The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith (Part Four)

 

The Tale

‘The door opened, but no one could be seen to open it.’ Gandalf and Pippin enter a great hall with deep windows and black marble pillars and a golden roof. Nothing is wooden or cloth (like tapestry) in this room. Between the pillars stand a long avenue of kingly statues, and Pippin is reminded of the Argonath, the Pillars of the King.

At the end of the room on a dais of many steps is a throne under a canopy of marble shaped like a crowned helmet; on the wall behind it is a carved tree set with gems. But the throne is empty. At the foot of the dais is a plain black stone chair, and sitting there is an old man, gazing into his lap, holding a white rod tipped with a gold knob. Wizard and hobbit approach in silence, then Gandalf hails the figure as Denethor, Lord and Steward of Minas Tirith. ‘I have come with counsel and tidings in this dark hour.’

Pippin sees Denethor look up with ‘carven face with its proud bones and skin like ivory, and the long curved nose between dark eyes.’  The hobbit thinks that somehow he seems more like Aragorn than Boromir.

Denethor says the hour is dark, but that’s when the wizard always seems to be around. Although it seems like the doom of Gondor is getting near, no darkness matches his own. He knows that Boromir is dead. Is this the one who saw him die?

Yes, this is he, a Halfling, one of the two who saw Boromir die. The other is with Theoden. But he is not the Halfling the prophetic dream spoke of.

‘Yet a Halfling still.’ Denethor does not care for the name, since it appeared and troubled their counsels, setting his beloved Boromir off on a quest that ended in his death. They need him now. Faramir, his other son, should have gone instead.

Gandalf declares he is being unjust; Faramir wanted to go, but Boromir wouldn’t have it. He was a masterful man, who would have his way. But how does Denethor know of his death?

Denethor lays his rod of office aside and raises up what he has been gazing at in his lap. ‘In each hand he held up one half of a great horn cloven through the middle: a wild-ox horn bound with silver.’ Pippin cries out, recognizing it as Boromir’s horn.

‘Verily,’ Denethor agrees. Boromir bore it, and he bore it, and every firstborn son of the House of the Stewards bore it since before the line of kings failed, ‘since Vorondil father of Mardil hunted the wild kine of Araw in the far fields of Rhun.’ Thirteen days ago Denethor heard it blowing dimly from the northern marches of Gondor, and then the Anduin brought the pieces of the horn. ‘What say you that that, Halfling?”

Pippin does some quick calculating. Yes, it was only thirteen days ago that he stood by Boromir as he blew that horn, but no help came, only more orcs.

Denethor studies Pippin’s face closely. So he was there. Why did no help come? And how was it that Pippin escaped, and a mighty warrior like Boromir did not, with only orcs fighting him? Pippin flushes with anger at the implication. The mightiest man can be slain with one arrow, and Boromir took many. Pippin saw him fall, and then the hobbit swooned, and he and his kinsman were taken captive.  He died trying to save them, and Pippin honors his memory.

Pippin’s ‘pride stirred strangely in him’, and on an impulse he draws his small sword and offers it in service to Denethor in payment of his debt, little though such service of a hobbit from the northern Shire might be to such a great lord. He lays the blade at Denethor’s feet.

‘A pale smile, like a gleam of cold sun on a winter’s evening, passed over the old man’s face.’ Laying aside the shards of the horn, Denethor has Pippin lift up the blade. Taking it, he recognizes it as belonging to their ‘kindred in the North,’ the fallen kingdom of Arnor. Pippin says it is, but it was rescued from a barrow only inhabited by evil wights. Denethor can see that for a such a little fellow he has had strange adventures. He accepts Pippin’s service. The Halfling is not daunted by words and has a courteous air, and they will need such folk in the days to come.

Gandalf cautions Pippin, but he is firm. The wizard tells Pippin to take the hilts of his sword, and he repeats the words of the vow as Denethor proclaims them.

‘Here do I swear fealty and service to Gondor, and to the Lord and Steward of the realm, to speak and to be silent, to do and to let be, to come and to go, in need or plenty, in peace or war, in living or dying, from this hour henceforth, until my lord release me, or death take me, or the world end. So say I, Peregrin son of Paladin of the Shire of the Halflings.’

‘And this do I hear, Denethor son of Ecthelion, Lord of Gondor, Steward of the High King. And I will not forget it, nor fail to reward that which is given: fealty with love, valour with honour, oathbreaking with vengeance.’ Pippin is given back his sword and he sheathes it.

Denethor’s first command is to speak and be not silent. Tell him all his tale, especially what he can remember about his son Boromir. He rings a silver gong and calls for refreshments. They will talk together for an hour. It is all he can spare right now.

Maybe more, Gandalf says. He hasn’t come all this way to bring him one small warrior. He has news of Theoden, and a battle, and the breaking of the staff of Saruman. Doesn’t he want to hear about all that?

