmaids-a girl a year or two younger than Valacar, by the looks of it. She was small- carried the glasses on a tray, instead of clutching two in each hand, as the proprietor would have. He couldn’t remember if he’d seen her before-the nights here tended to blur one into the other, as did the faces that passed through them.
“Here you are,” she said, and lowered the tray to the table, careful to avoid the discard pile. Callon was already making a show of looking her up and down. If she noticed him, she made no sign, just smiled at a spot somewhere above his head. “Anything else?” she asked, as she moved the glasses, two by two, from the tray to the surface of the table.
“We’re quite all right,” said Callon, slouching back in his chair again. “Anything we can get for you?”
Raunor rolled his eyes.
“I don’t drink on my shift,” she replied, tucking the tray beneath her arm in a neat, practiced movement. She was looking directly at Callon now, still smiling. “Maybe later.”
They watched her as she left.
“Is she new here?” said Raunor, apparently wondering the same as Valacar.
“No,” said Heril. “But she works an earlier shift, most nights.” He took a sip of his drink and made a face. Then he seemed to work up his reserve before taking a more manful swallow and wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“Leaves time for other wage-earning activities, most likely,” Callon said, looking unaccountably pleased with himself.
“You’d take her up on that?” Raunor asked.
Callon seemed to weigh the matter carefully, as if his master had just put a particularly tricky question to him in the surgery. “She’s a bit skinny, honestly. Pretty smile, though.”
“I’d bet Amroth would take her,” Heril said, elbowing Valacar. “You haven’t got any sweethearts at home, have you?” Valacar shook his head, once. “You’ve got to be getting lonely,” Heril said, “up in that attic of yours.”
“It’s more like a garret,” Valacar said.
“What are the girls like, where you’re from?” asked Callon. “I hear they’re kind of wild, out on the coast.”
“You’ve got sisters, right?” said Heril.
“Yes, and because I’m a good brother, I’d never let the likes of you near them,” Valacar snorted. Callon laughed, smacked Heril on the back of the head, and Heril laughed, too, in spite of himself. Valacar was relieved to be back, at least for the moment, on a subject he could trust himself to joke about. Even if he did not like the idea of Haleth and Lalaith being an object of speculation for Heril in the same vein as the barmaid.
The card game and the drinking continued apace.
“How’d you all make out, today?” Valacar asked, dealing out a second hand. “At work, I mean.”
Raunor sighed. “Nauthir’s got it in for me, I think. The minute he sees me gripping my scalpel a finger’s-width too close to the blade, or threading a needle too slowly, he just gets this look on his face.”
“This look?” said Callon, doing a fair impression of Raunor’s master looking displeased: brow furrowed, mouth tightened slightly at the corners, as if troubled by a distant but unavoidable memory.
“That’s the one,” said Raunor, gesturing towards Callon with his glass. “Only, don’t do that, you’ll make me think I’ve done something wrong, even now.” At which Callon, of course, only intensified the look to comic effect, crossing his dark eyes slightly. “Stop it!” Raunor said, and leaned across the table to punch Callon’s shoulder. They were all laughing, now.
“Well, I hope Nauthir knows how lucky he is to have you,” Heril said. “You might’ve gone to the Guardsmen, I suppose.” Raunor shrugged. It was common knowledge-though no surgeon had actually ever admitted as much, in Valacar’s hearing-that the bigger, heavier lads were preferred as apprentices, as they could better hold down a struggling patient at need.
“And what about you lot?” Raunor asked. “How’d you make out?”
“Cataract removal,” said Heril.
“And?” Valacar pressed.
“Success,” Heril replied with pronounced pride. “Though not before the poor bastard fainted dead away on the table.”
“Can’t blame him, with you hovering over him,” said Callon.
“Well,” Heril shrugged. He was nearly to the bottom of his drink, at this point, and taking such jabs more and more in stride. “Taithir says that that’s the best you can hope for, oftentimes.”
“But the problem’s if they wake up with a start,” Valacar pointed out. “Happened in Darthan’s surgery last week. This man nearly sat bolt upright in the middle of bladder stone removal.” He shook his head.
“And?” Raunor asked.
“Nothing for it. Bled right out,” said Valacar, and they all fell silent for a moment.
“That’s where Raunor’s ilk comes in useful,” said Heril.
“That, or just strap them to the table,” Callon put in.
“Makes them panic worse, though,” said Valacar. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. That’s what Darthan says, anyway.”
Valacar liked this, liked that they could talk about failure. The first months had been full of bravado and the basest sort of one-upmanship among the new apprentices-“weeding out,” as the older ones would say. Each young man pretending that he never flinched, pouring out the worst details of all he’d seen and heard in the surgery over mealtimes, seeing who could go the longest without fainting or being sick. Valacar had heard that in a good year, about half of the new apprentices made it past their first few months. He’d been pleasantly surprised to find himself among the survivors, standing amidst the wreckage, though he’d known that Darthan had a good reputation when it came to keeping his trainees.
Now their lot had been pared down, and with it, the worst of the bluffing and competition. All were still trying to keep up an air of toughness, of course, but they were freer to speak about what was true. That, and to compare notes on their masters, half the time complaining about them and the other half repeating their words and speaking in awed tones about what the experienced surgeons were able to do, the steadiness of their hands and the breadth of their knowledge.
The little barmaid came back to refill their drinks, glancing at each of them in turn with that same steady, close-mouthed smile.
“Having a good night?” Heril asked her.
“Well as can be expected,” she replied. “And you?”
“Better now that you’re here,” said Callon, to which Raunor put his face in his hand and groaned audibly.
“Thank you,” Valacar said to the girl as she collected his empty glass, trying to signal to her that she shouldn’t feel obligated to linger, no matter what Callon or the others said to her.
“You’re welcome,” she said. And this time her smile showed some teeth.
Callon and Heril glanced at one another when she left. Valacar felt a flash of annoyance. Why couldn’t they just keep talking around her presence, over it, the way they would have if it had been the proprietor, or the proprietor’s ancient mother, or one of the barmen serving their drinks? She was just a barmaid, and surely the easiest kind of girl to ignore, even if she wasn’t bad looking. But then it started up again.
“I think she fancies you, Amroth,” Heril said, eyebrows raised.
“She probably likes your accent,” Callon said, in a very broad, and not particularly good, imitation of Valacar’s coastal inflections: softening of the rs, rounding of the os, slight lift at the end of a phrase. It was something Callon did from time to time, without particular derision or meanness, and which Valacar generally found amusing. That was where his weight usually fell, within their group: he was the slightly exotic one, the outsider. He didn’t mind that they called him “Amroth,” either; it was better than a lot of other names they might have given him.
“Since I’ve spoken all of two words to her,” Valacar snorted. “And you’re still not doing it right,” he added, broadening his own speech for demonstration, mimicking the way the farmers on his father’s land and the fishermen at the docks spoke.
“She might’ve listened in, when we were talking,” Callon speculated, ignoring him.
“Right. Because we’re fascinating. I’m sure she couldn’t help herself.” Another attractive feature of the tavern was that the apprentices’ talk, particularly as the evening wore on, and the conversation became louder and looser-talk of sutures and cautery, blood flow and organs-never seemed to garner any special attention from the other patrons, as it might have done in a quieter or more respectable establishment. Though some of his fellow apprentices, Valacar was certain, would probably also take a certain glee in flaunting their new, hard-won knowledge in such venues, as well. In turning heads and making a spectacle.
“Well, is she your sort, or not?” Heril persisted. “Have you got a sort?” he asked. An innocent enough question, the type that young men asked their friends all the time, but still enough to strike off distant alarms in Valacar’s mind.
He rolled his eyes, took a drink. “Well, she’s not the type to tempt me-especially if she’s trading for coin what can be had for free, elsewhere.”
Heril groaned. “Oh, come on. Let’s none of us pretend we’re getting anything for free, these days. All the women in the Houses are shut up tighter than the Citadel doors. Even the kitchen-girls.”
He looked at Callon and Raunor, who nodded grudging concurrence.
“I’ve not seen any relief since I left my father’s house last harvest-time,” Callon admitted. “Little housemaid, sort of mousy,” he added, in answer to a question that no one had asked.
