An Evil Cradling

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Eventually Maedhros finished the bowl, and as the broth settled like a fortifying, invigorating weight into his stomach, softly he murmured, “Water… p-please…”

All that effort for this miserable pig?” A sneering voice whined before him, and Maedhros started as amid the slurred intonations of misshapen lips, he recognised the corrupt, basal form of archaic Quenya, and the orc’s crude words seared through him. “Nar, should’ve gutted him in the hollow, left him red and gasping with the rest of them.” It was as a hostage in Beirut, facing the possibility that he might be executed at any moment, that Brian Keenan realised how much being a father would mean to him. "I remember thinking, if I'm going to die here, my biggest regret is that I haven't had any kids," he says. "The feeling quite overwhelmed me." When he was finally released, Keenan famously told journalists that he intended to "make love to every woman in the world", before realising that imprisonment had left him horribly vulnerable and that he should steer clear of a big love affair. Then, having decided after all not to leap into the arms of the first woman who crossed his newly liberated path, he ended up doing precisely that: Audrey Doyle, who became his wife in 1993, was the physiotherapist charged with helping to build up his muscles again. And what?” the Balrog murmured, and the soft rue in its tone only stripped bare the cruelty of its truths. “Your bargains are empty, Noldo. As the soldiery might not take their pleasures with you, your freedom is not mine to barter.”

Frenzied hands clutched to him; shrill panic trembled in Maedhros’ throat, anger and terror waged their devastating war within him but through filth-stained lips he screamed, “Stop! Stop, let me go! Let me go!” A dissenting grumble rolled through the orcs, but slowly they shuffled off, and relief poured through Maedhros’ heart as he heard them depart. Yet setting towards him then he heard the heavy tread of the captain; unseen things crunched to the stones by his side, and swiftly he steeled himself, he drew to himself whatever shreds of lordliness he had left and thrust them out before him like a shield. In his book he writes. "It is memory that ages us not time." The mind forgets nothing, he says. "I may forget things, but the mind doesn't." In captivity he found himself remembering details from his childhood, things that he didn't even know he knew. "I could smell the linoleum in the house I grew up in. I could feel, twirl in my hand, the earrings that my mother wore when I was a child and she'd carry me in her arms." So he knows, however much he says, what happened in Beirut is the past. "It's like a book I can take down from a shelf and read it and replace." His mother, a housewife, used to say to him: "Politics stops at your doorstep.""But I never knew if she meant coming in or going out." His father was a telephone engineer and before that he worked on the buses. A sweet man. "I remember him bringing home all these injured animals he'd find on the road and mum telling him to get them out."

The Balrog captain’s bellow seemed to reverberate through the very earth, and dread spilled through Maedhros’ innards.Bind him tightly, now,” a Valarauka boomed, and the orcs seemed set aflame to hear their commander’s encouragement. Not to myself. To myself I never disappeared, I knew exactly where I was." Crucial, this. All the time that the world knew nothing of his existence, he hadn't ceased to exist, though he had transposed worlds. His reality, confined though it was, was his own. He didn't look outside. "My recollection is that if you focus on the real world, which isn't your real world, because your world is here in your head, then you are going to make life very difficult."

This is nothing more than a feint,” Celegorm had whispered, he had implored Maglor to see reason even as the final preparations for Maedhros’ leave-taking were made. “This is a game of daggers and mirrors, and we cannot fathom what shadows lurk behind this façade. Nelyo will not see sense, he will not see the snare that loops before him; he will throw himself away upon the rash hope that a thief might relinquish that which he has stolen. This is madness, Káno, this is folly, and you must make him see it.” Please,” he whimpered, and how he hated himself for it; he hated that he subjected himself to this creature, he hated that he begged for its mercy, he cursed every blind, arrogant, stupid decision that had cast down him so low, but still the words poured from him. “Please, please just let me go… Release me, and… “ Furiously he fought; they would not take him, they would not take him, the thought screeched through his head as his boots skidded through a mire of blood, but as a fiery whip suddenly cut towards his head, in that terrible instant he came undone.Wait!” Maedhros croaked; the words sounded pathetic even in his own ears but still he spoke them to keep that awful gag from his lips. “Wait… you… You’re taking me to him, aren’t you? To… to the Moringotto, to Angband…” Celegorm’s words turned in his mind, but Maedhros would not allow them to daunt him. For as the ranks of his retinue formed up behind him, as Gaelor loosed his banner and Orellë sounded a triumphant horn to the skies above, as the drum of galloping hooves filled his ears, grim, unyielding resolve settled in Maedhros’ stomach, and it would not be undone. And so it began. His re-emergence into a world he thought he knew, the world he had left behind, but different now. Not so much because the world had changed, or even because he himself had changed. But because his place in the world had changed. He went into the cell Brian Keenan, an unknown university teacher from Belfast. He then became Brian Keenan, the disappeared. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

Patiently the Balrog lifted the skin to him once more, and gratefully he drained it. Somewhat refreshed then he shifted himself slightly, the heels of his boots crunched as they slid across the gravel, and he pushed himself a little more upright against the wooden post that crushed between his shoulder-blades. Gothmog watched his motions neutrally, but as a wince crossed Maedhros’ face as he settled himself, the Valarauka reached for the gag once more. He talks about a letter he received recently from a woman whose daughter is dying of leukaemia. "There's far more heroism in that woman than there will ever be in me." Now, he says, he turns down offers to speak about his experience. "It's the past. Why would I want to do that?" He has always refused to go to America to lecture. "I am asked and I say, 'No.'" Money couldn't tempt him. "Money has always been the last thing on my mind. Though I don't have a lot of it. I have to work, my wife has to work." He wasn't sure about fatherhood. "I was anxious, still am. I thought, at 45, I was too old. But they are nice kids, lovely people." And tall, both of them are going to be over six foot. "As a small person I always wanted to be tall." When he was, his mum used to say to him, "'Be careful with what you want, you may get it.' So, she was right. I did get it." A sudden pang of hunger twisted through Maedhros’ stomach, but haughtily he lifted his head, and with as much defiance as he could push into his voice he replied, “I do not want it… Not from you!”His brothers fretted as he had armed himself: Caranthir rumbled out his worries as a squire garbed Maedhros in a magnificent breastplate of burnished steel, Curufin scowled down at Huan flopped by his feet as Maedhros tightened the gleaming bracers upon his arms and rolled out his shoulders within his newly smelted pauldrons. Amras held tightly to little Celebrimbor curled up and dozing in his lap, and Celegorm stood tightly at his side, worrying at the cuticle of his nail until Maedhros was sure that he must have torn it beyond all repair. Finally Maglor ceased his worrisome pacing, the rhythmic tread of his steps had sent a faint tinge of nausea rolling through Maedhros’ stomach; he passed Maedhros his sword sheathed within its ornate scabbard, and with every ounce of willpower in him Maedhros forced himself to ignore just how hard his brother’s fingers were shaking. What was known about Turlough was his music, his art. He is honoured and revered by many musicians through the centuries, in contemporary times particularly by the Chieftains, who have been playing Turlough's music for 30 years. Yet nothing was known "of Turlough's head and his heart". Sleep while you can, prince,” he said slowly, almost sorrowfully; and his words drenched Maedhros in nothing but despair. “For my home is forged of nightmares, and you will find no rest there.” Slay any left alive!” A thin voice barked behind him, and with its words and the roar of orcish glee that met them, blank despair crested in Maedhros’ heart as he was led away. “Leave the dead to rot.”