Denethor dimisses the thought. He already knows enough about all that for his own counsels against Mordor. ‘He turned his dark eyes on Gandalf, and now Pippin saw a likeness between the two, and he felt the strain between them, almost as if he saw a line of smouldering fire, drawn from eye to eye, that might suddenly burst into flame.’

Pippin suddenly thinks that Denethor looks more like a great wizard, but Gandalf has a greater power and deeper wisdom, and he is far older. For the first time Pippin wonders, how much older? He remembers Treebeard saying something about wizards, but somehow he never thought of Gandalf as one. Where did he come from and what was his purpose? As it is, Denethor turns away first.

‘Yea’, he said; ‘for though the Stones be lost, they say, still the lords of Gondor have keener sight than lesser men, and many messages come to the. But sit now!’

Chairs are brought and the refreshments arrive, wine and white cakes. Pippin is uneasy. When he mentioned the Stones, did the Steward glance at Pippin? How much does the old man know?

Well, he knows more by the end of the hour. Pippin tells his tale, punctuated by many shrewd questions from Denethor. Gandalf stands by, watching Pippin’s words with care, and with rising impatience and anger. Finally the old Steward dismisses them, saying that Gandalf can come to him anytime with his counsel, except in those brief hours when he must sleep. Pippin is worn out with questioning, and hungrier than ever. There are lodgings prepared for the Lord Mithrandir, and Pippin can stay with him for now. And ‘Let your wrath at an old man’s folly run off, then return to my comfort!’

‘Folly?’ said Gandalf. ‘Nay, my lord, when you are a dotard you shall die. You can use even your grief as a cloak.’ He’s been trying to get what he wants to know from Pippin, while the one who knows the most is standing by. He understands what he’s doing.

Then let it be, says Denethor. You may have a lot advice, but you give it out according to your own plans. The Lord of Gondor is not to be made a tool for any wizard’s purposes. To Denethor ‘there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor, and the rule of Gondor, my lord, is mine and no other man’s, unless the king should come again.’

‘Unless the king should come again?’ said Gandalf. ‘Well, my lord Steward, it is your task to keep some kingdom still against that event, which few look now to see. In that task you shall have all the aid that you are pleased to ask for. But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?’ And with that he turned and strode from the hall with Pippin running at his side.’

Bits and Bobs

The ruling hall of Minas Tirith is an interesting contrast to Meduseld in Rohan. Meduseld has a fire and tapestries and carvings, a living place. Here everything is marble and gold and gems; rich, ‘immortal’ but in effect sterile, and with the empty throne somehow hollow. It is monumental in both meanings of the word.

The fact that Denethor reminds Pippin more of Aragorn than of Boromir is probably related to the fact that the Numenorean blood runs more or less true in the Steward, while Boromir, as Faramir has earlier commented, is more like one of the men of later days.

I’ve already noted, in an early post, about Boromir’s horn and the Kine of Araw. Gandalf comments that it was Boromir’s own ‘masterfulness’ that led to his end; it is not Faramir’s fault that he more or less usurped the quest for himself. What would have happened if Faramir had gone, as it seemed he was supposed to, cannot be known.

We are given a rather surprising time stamp: it has been less than two weeks since the breaking of the Fellowship. All the events of The Two Towers took place in that time. In some ways it feels like an age of the earth. That Denethor could hear the Horn so far away confirms the fact that it has unusual powers.

Pippin’s ‘strange stirring’ to offer his fealty to Denethor, though spurred by pride provoked by suspicion, could very well be one of those mysterious providential promptings from the Powers That Be. It certainly positions him well to be able to save Faramir later.

It does seem strange that Gandalf is not more wondered about by those who know him; perhaps in a world where immortal Elves are known to exist (or to have existed) he does not seem unlikely, although unlike Elves in other ways. The name Gandalf (‘wand-elf’) certainly suggests that Men might have thought of him so. In The Hobbit Bilbo rather euphemistically states that he had no idea Gandalf was ‘still in business’; in other words, still alive. He was already old when the Old Took was throwing parties, when Bilbo was just a child. Gandalf quashes that with a rather querulous ‘Were else should I be?’  Well, ‘do not meddle in the affairs of wizards …’

Denethor seems to, inexplicably, know or suspect a lot of things. He seems to connect Pippin with a Palantir (more about that later), that Gandalf has plans about the rule of Gondor, and that it has something with the king returning, which he just sort of floats out there. It is revealed in the Appendices that Aragorn served under Denethor’s father Ecthelion II under the name Thorongil (‘eagle of the star’), and that Denethhor was suspicious and jealous of him back then.

Book Denethor is not so slimy and weak as Movie Denethor. His acceptance of Pippin’s fealty here is seen to his honor and prompted by his better impulses. Dotard means “an old person, especially one who has become physically weak or whose mental faculties have declined.” Can we think of any recent applications of the term in political affairs?