Relief, Valacar thought. He’d always thought that was an odd way to put it.
It went on like that for the rest of the evening, the conversation drifting companionably between the ongoing card game and talk about work. And then the girl would show up to bring them more drinks, and Callon would persist in making an utter fool of himself, and be soundly mocked for it. And then, when she left their table, the others would inevitably circle back to the subject of girls, and the many sorts of girls that existed in the world, and the difficulties inherent in bedding them.
“You’re not some kind of romantic, are you?” Heril said, turning to Valacar after Valacar had been silent for a while. They were somewhere in between their third and fourth round of drinks.
Valacar looked up. “What do you mean?”
“You know, waiting on your true love, and all that?”
Valacar shook his head. “Hardly.”
“Well, so…?” Callon said. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Valacar echoed. He tried his best not to shift in his seat.
“How long’s it been since you’ve had any?” Callon asked.
Valacar considered this. “A year, maybe. Perhaps a little longer.” Which was the truth.
Raunor sat back in his chair, let out a low whistle. “That’s a while.”
“Details?” Heril leaned forward. Valacar smiled, in a way that he hoped would look self-satisfied, rather than panicked.
“He’s a gentleman, Heril,” Raunor said. “Doesn’t give away the details.” He gave Heril a little shove with the palm of his hand, but he was observing Valacar with a sidelong look.
“It was…on the shore,” Valacar said. Which was also true.
“The shore?” Callon looked impressed. “Had to take it out of doors, did you?”
“Trying to avoid my father,” Valacar admitted. “He’s…concerned about the family honor.” He was gratified to see the others nodding sympathetically.
“That’s right, you’re from one of the old landholding lines down there, aren’t you?” Raunor asked.
“Somewhat,” Valacar shrugged. “Though not nearly as old as my father would like to think.”
“Doesn’t want his heir getting a bastard on some farmer’s daughter.” Heril laughed. “So, what was it like?”
“What?”
“Beach tryst? Amidst the…the crashing waves, or what have you?” Heril made a fanciful gesture with his hand. He was, like the rest of them, at least slightly drunk at this point.
Valacar took another drink. “It was low tide, actually.”
Heril rolled his eyes, shook his head. “That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?”
“Well, the coastline in my part of Dol Amroth is fairly rocky,” Valacar said. “So, it was all a bit…uncomfortable?” He ventured a smile.
The others burst out laughing, and Raunor clapped him on the back with a big, heavy hand. “The things we do for love, eh, Amroth?” he asked.
“So, who was it?” Heril persisted. “Someone special?”
Suddenly all Valacar wanted to do was go home, up the back stairway at Darthan’s house, and straight to bed. “You could say that,” he murmured.
“So, you do have a sweetheart back home,” said Callon. “Sly dog.”
Valacar shook his head. He had thought about taking this tack a few times, but he knew there’d always be more teasing and thrown elbows, more questions. He didn’t much trust himself to dissemble, save by omission. He took another drink. “She’s…engaged, now. To somebody else.” Mostly true.
Noises of sympathy, general dismay, friendly hands on his shoulder.
“Well, that harlot be damned!” Callon said. “I’m sorry, Amroth.”
“Forget her,” Raunor nodded.
“Thanks.” Valacar managed a smile. “Trying.”
And then, to what would afterwards be Valacar’s great consternation, the barmaid chose that very instant to appear at their table once more.
“You should try harder,” Heril said to him in a low voice, then glanced at the girl. He cleared his throat. “Miss, my friend-” he started, before Valacar could respond, and threw an arm around Valacar’s shoulders, “thinks you are very lovely.”
The girl looked at Heril, then at Valacar. “Does he?” she said. She set down the tray and folded her arms over her chest, that same smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“Heril,” Valacar hissed. “No.”
“What?” Heril asked, undeterred. “Are you saying she’s not pretty, now?”
“He’s from the coast, you know. In the south,” Callon piled on, before Valacar could intervene.
“I’d gathered,” said the girl, looking at Valacar, who suddenly found his cards to be very interesting.
“I told you,” Callon grinned triumphantly. “It’s the accent.”
“He’s not as good-looking as a Minas Tirith man, I’ll grant you,” said Heril, “but not all bad.”
Valacar looked over to Raunor for support. Raunor could generally be counted on to temper the excesses of the other two, especially once the liquor had started flowing. But he only winked at Valacar, and then turned towards the barmaid and asked, “When does your shift end?” Valacar resolved then to kill all of them, Valar help him.
“Soon,” she replied. She was surveying all four of them with a look of mild amusement on her face. No doubt she’d seen many such displays in her time here, or at similar establishments.
“He’ll buy you that drink,” Raunor said. “If you want.”
She considered Valacar for a moment, then smiled. “That would be very kind of him.” And then she picked up her tray and left.
“No,” Valacar said, once she was out of earshot.
“She likes you,” Heril said. “You saw her.”
“She likes me, she likes you, she likes everyone here,” Valacar said. “That’s how she makes money.”
“Don’t be so high and mighty, Master Landholder’s Son,” Callon said. He’d started to slur his speech a little. “Honestly, what more could you ask for? She’s got all her teeth, she’s most likely not syphilitic yet, and she’s not old enough to be your mother.”
“Nothing wrong with--” Raunor put in, at the same time that Valacar muttered, “My mother is dead.”
“Amroth,” Heril began. “Valacar.” He clapped a heavy, sincere hand to Valacar’s shoulder. “It’ll do you a world of good.”
“Hear, hear,” said Callon, gesturing with his glass, which Heril wisely plucked out of his hand before it could go flying into the wall.
“And you won’t even have to scrape up your knees on some rocky scarp,” added Raunor, helpfully. He reached into his pocket, slapped a fistful of coins down on the tabletop. There was something about the dull sound of the metal pieces hitting the damp wood, some sort of finality that only made Valacar’s panic stronger. “Look, here’s some of what I won off you and Heril at cards, last week. Buy her a drink.”
Valacar shook his head, started to get up. “That’s very kind, but I…” At the sound of his chair legs scraping against the floor, something seemed to change at the table. The cajoling died down, and the other three exchanged brief looks. And now they were considering him with…what? Disappointment? Speculation? Confirmation? Even Callon, clearly the farthest in the bag out of all of them, seemed to have a dim gleam of appraisal in his eye. He swallowed, glanced towards the other side of the room, where the girl was now wiping a glass with a rag behind the bar.
“Fine,” he said, and sat down, again.
“Good man!” said Heril, throwing an arm around Valacar’s shoulders once more. “Do you a world of good,” he repeated. Valacar felt numb.
“Only…” He pushed Raunor’s coins back towards him with as much of a smile as he could muster. “Keep your winnings.” When Raunor began to protest, Valacar said, “Or-or just pay for my drinks, if you want.” Raunor gave a conciliatory nod, and Valacar found himself wondering how much it was supposed to cost, for what…for a night? An hour? Half-hour?
Meanwhile, Heril had started to gather up the cards and arrange them into a single deck once more. Callon launched into a rambling, and very detailed, string of conjectures as to the carnal preferences of second circle tavern maids, before slumping forward onto the table, his face buried in his folded arms.
“Someone ought to see him home,” Valacar said.
“All in good time,” said Heril, handing the deck of cards back to Valacar.
“Or we could just leave him here, for the night, too-alone, that is,” Raunor said, eying Callon with the dismissive eye of a more accomplished drinker. “Would probably do him a world of good.”
“Ha! And have his master skin us alive with a scalpel,” said Heril.
“That would take a long time,” Valacar managed to point out, but Heril was already looking past him, giving a slight wave.
“Ah, here we are,” he said, fixing a wolfish grin on Valacar. “We’ll pay up, now,” he said to the girl, who was approaching their table once more. “That is, most of us will,” he said, crooking a thumb in Valacar’s direction.
The girl quoted them the sum of their bill, which Raunor and Heril handed over-plus, Valacar was at least a little pleased to see, a not insubstantial tip. Fair enough, for all the trouble they’d been giving her.
