Sword and Arrow

Chapter 76

Beruthiel had never thought she would get married, but now she found that married life suited her. It meant that Aragorn's arm was always around her when they sat by the fire; his chest was always against her back at night when she woke up from a nightmare.

Beruthiel hummed to herself as she sat squatted down in the empty garden behind their house. The facade that the King's House presented to the street was a well-to-do one that had not taken too much repair, but the garden in the back was overgrown with weeds. And the fence needed fixing.

A pile of weeds, ranging from sizable bushes to tiny buds that were a pain to pull out grew by the back gate. Beruthiel had a clump of weeds held in her hand as she moved in neat rows, cleaning the garden out strip by strip.

She paused for a moment, sitting back on her heels and digging the dirt out of the engravings on her ring. She had been working on this for the last half week while Aragorn had been doing some carpentry work up on the roof, but less than half of the garden had been cleared. This would definitely take a while.

"I thought I'd find you here," Aragorn said from the doorway. "Any progress?"

Beruthiel waved to the clean soil behind her. "A little. It isn't much, but it's honest work."

Aragorn laughed. "You've really put your mind to this, haven't you?"

"It's exhausting," she admitted. "But it's better than having nothing to do." Her oakleaf pendant was cool against her sternum - Aragorn had given it back to her just after their wedding - but she hadn't been assigned to anything yet. Rather, there hadn't been anything to do yet. She was the one who would do the assigning. "I've considered secretly hiring a gardener to do it for me a few times. But then it wouldn't be a true garden."

"That it would not," Aragorn said. He set down the case he carried just behind the door and came out onto the moist soil - it had rained the night before, making Beruthiel's job much easier. "There's someone here to see you."

"See me?" She rose from her squat and dumped the weeds in her hand onto the larger pile, brushing her hands free of the sticky seeds that came with them. "Who would want to see me?"

"You're the queen, Ruth. Of course people want to see you."

"Yes, but nobles wouldn't come to our house to do it, would they?" Beruthiel ran a hand through her hair as she wiped her bare feet on the mat outside the door.

"It's not a noble," he admitted. "It's someone from the House of Healing. He says that he needs to talk to you. Apparently he spoke with you just after the Battle of Pelennor Fields."

Beruthiel frowned. "Strange. I think I only spoke with one Healer after Pelennor Fields... I think it was the one with Legolas." Oh. Was it the one that she had thought looked rather familiar?

She wiped her hands on the front of her shirt, internally cursing when it left a stain, and followed Aragorn through the many passages of their house out into the sitting room. A man waited there, standing awkwardly between two sofas with his hands in his pocket.

Indeed, it was the same Healer who had tended to Legolas when he had been terribly injured. Beruthiel squinted at him as they approached: he definitely looked familiar, but she couldn't place when or where she had seen him before the Houses of Healing.

The man heard them coming and dropped to his knees, his head bowed. "Your Majesties," he said. "Thank you for agreeing to this, my king."

"It is no bother. Rise, Healer," Aragorn said, slipping into king-speech, as Beruthiel referred to it. "You wished to speak to my wife?"