“Thank you,” she nodded, taking her leave of them. “I’ll be at the bar.” A few moments later, she was on the far side of the room, again, taking off her apron and hanging it up on a peg beside the door to the kitchen.
“There’s your cue,” said Heril, giving Valacar a shove.
“What about…” Valacar glanced over at Callon, who still had his head pillowed on his arms.
“Never mind him,” said Raunor. “Far from the first time we’ll have dragged him back up to the fifth circle in such a state, as well you know.”
There was nothing else to say, it seemed. Valacar got up from his chair, made his way between tables and patrons, and sat down at the bar. The girl was nowhere in sight, and for a moment he thought that maybe he’d been delivered, but then she emerged from the kitchen door, spotted him, and climbed up unceremoniously onto the stool beside him. She waved to the barkeep, ordered two ales. Probably a wise choice for the remainder of the evening, Valacar thought, though if he were being honest with himself, he ought to have switched to water some time ago.
“I’m sorry,” he said, as she turned to face him. “My friends are idiots.” The barkeep put their mugs down in front of them, and he picked his up to take a drink.
She chuckled, and Valacar realized that, though she’d been smiling fixedly all night, this was the first time he’d seen her laugh. “I know.”
“I’m Valacar, by the way,” he said, putting his mug back on the bar, and, not knowing what else to do, put out his hand.
She laughed again, probably, Valacar realized, at the absurd formality of the gesture, but she took his hand and shook it once with a heavy mock-solemnity. “Fíriel,” she said.
“Fíriel?” he repeated. “Really?” It seemed rather a highborn name for a woman in her line of work.
She gave him an appraising look. “Yes,” she said. “Really.”
“I only…” he started. Valar, he thought, he was going to humiliate himself with this girl at the bar before they even got to her bed, or wherever it was that she plied her trade.
“It’s my real name,” she said, and he could detect the slightest edge in her voice, now. “Some of the other girls use false ones, now and then, but…” She shrugged. “I just don’t.”
“Ah,” he said. He glanced back over across the room, where, back at the table in the corner, Raunor and Heril were now shaking a still-unconscious Callon. Heril looked up, saw Valacar, gave him that same grin and an “everything’s fine” gesture. Valacar turned away, gritting his teeth.
“You don’t look like butchers,” the girl said, when Valacar turned back to her.
“What?” Valacar asked.
“That’s what Adrath calls you,” she said. “Adrath, the owner,” she added, when he gave her a blank look. “The Butchers’ Guild.”
He’d go with her wherever she took him, he decided, and then pay her for her troubles and beg off with some excuse. It wasn’t as if she actually wanted to bed him, anyway. Only, he wanted to wait until he knew his friends were well and truly gone, far away from the second circle-he didn’t want to see their knowing looks or their stupid, congratulatory smiles. Better not to speak to them again until the morning, when their enthusiasm would be dampened by their hangovers.
“Oh, that,” he said. “We’re surgeons.”
“Surgeons?” She raised her eyebrows. “In the Houses?”
He nodded. “Apprentices. One of the first nights we came here, Callon still had some blood on his tunic, and so Adrath asked if we were butchers. We told him, no, but everyone thought it was funny, so the name stuck.”
There was a long pause.
“Any blood on you, tonight?” She took a sip of her ale, surveyed his clothes.
“Not that I know of,” he replied, stupidly.
“No, doesn’t look like it,” she said, and she took hold of his hand, which was resting on top of the bar. He drew in his breath. She released his hand and straightened up, suddenly businesslike. “Look, we don’t have to,” she said. “Only, don’t waste my time if you don’t want it.”
“No, I-” He glanced over his shoulder; Callon, Heril, and Raunor were as he’d last seen them, just a few moments ago. He looked back at the girl, who was still looking at him, waiting for a reply. And what would he tell her, exactly, when he begged off? Most likely she wouldn’t care, as long as he paid her. But would she think it odd, mention it to the other girls, or the barmen? Or to his friends, the next time they came to the tavern? Probably not, he thought-in her line of work, she would need to be discreet, after all. But there was always some chance…
“I-” he started again. She was still looking at him expectantly. He put a hand on her shoulder, felt her warmth through the thin fabric of her dress. But, what if he did go through with it? He didn’t think he’d like it, but what if there was a chance that he did? Even if it didn’t do him a whole world of good, as Heril claimed it would, it would still be an important thing to know.
A relief.
He slid his hand down her arm, took her fingers in hers. “I do,” he said. “Want to, I mean.”
Valacar downed the rest of his ale rather too quickly, and he could feel the room spin just a little bit as he got down from his stool. He left a few coins on the bar, and then the girl led him to a narrow stairway next to the kitchen door. As he followed her up the stairs, he didn’t dare venture a glance back over his shoulder to see if his friends were still at their table.
The room at the top of the stairs looked to be little more than a commandeered storage closet, with barely room enough for a single pallet on the floor and a washstand under a sharply sloped roof. It was clear that no one lived here, at least not at the moment. There were no windows, and the air was close and humid. The girl bolted the door behind them. She’d brought a lantern from the bar, and now she set it on the floor, a safe distance from the pallet. And there was yet one more thing to recommend this place, Valacar found himself thinking; even if a straw mattress went up in flames under its eaves, the tavern building itself would never catch fire, not with all the damp.
The girl took off her shoes, then undid the ties on her dress and pulled it over her head. She paused to look at Valacar, the garment’s sleeves still bunched over her arms. He was still standing next to the door, unmoving. He hadn’t expected her to start getting undressed right away, but then realized that that had been stupid. They weren’t here to talk, after all.
“Is this your first time?” she asked.
“I--” he began. He probably should have been prepared for the question, but now he didn’t know what to say. It was his first time, but it wasn’t.
Another long moment stretched out between them. Sweat prickled his palms, his forehead.
“That’s all right,” she said. She finished removing her dress, then shook it out and folded it neatly, setting it to the side of the pallet. Underneath, she wore a thin, shapeless shift that left her arms bare. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”
Valacar wasn’t certain about that.
She stood there in her shift, considering him for a few more seconds, until he realized that he was going to need to do something, soon. This had, after all, been his decision. Not at first, of course, but the two of them, now, in this room: that was his fault.
He went over to her and bent his head down towards hers; she didn’t quite come up to his chin. He put his hand on the side of her face and pressed his mouth to hers, lightly, at first. She returned the kiss gamely enough, her palms on his chest, then paused to grasp the hem of his shirt and pull it up. He helped her, lifting it up and over his head and letting it drop to the floor. He gathered her up, pulled her in close. Her hair smelled vaguely sweet. She felt soft in his arms, and small, and it was strange. The thought occurred to him, unbidden, that he could hurt her easily if he wanted to.
She ran a hand down his chest, then his stomach. Then she was at work on the buckle of his belt, and a few moments later she had the front of his trousers open. She pressed her palm to him, then glanced up at his face. Kissing her hadn’t been bad, but it also hadn’t done very much for him.
“I’m drunk,” he blurted, by way of apology.
She made as if to kneel, then seemed to think better of it, and pointed at the pallet and said, “Lie down.”
He decided the best course of action would be to remove the rest of clothes, first. He stepped out of his shoes, pushed down his trousers and undergarments, and left them on the floor next to his discarded shirt. When he lay down on the pallet, the straw was rough on his back through the thin bedclothes-and how often, if ever, were the bedclothes here washed, he wondered in sudden alarm.
Standing above him, the girl took off her shift, folded it and laid it atop her dress. Even in the dim, flickering lamplight, he could see clearly just how thin she was, her ribs visible under her pale skin, beneath her small breasts. He looked closer, and thought, too, that he could discern a cluster of fading green bruises on her narrow hips, another on her right shoulder.
She lay down beside him, and he moved over to make room. He could hear the din of the tavern below them.
“How did you get that?” he asked her, tracing his fingers lightly over the mark on her bare shoulder. Definitely a bruise, he could see, now.
She blinked, looked at her shoulder where he’d touched her, as if noticing the mark for the first time. “It’s nothing,” she replied.
“Doesn’t look like nothing,” he said, before he could think better of it. And now that they were so close, face to face, he could see that she was most likely younger than he’d first thought her.
“Well, that’s none of your concern, is it?” she said, and there was a hardness in her eyes, now. Before he could make any response to that, she slid down the pallet, and then her hand was on him, and then her mouth.
His eyes widened and he drew in his breath. She was, abruptness notwithstanding, very good. He put a hand on the back of his head, pushed his fingers through her dark hair, still bound up at the nape of her neck, the way she’d been wearing it when she served drinks.
She stopped momentarily, one hand still wrapped around him, the other hand bracing for balance above him, and asked, “Is that all right?”
“You know it is,” he gasped, annoyed, because of course she knew. She smiled a little bit before going back to work on him. He stared up at the ceiling nad thought of Claurin, that last time, before things had really gone bad. Definitely one of the more foolish things they’d done together, with Claurin’s brothers hauling in the day’s catch not a mile down the beach. But that was how it always was, nearly from the first, the tide of sheer want rolling over any semblance of reason or good sense…
It was almost too much. He felt a familiar heat, and a tightening, and he pushed gently against the top of her head. “Not-not yet,” he ground out, and she nodded. She moved back up to lay full-length beside him, propped herself up on an elbow.
“Can I--” he began. He ran his hand down her side, felt the sharp point of her hipbone. “Is there anything I can do? For you, I mean?”
She blinked, perhaps even looked a little startled, and despite all of the nerves and the strangeness and the wrongness he was feeling, Valacar allowed himself a small amount of satisfaction at being able to catch her off-guard. But then she simply smiled and said, “No,” and before he could think on that, she turned onto her back and pulled him on top of her.
He fumbled with himself, bracing his weight on his left forearm. She reached down between their bodies, helping him.
“It’s all right,” she murmured. “Here, just-like this.” And he was annoyed with her again, this time for the softness of her voice, as if he were some child she was indulging. Though he supposed that, in a sense, he was.
And then she pushed her hips up against him, and he was overtaken by the newness of it, the strangeness in the midst of vague familiarity. She was soft beneath him, and wet-he didn’t know exactly how it was supposed to be with women, had only the crudest of hearsay to draw upon, but he was glad to know that was not completely without enthusiasm. He took his weight off of his forearm, let himself sink into her. He buried his head in the space between her shoulder and neck so that he would not have to look at her, would not have to watch her watching him. She wrapped one arm around his back, rested the other hand on his hip.
And then he was moving against her, as if by rote. After some time-which, later, to his mortified recollections, would seem much too short-his breath caught, and he made a noise in his throat, and held himself taut against her. He lay there bonelessly atop her for a moment, and then pushed himself up on his forearms. She was staring up at the ceiling, breathing slowly. He hadn’t meant to finish inside of her, but she didn’t seem overly bothered by it.
He realized, then, that he was exhausted. He could have happily rolled over and lay there with his eyes closed for a long time, never mind the coarseness of the straw bedding. But instead he pushed himself up, extricating himself from the sweaty tangle of their limbs. He stood up-not as steadily as he might have-and went over to the washstand.
After a brief rinse-the water in the basin had been warmed by the airless heat of the room-he turned around to find the girl sitting on the edge of the pallet, looking at him. An immensely foolish part of himself wanted to ask her if it had been all right for her, but for once that evening his better judgement won out.
Instead, he asked, “How long have you been…here?” He went to gather up his clothes.
“You mean, at this tavern?”
“Yes.”
She shrugged, and then stood up from the pallet and went to the washstand. “A year, perhaps.” He turned away from her to get dressed.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked.
“Just curious,” he said.
“And how long have you been here?” she asked. “In the City, I mean?”
“Around six months, this September.”
When he turned back around, she already had her shift back on, was pulling her dress down over her head.
“Will you come around here?” she asked. She had loosened her hair-for a moment it fell in dark waves over her shoulders, but just as quickly she was gathering it up at the nape of her neck again, righting what had been put askew. He tried to imagine coming to the tavern again, next week, as the others would surely want to, sitting at the corner table as his friends elbowed him. Well, he thought. That was why people drank.
“Yes, most likely,” he said.
She nodded. “So I’ll see you again. Ah-downstairs, I mean.”
“Um, yes.” He walked over to her, bent and gave her a clumsy kiss on the cheek. “Thank you,” he said. “It was nice.”
“You’re sweet,” she said.
His face was getting hot again. “How much do you…?”
She was quiet for a moment. He imagined that she was considering what little she knew of him, maybe examining the cut of his clothes and the way he spoke. Then she quoted a sum that seemed, at least to him, fairly low, all things considered. He reached into his pocket, brought out twice that amount, and put it in her hand.
She stared at the coins for a moment. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” If nothing else, it gave him an immense sense of pleasure to know that some portion of the modest allowance his father had arranged to have disbursed to him every month would go towards paying a woman of ill repute.
She hesitated. “Only…” And now it was her turn to look uncomfortable. “There’s some men, who, if they overpay a girl while they’re not in all of their senses-they’ll come back later and claim she’s robbed him.”
“Oh,” he said. He hadn’t thought of it, but he remembered, with a turn of his stomach, the bruises he'd seen on her. “No, I’m not drunk.” He paused. “Not anymore, at least.”
“I see.” And then she smiled again, and she looked very young. “Thank you.”
When Valacar came back downstairs, he saw that the corner table-Valar be praised-was now empty of his friends. Doubtless Heril and Raunor had since wrestled Callon back up to his master’s house on the fifth circle, cursing all the while, or perhaps were still in the process of doing so. Valacar decided he might linger a bit on his way up the third and fourth circles, to ensure he’d no chance of catching up with them.
When he left the nameless tavern-the salt of dried sweat beneath his clothing, this time, instead of the simple familiar clamminess-he was quite alone, indeed.
A little bit of background on this one: a number of readers (well, a few, at least) over the years have asked me for some more about Valacar (talented surgeon, gay, pathologically repressed) and Fíriel (talented healer, ex-prostitute, emotionally competent), a pair of original characters who have figured into my stories about the Houses of Healing for the past decade and change. Like: "How did Fíriel end up working in the Houses of Healing?" " How did they end up meeting for the first time?" "Why does she continually put up with Valacar's bullshit?" and "Has he always been this intent on wrecking his own life?"
Thus, I bring you the first part of (I don't know how many) of the currently untitled backstory. It takes place about fifteen years before the main events of LoTR, and you don't need to know much else. (Rest assured that future parts, if/when they appear, will also feature heavy doses of pre-modern medical practice, encroaching warfare, internal politics, and sex. I mean, more sex.)
(All feedback welcome all the time of course, but maybe even more welcome than usual, if possible, since I don't have a beta reader at the moment.)
Part 1: "The Girlfriend Experience"
Characters: Valacar, Fíriel, Valacar's dirtbag friends
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Prostitution; what the youths these days would probably refer to as "toxic masculinity"; also, really, really awkward, largely terrible sex
Word Count: ~7,000
Summary: ...he realized that he was going to need to do something, soon. This had, after all, been his decision. Not at first, of course, but the two of them, now, in this room: that was his fault.
The Girlfriend Experience
One of the peculiar things about the tavern on the west side of the second circle was that, even in the driest days of late summer, there was a heavy air of damp inside. It was a condition that no amount of open windows-not that there were many--could remedy. The inside walls were dark with caked soot, and the surfaces of the tables-all, it seemed, of a mismatched height, and none entirely level-were always sticky, no matter how many times the barmaid swiped a rag over them in the course of an evening. Even after less than an hour inside, Valacar would walk out the door with a strange clamminess on the back of his neck, on his forehead, and between his shoulder blades, as if something of the place had seeped beneath his clothes.
Still, the tavern-if it had ever had a name, or indeed, a sign declaiming such, both were now long forgotten-had other things to recommend it, namely, drinks that were cheap but tolerably strong. And since apprentices, even those stationed on the upper circles, could not afford to live extravagantly, it was where they found themselves, more often than not.
“The Butchers’ Guild,” the proprietor addressed them with a mock-grave nod as they entered, and made his usual show of leading them to a table in the far corner, beside a now-dormant hearth, yanking out mismatched chairs. “Well met, young sirs.” Valacar would have liked to think that the man’s manner was more jesting than anything else, but he couldn’t help but read into it a slight edge of a jeer-or was it simple wariness?--from time to time. Well, no matter-they drank his liquor without fail, and usually in no small amount, so if he did harbor any ill thoughts towards the four apprentices, he’d do well not to air them too openly.
“My liege,” Callon answered the proprietor with an exaggerated, courtly bow before sinking into his chair. Even in the dim lamplight, it was apparent that his pale face was flushed a shade or two redder than usual. He’d probably already had a few drinks before heading out for the night, perhaps at his master’s table. Or, more likely, pilfered from his master’s liquor cabinet.
“‘My liege,’” Heril muttered, whacking Callon on the shoulder, after the proprietor had headed back towards the bar with their orders. “What’s that, now?”
“I only figure,” Callon said, suddenly expansive, folding his hands behind his head-yes, Valacar decided, it had definitely been the liquor cabinet this time-“I can add a touch of polish to this place.”
“And what would you know about that?” Raunor snorted. He was sitting across from Callon, next to Valacar. He was the biggest of their lot, broad in the chest and shoulders, nearly a head taller than Valacar. He always hunched over in his seat, even when there was plenty of room.
“More than you, I’d wager.” And they fell back again into the by-now familiar rhythms of their talk, half-heartedly jesting and feinting at whatever topic floated into view. Valacar had already taken the pack of cards out of his pocket, started dealing them out.
“Again with the cards, Amroth?” Heril groaned.
“Say the word if you’d rather not,” Valacar replied, glancing first at Heril, then at Callon and Raunor. Valacar was always the one with the cards. He liked having something to look at and something to do with his hands. “I’d understand, seeing as you got thrashed so soundly the other night.”
“Fine,” Heril grumbled, and picked up his newly-dealt hand from where it lay on the table. Raunor smirked.
“I am very polished, at least in here,” Callon said at the same time; he’d either missed the exchange about the cards, or chosen to ignore it altogether. He twisted in his chair, made a show of surveying the rest of the patrons in the dim room: men, mostly, in dark or undyed workers’ clothes with telltale smudges of ash and dust from the smithy’s or the mason’s or the mill. “I mean, how many of this lot do you suppose are lettered?”
“Or numbered, even?” Heril inclined his head towards the bar, where the proprietor had headed. “That might explain why the drinks cost so little.”
“They cost so little,” Raunor said with a grimace, “because they’re terrible.” Valacar laughed, studied his cards. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t all go blind by the time the year is out.”
As if on cue, their terrible drinks arrived. This time, it wasn’t the proprietor who came to their table, but one of the barmaids-a girl a year or two younger than Valacar, by the looks of it. She was small- carried the glasses on a tray, instead of clutching two in each hand, as the proprietor would have. He couldn’t remember if he’d seen her before-the nights here tended to blur one into the other, as did the faces that passed through them.
“Here you are,” she said, and lowered the tray to the table, careful to avoid the discard pile. Callon was already making a show of looking her up and down. If she noticed him, she made no sign, just smiled at a spot somewhere above his head. “Anything else?” she asked, as she moved the glasses, two by two, from the tray to the surface of the table.
“We’re quite all right,” said Callon, slouching back in his chair again. “Anything we can get for you?”
Raunor rolled his eyes.
“I don’t drink on my shift,” she replied, tucking the tray beneath her arm in a neat, practiced movement. She was looking directly at Callon now, still smiling. “Maybe later.”
They watched her as she left.
“Is she new here?” said Raunor, apparently wondering the same as Valacar.
“No,” said Heril. “But she works an earlier shift, most nights.” He took a sip of his drink and made a face. Then he seemed to work up his reserve before taking a more manful swallow and wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“Leaves time for other wage-earning activities, most likely,” Callon said, looking unaccountably pleased with himself.
“You’d take her up on that?” Raunor asked.
Callon seemed to weigh the matter carefully, as if his master had just put a particularly tricky question to him in the surgery. “She’s a bit skinny, honestly. Pretty smile, though.”
“I’d bet Amroth would take her,” Heril said, elbowing Valacar. “You haven’t got any sweethearts at home, have you?” Valacar shook his head, once. “You’ve got to be getting lonely,” Heril said, “up in that attic of yours.”
“It’s more like a garret,” Valacar said.
“What are the girls like, where you’re from?” asked Callon. “I hear they’re kind of wild, out on the coast.”
“You’ve got sisters, right?” said Heril.
“Yes, and because I’m a good brother, I’d never let the likes of you near them,” Valacar snorted. Callon laughed, smacked Heril on the back of the head, and Heril laughed, too, in spite of himself. Valacar was relieved to be back, at least for the moment, on a subject he could trust himself to joke about. Even if he did not like the idea of Haleth and Lalaith being an object of speculation for Heril in the same vein as the barmaid.
The card game and the drinking continued apace.
“How’d you all make out, today?” Valacar asked, dealing out a second hand. “At work, I mean.”
Raunor sighed. “Nauthir’s got it in for me, I think. The minute he sees me gripping my scalpel a finger’s-width too close to the blade, or threading a needle too slowly, he just gets this look on his face.”
“This look?” said Callon, doing a fair impression of Raunor’s master looking displeased: brow furrowed, mouth tightened slightly at the corners, as if troubled by a distant but unavoidable memory.
“That’s the one,” said Raunor, gesturing towards Callon with his glass. “Only, don’t do that, you’ll make me think I’ve done something wrong, even now.” At which Callon, of course, only intensified the look to comic effect, crossing his dark eyes slightly. “Stop it!” Raunor said, and leaned across the table to punch Callon’s shoulder. They were all laughing, now.
“Well, I hope Nauthir knows how lucky he is to have you,” Heril said. “You might’ve gone to the Guardsmen, I suppose.” Raunor shrugged. It was common knowledge-though no surgeon had actually ever admitted as much, in Valacar’s hearing-that the bigger, heavier lads were preferred as apprentices, as they could better hold down a struggling patient at need.
“And what about you lot?” Raunor asked. “How’d you make out?”
“Cataract removal,” said Heril.
“And?” Valacar pressed.
“Success,” Heril replied with pronounced pride. “Though not before the poor bastard fainted dead away on the table.”
“Can’t blame him, with you hovering over him,” said Callon.
“Well,” Heril shrugged. He was nearly to the bottom of his drink, at this point, and taking such jabs more and more in stride. “Taithir says that that’s the best you can hope for, oftentimes.”
“But the problem’s if they wake up with a start,” Valacar pointed out. “Happened in Darthan’s surgery last week. This man nearly sat bolt upright in the middle of bladder stone removal.” He shook his head.
“And?” Raunor asked.
“Nothing for it. Bled right out,” said Valacar, and they all fell silent for a moment.
“That’s where Raunor’s ilk comes in useful,” said Heril.
“That, or just strap them to the table,” Callon put in.
“Makes them panic worse, though,” said Valacar. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. That’s what Darthan says, anyway.”
Valacar liked this, liked that they could talk about failure. The first months had been full of bravado and the basest sort of one-upmanship among the new apprentices-“weeding out,” as the older ones would say. Each young man pretending that he never flinched, pouring out the worst details of all he’d seen and heard in the surgery over mealtimes, seeing who could go the longest without fainting or being sick. Valacar had heard that in a good year, about half of the new apprentices made it past their first few months. He’d been pleasantly surprised to find himself among the survivors, standing amidst the wreckage, though he’d known that Darthan had a good reputation when it came to keeping his trainees.
Now their lot had been pared down, and with it, the worst of the bluffing and competition. All were still trying to keep up an air of toughness, of course, but they were freer to speak about what was true. That, and to compare notes on their masters, half the time complaining about them and the other half repeating their words and speaking in awed tones about what the experienced surgeons were able to do, the steadiness of their hands and the breadth of their knowledge.
The little barmaid came back to refill their drinks, glancing at each of them in turn with that same steady, close-mouthed smile.
“Having a good night?” Heril asked her.
“Well as can be expected,” she replied. “And you?”
“Better now that you’re here,” said Callon, to which Raunor put his face in his hand and groaned audibly.
“Thank you,” Valacar said to the girl as she collected his empty glass, trying to signal to her that she shouldn’t feel obligated to linger, no matter what Callon or the others said to her.
“You’re welcome,” she said. And this time her smile showed some teeth.
Callon and Heril glanced at one another when she left. Valacar felt a flash of annoyance. Why couldn’t they just keep talking around her presence, over it, the way they would have if it had been the proprietor, or the proprietor’s ancient mother, or one of the barmen serving their drinks? She was just a barmaid, and surely the easiest kind of girl to ignore, even if she wasn’t bad looking. But then it started up again.
“I think she fancies you, Amroth,” Heril said, eyebrows raised.
“She probably likes your accent,” Callon said, in a very broad, and not particularly good, imitation of Valacar’s coastal inflections: softening of the rs, rounding of the os, slight lift at the end of a phrase. It was something Callon did from time to time, without particular derision or meanness, and which Valacar generally found amusing. That was where his weight usually fell, within their group: he was the slightly exotic one, the outsider. He didn’t mind that they called him “Amroth,” either; it was better than a lot of other names they might have given him.
“Since I’ve spoken all of two words to her,” Valacar snorted. “And you’re still not doing it right,” he added, broadening his own speech for demonstration, mimicking the way the farmers on his father’s land and the fishermen at the docks spoke.
“She might’ve listened in, when we were talking,” Callon speculated, ignoring him.
“Right. Because we’re fascinating. I’m sure she couldn’t help herself.” Another attractive feature of the tavern was that the apprentices’ talk, particularly as the evening wore on, and the conversation became louder and looser-talk of sutures and cautery, blood flow and organs-never seemed to garner any special attention from the other patrons, as it might have done in a quieter or more respectable establishment. Though some of his fellow apprentices, Valacar was certain, would probably also take a certain glee in flaunting their new, hard-won knowledge in such venues, as well. In turning heads and making a spectacle.
“Well, is she your sort, or not?” Heril persisted. “Have you got a sort?” he asked. An innocent enough question, the type that young men asked their friends all the time, but still enough to strike off distant alarms in Valacar’s mind.
He rolled his eyes, took a drink. “Well, she’s not the type to tempt me-especially if she’s trading for coin what can be had for free, elsewhere.”
Heril groaned. “Oh, come on. Let’s none of us pretend we’re getting anything for free, these days. All the women in the Houses are shut up tighter than the Citadel doors. Even the kitchen-girls.”
He looked at Callon and Raunor, who nodded grudging concurrence.
“I’ve not seen any relief since I left my father’s house last harvest-time,” Callon admitted. “Little housemaid, sort of mousy,” he added, in answer to a question that no one had asked.
Relief, Valacar thought. He’d always thought that was an odd way to put it.
It went on like that for the rest of the evening, the conversation drifting companionably between the ongoing card game and talk about work. And then the girl would show up to bring them more drinks, and Callon would persist in making an utter fool of himself, and be soundly mocked for it. And then, when she left their table, the others would inevitably circle back to the subject of girls, and the many sorts of girls that existed in the world, and the difficulties inherent in bedding them.
“You’re not some kind of romantic, are you?” Heril said, turning to Valacar after Valacar had been silent for a while. They were somewhere in between their third and fourth round of drinks.
Valacar looked up. “What do you mean?”
“You know, waiting on your true love, and all that?”
Valacar shook his head. “Hardly.”
“Well, so…?” Callon said. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Valacar echoed. He tried his best not to shift in his seat.
“How long’s it been since you’ve had any?” Callon asked.
Valacar considered this. “A year, maybe. Perhaps a little longer.” Which was the truth.
Raunor sat back in his chair, let out a low whistle. “That’s a while.”
“Details?” Heril leaned forward. Valacar smiled, in a way that he hoped would look self-satisfied, rather than panicked.
“He’s a gentleman, Heril,” Raunor said. “Doesn’t give away the details.” He gave Heril a little shove with the palm of his hand, but he was observing Valacar with a sidelong look.
“It was…on the shore,” Valacar said. Which was also true.
“The shore?” Callon looked impressed. “Had to take it out of doors, did you?”
“Trying to avoid my father,” Valacar admitted. “He’s…concerned about the family honor.” He was gratified to see the others nodding sympathetically.
“That’s right, you’re from one of the old landholding lines down there, aren’t you?” Raunor asked.
“Somewhat,” Valacar shrugged. “Though not nearly as old as my father would like to think.”
“Doesn’t want his heir getting a bastard on some farmer’s daughter.” Heril laughed. “So, what was it like?”
“What?”
“Beach tryst? Amidst the…the crashing waves, or what have you?” Heril made a fanciful gesture with his hand. He was, like the rest of them, at least slightly drunk at this point.
Valacar took another drink. “It was low tide, actually.”
Heril rolled his eyes, shook his head. “That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?”
“Well, the coastline in my part of Dol Amroth is fairly rocky,” Valacar said. “So, it was all a bit…uncomfortable?” He ventured a smile.
The others burst out laughing, and Raunor clapped him on the back with a big, heavy hand. “The things we do for love, eh, Amroth?” he asked.
“So, who was it?” Heril persisted. “Someone special?”
Suddenly all Valacar wanted to do was go home, up the back stairway at Darthan’s house, and straight to bed. “You could say that,” he murmured.
“So, you do have a sweetheart back home,” said Callon. “Sly dog.”
Valacar shook his head. He had thought about taking this tack a few times, but he knew there’d always be more teasing and thrown elbows, more questions. He didn’t much trust himself to dissemble, save by omission. He took another drink. “She’s…engaged, now. To somebody else.” Mostly true.
Noises of sympathy, general dismay, friendly hands on his shoulder.
“Well, that harlot be damned!” Callon said. “I’m sorry, Amroth.”
“Forget her,” Raunor nodded.
“Thanks.” Valacar managed a smile. “Trying.”
And then, to what would afterwards be Valacar’s great consternation, the barmaid chose that very instant to appear at their table once more.
“You should try harder,” Heril said to him in a low voice, then glanced at the girl. He cleared his throat. “Miss, my friend-” he started, before Valacar could respond, and threw an arm around Valacar’s shoulders, “thinks you are very lovely.”
The girl looked at Heril, then at Valacar. “Does he?” she said. She set down the tray and folded her arms over her chest, that same smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“Heril,” Valacar hissed. “No.”
“What?” Heril asked, undeterred. “Are you saying she’s not pretty, now?”
“He’s from the coast, you know. In the south,” Callon piled on, before Valacar could intervene.
“I’d gathered,” said the girl, looking at Valacar, who suddenly found his cards to be very interesting.
“I told you,” Callon grinned triumphantly. “It’s the accent.”
“He’s not as good-looking as a Minas Tirith man, I’ll grant you,” said Heril, “but not all bad.”
Valacar looked over to Raunor for support. Raunor could generally be counted on to temper the excesses of the other two, especially once the liquor had started flowing. But he only winked at Valacar, and then turned towards the barmaid and asked, “When does your shift end?” Valacar resolved then to kill all of them, Valar help him.
“Soon,” she replied. She was surveying all four of them with a look of mild amusement on her face. No doubt she’d seen many such displays in her time here, or at similar establishments.
“He’ll buy you that drink,” Raunor said. “If you want.”
She considered Valacar for a moment, then smiled. “That would be very kind of him.” And then she picked up her tray and left.
“No,” Valacar said, once she was out of earshot.
“She likes you,” Heril said. “You saw her.”
“She likes me, she likes you, she likes everyone here,” Valacar said. “That’s how she makes money.”
“Don’t be so high and mighty, Master Landholder’s Son,” Callon said. He’d started to slur his speech a little. “Honestly, what more could you ask for? She’s got all her teeth, she’s most likely not syphilitic yet, and she’s not old enough to be your mother.”
“Nothing wrong with--” Raunor put in, at the same time that Valacar muttered, “My mother is dead.”
“Amroth,” Heril began. “Valacar.” He clapped a heavy, sincere hand to Valacar’s shoulder. “It’ll do you a world of good.”
“Hear, hear,” said Callon, gesturing with his glass, which Heril wisely plucked out of his hand before it could go flying into the wall.
“And you won’t even have to scrape up your knees on some rocky scarp,” added Raunor, helpfully. He reached into his pocket, slapped a fistful of coins down on the tabletop. There was something about the dull sound of the metal pieces hitting the damp wood, some sort of finality that only made Valacar’s panic stronger. “Look, here’s some of what I won off you and Heril at cards, last week. Buy her a drink.”
Valacar shook his head, started to get up. “That’s very kind, but I…” At the sound of his chair legs scraping against the floor, something seemed to change at the table. The cajoling died down, and the other three exchanged brief looks. And now they were considering him with…what? Disappointment? Speculation? Confirmation? Even Callon, clearly the farthest in the bag out of all of them, seemed to have a dim gleam of appraisal in his eye. He swallowed, glanced towards the other side of the room, where the girl was now wiping a glass with a rag behind the bar.
“Fine,” he said, and sat down, again.
“Good man!” said Heril, throwing an arm around Valacar’s shoulders once more. “Do you a world of good,” he repeated. Valacar felt numb.
“Only…” He pushed Raunor’s coins back towards him with as much of a smile as he could muster. “Keep your winnings.” When Raunor began to protest, Valacar said, “Or-or just pay for my drinks, if you want.” Raunor gave a conciliatory nod, and Valacar found himself wondering how much it was supposed to cost, for what…for a night? An hour? Half-hour?
Meanwhile, Heril had started to gather up the cards and arrange them into a single deck once more. Callon launched into a rambling, and very detailed, string of conjectures as to the carnal preferences of second circle tavern maids, before slumping forward onto the table, his face buried in his folded arms.
“Someone ought to see him home,” Valacar said.
“All in good time,” said Heril, handing the deck of cards back to Valacar.
“Or we could just leave him here, for the night, too-alone, that is,” Raunor said, eying Callon with the dismissive eye of a more accomplished drinker. “Would probably do him a world of good.”
“Ha! And have his master skin us alive with a scalpel,” said Heril.
“That would take a long time,” Valacar managed to point out, but Heril was already looking past him, giving a slight wave.
“Ah, here we are,” he said, fixing a wolfish grin on Valacar. “We’ll pay up, now,” he said to the girl, who was approaching their table once more. “That is, most of us will,” he said, crooking a thumb in Valacar’s direction.
The girl quoted them the sum of their bill, which Raunor and Heril handed over-plus, Valacar was at least a little pleased to see, a not insubstantial tip. Fair enough, for all the trouble they’d been giving her.
“Thank you,” she nodded, taking her leave of them. “I’ll be at the bar.” A few moments later, she was on the far side of the room, again, taking off her apron and hanging it up on a peg beside the door to the kitchen.
“There’s your cue,” said Heril, giving Valacar a shove.
“What about…” Valacar glanced over at Callon, who still had his head pillowed on his arms.
“Never mind him,” said Raunor. “Far from the first time we’ll have dragged him back up to the fifth circle in such a state, as well you know.”
There was nothing else to say, it seemed. Valacar got up from his chair, made his way between tables and patrons, and sat down at the bar. The girl was nowhere in sight, and for a moment he thought that maybe he’d been delivered, but then she emerged from the kitchen door, spotted him, and climbed up unceremoniously onto the stool beside him. She waved to the barkeep, ordered two ales. Probably a wise choice for the remainder of the evening, Valacar thought, though if he were being honest with himself, he ought to have switched to water some time ago.
“I’m sorry,” he said, as she turned to face him. “My friends are idiots.” The barkeep put their mugs down in front of them, and he picked his up to take a drink.
She chuckled, and Valacar realized that, though she’d been smiling fixedly all night, this was the first time he’d seen her laugh. “I know.”
“I’m Valacar, by the way,” he said, putting his mug back on the bar, and, not knowing what else to do, put out his hand.
She laughed again, probably, Valacar realized, at the absurd formality of the gesture, but she took his hand and shook it once with a heavy mock-solemnity. “Fíriel,” she said.
“Fíriel?” he repeated. “Really?” It seemed rather a highborn name for a woman in her line of work.
She gave him an appraising look. “Yes,” she said. “Really.”
“I only…” he started. Valar, he thought, he was going to humiliate himself with this girl at the bar before they even got to her bed, or wherever it was that she plied her trade.
“It’s my real name,” she said, and he could detect the slightest edge in her voice, now. “Some of the other girls use false ones, now and then, but…” She shrugged. “I just don’t.”
“Ah,” he said. He glanced back over across the room, where, back at the table in the corner, Raunor and Heril were now shaking a still-unconscious Callon. Heril looked up, saw Valacar, gave him that same grin and an “everything’s fine” gesture. Valacar turned away, gritting his teeth.
“You don’t look like butchers,” the girl said, when Valacar turned back to her.
“What?” Valacar asked.
“That’s what Adrath calls you,” she said. “Adrath, the owner,” she added, when he gave her a blank look. “The Butchers’ Guild.”
He’d go with her wherever she took him, he decided, and then pay her for her troubles and beg off with some excuse. It wasn’t as if she actually wanted to bed him, anyway. Only, he wanted to wait until he knew his friends were well and truly gone, far away from the second circle-he didn’t want to see their knowing looks or their stupid, congratulatory smiles. Better not to speak to them again until the morning, when their enthusiasm would be dampened by their hangovers.
“Oh, that,” he said. “We’re surgeons.”
“Surgeons?” She raised her eyebrows. “In the Houses?”
He nodded. “Apprentices. One of the first nights we came here, Callon still had some blood on his tunic, and so Adrath asked if we were butchers. We told him, no, but everyone thought it was funny, so the name stuck.”
There was a long pause.
“Any blood on you, tonight?” She took a sip of her ale, surveyed his clothes.
“Not that I know of,” he replied, stupidly.
“No, doesn’t look like it,” she said, and she took hold of his hand, which was resting on top of the bar. He drew in his breath. She released his hand and straightened up, suddenly businesslike. “Look, we don’t have to,” she said. “Only, don’t waste my time if you don’t want it.”
“No, I-” He glanced over his shoulder; Callon, Heril, and Raunor were as he’d last seen them, just a few moments ago. He looked back at the girl, who was still looking at him, waiting for a reply. And what would he tell her, exactly, when he begged off? Most likely she wouldn’t care, as long as he paid her. But would she think it odd, mention it to the other girls, or the barmen? Or to his friends, the next time they came to the tavern? Probably not, he thought-in her line of work, she would need to be discreet, after all. But there was always some chance…
“I-” he started again. She was still looking at him expectantly. He put a hand on her shoulder, felt her warmth through the thin fabric of her dress. But, what if he did go through with it? He didn’t think he’d like it, but what if there was a chance that he did? Even if it didn’t do him a whole world of good, as Heril claimed it would, it would still be an important thing to know.
A relief.
He slid his hand down her arm, took her fingers in hers. “I do,” he said. “Want to, I mean.”
Valacar downed the rest of his ale rather too quickly, and he could feel the room spin just a little bit as he got down from his stool. He left a few coins on the bar, and then the girl led him to a narrow stairway next to the kitchen door. As he followed her up the stairs, he didn’t dare venture a glance back over his shoulder to see if his friends were still at their table.
The room at the top of the stairs looked to be little more than a commandeered storage closet, with barely room enough for a single pallet on the floor and a washstand under a sharply sloped roof. It was clear that no one lived here, at least not at the moment. There were no windows, and the air was close and humid. The girl bolted the door behind them. She’d brought a lantern from the bar, and now she set it on the floor, a safe distance from the pallet. And there was yet one more thing to recommend this place, Valacar found himself thinking; even if a straw mattress went up in flames under its eaves, the tavern building itself would never catch fire, not with all the damp.
The girl took off her shoes, then undid the ties on her dress and pulled it over her head. She paused to look at Valacar, the garment’s sleeves still bunched over her arms. He was still standing next to the door, unmoving. He hadn’t expected her to start getting undressed right away, but then realized that that had been stupid. They weren’t here to talk, after all.
“Is this your first time?” she asked.
“I--” he began. He probably should have been prepared for the question, but now he didn’t know what to say. It was his first time, but it wasn’t.
Another long moment stretched out between them. Sweat prickled his palms, his forehead.
“That’s all right,” she said. She finished removing her dress, then shook it out and folded it neatly, setting it to the side of the pallet. Underneath, she wore a thin, shapeless shift that left her arms bare. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”
Valacar wasn’t certain about that.
She stood there in her shift, considering him for a few more seconds, until he realized that he was going to need to do something, soon. This had, after all, been his decision. Not at first, of course, but the two of them, now, in this room: that was his fault.
He went over to her and bent his head down towards hers; she didn’t quite come up to his chin. He put his hand on the side of her face and pressed his mouth to hers, lightly, at first. She returned the kiss gamely enough, her palms on his chest, then paused to grasp the hem of his shirt and pull it up. He helped her, lifting it up and over his head and letting it drop to the floor. He gathered her up, pulled her in close. Her hair smelled vaguely sweet. She felt soft in his arms, and small, and it was strange. The thought occurred to him, unbidden, that he could hurt her easily if he wanted to.
She ran a hand down his chest, then his stomach. Then she was at work on the buckle of his belt, and a few moments later she had the front of his trousers open. She pressed her palm to him, then glanced up at his face. Kissing her hadn’t been bad, but it also hadn’t done very much for him.
“I’m drunk,” he blurted, by way of apology.
She made as if to kneel, then seemed to think better of it, and pointed at the pallet and said, “Lie down.”
He decided the best course of action would be to remove the rest of clothes, first. He stepped out of his shoes, pushed down his trousers and undergarments, and left them on the floor next to his discarded shirt. When he lay down on the pallet, the straw was rough on his back through the thin bedclothes-and how often, if ever, were the bedclothes here washed, he wondered in sudden alarm.
Standing above him, the girl took off her shift, folded it and laid it atop her dress. Even in the dim, flickering lamplight, he could see clearly just how thin she was, her ribs visible under her pale skin, beneath her small breasts. He looked closer, and thought, too, that he could discern a cluster of fading green bruises on her narrow hips, another on her right shoulder.
She lay down beside him, and he moved over to make room. He could hear the din of the tavern below them.
“How did you get that?” he asked her, tracing his fingers lightly over the mark on her bare shoulder. Definitely a bruise, he could see, now.
She blinked, looked at her shoulder where he’d touched her, as if noticing the mark for the first time. “It’s nothing,” she replied.
“Doesn’t look like nothing,” he said, before he could think better of it. And now that they were so close, face to face, he could see that she was most likely younger than he’d first thought her.
“Well, that’s none of your concern, is it?” she said, and there was a hardness in her eyes, now. Before he could make any response to that, she slid down the pallet, and then her hand was on him, and then her mouth.
His eyes widened and he drew in his breath. She was, abruptness notwithstanding, very good. He put a hand on the back of his head, pushed his fingers through her dark hair, still bound up at the nape of her neck, the way she’d been wearing it when she served drinks.
She stopped momentarily, one hand still wrapped around him, the other hand bracing for balance above him, and asked, “Is that all right?”
“You know it is,” he gasped, annoyed, because of course she knew. She smiled a little bit before going back to work on him. He stared up at the ceiling nad thought of Claurin, that last time, before things had really gone bad. Definitely one of the more foolish things they’d done together, with Claurin’s brothers hauling in the day’s catch not a mile down the beach. But that was how it always was, nearly from the first, the tide of sheer want rolling over any semblance of reason or good sense…
It was almost too much. He felt a familiar heat, and a tightening, and he pushed gently against the top of her head. “Not-not yet,” he ground out, and she nodded. She moved back up to lay full-length beside him, propped herself up on an elbow.
“Can I--” he began. He ran his hand down her side, felt the sharp point of her hipbone. “Is there anything I can do? For you, I mean?”
She blinked, perhaps even looked a little startled, and despite all of the nerves and the strangeness and the wrongness he was feeling, Valacar allowed himself a small amount of satisfaction at being able to catch her off-guard. But then she simply smiled and said, “No,” and before he could think on that, she turned onto her back and pulled him on top of her.
He fumbled with himself, bracing his weight on his left forearm. She reached down between their bodies, helping him.
“It’s all right,” she murmured. “Here, just-like this.” And he was annoyed with her again, this time for the softness of her voice, as if he were some child she was indulging. Though he supposed that, in a sense, he was.
And then she pushed her hips up against him, and he was overtaken by the newness of it, the strangeness in the midst of vague familiarity. She was soft beneath him, and wet-he didn’t know exactly how it was supposed to be with women, had only the crudest of hearsay to draw upon, but he was glad to know that was not completely without enthusiasm. He took his weight off of his forearm, let himself sink into her. He buried his head in the space between her shoulder and neck so that he would not have to look at her, would not have to watch her watching him. She wrapped one arm around his back, rested the other hand on his hip.
And then he was moving against her, as if by rote. After some time-which, later, to his mortified recollections, would seem much too short-his breath caught, and he made a noise in his throat, and held himself taut against her. He lay there bonelessly atop her for a moment, and then pushed himself up on his forearms. She was staring up at the ceiling, breathing slowly. He hadn’t meant to finish inside of her, but she didn’t seem overly bothered by it.
He realized, then, that he was exhausted. He could have happily rolled over and lay there with his eyes closed for a long time, never mind the coarseness of the straw bedding. But instead he pushed himself up, extricating himself from the sweaty tangle of their limbs. He stood up-not as steadily as he might have-and went over to the washstand.
After a brief rinse-the water in the basin had been warmed by the airless heat of the room-he turned around to find the girl sitting on the edge of the pallet, looking at him. An immensely foolish part of himself wanted to ask her if it had been all right for her, but for once that evening his better judgement won out.
Instead, he asked, “How long have you been…here?” He went to gather up his clothes.
“You mean, at this tavern?”
“Yes.”
She shrugged, and then stood up from the pallet and went to the washstand. “A year, perhaps.” He turned away from her to get dressed.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked.
“Just curious,” he said.
“And how long have you been here?” she asked. “In the City, I mean?”
“Around six months, this September.”
When he turned back around, she already had her shift back on, was pulling her dress down over her head.
“Will you come around here?” she asked. She had loosened her hair-for a moment it fell in dark waves over her shoulders, but just as quickly she was gathering it up at the nape of her neck again, righting what had been put askew. He tried to imagine coming to the tavern again, next week, as the others would surely want to, sitting at the corner table as his friends elbowed him. Well, he thought. That was why people drank.
“Yes, most likely,” he said.
She nodded. “So I’ll see you again. Ah-downstairs, I mean.”
“Um, yes.” He walked over to her, bent and gave her a clumsy kiss on the cheek. “Thank you,” he said. “It was nice.”
“You’re sweet,” she said.
His face was getting hot again. “How much do you…?”
She was quiet for a moment. He imagined that she was considering what little she knew of him, maybe examining the cut of his clothes and the way he spoke. Then she quoted a sum that seemed, at least to him, fairly low, all things considered. He reached into his pocket, brought out twice that amount, and put it in her hand.
She stared at the coins for a moment. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” If nothing else, it gave him an immense sense of pleasure to know that some portion of the modest allowance his father had arranged to have disbursed to him every month would go towards paying a woman of ill repute.
She hesitated. “Only…” And now it was her turn to look uncomfortable. “There’s some men, who, if they overpay a girl while they’re not in all of their senses-they’ll come back later and claim she’s robbed him.”
“Oh,” he said. He hadn’t thought of it, but he remembered, with a turn of his stomach, the bruises he'd seen on her. “No, I’m not drunk.” He paused. “Not anymore, at least.”
“I see.” And then she smiled again, and she looked very young. “Thank you.”
When Valacar came back downstairs, he saw that the corner table-Valar be praised-was now empty of his friends. Doubtless Heril and Raunor had since wrestled Callon back up to his master’s house on the fifth circle, cursing all the while, or perhaps were still in the process of doing so. Valacar decided he might linger a bit on his way up the third and fourth circles, to ensure he’d no chance of catching up with them.
When he left the nameless tavern-the salt of dried sweat beneath his clothing, this time, instead of the simple familiar clamminess-he was quite alone, indeed.