All healings of the heart and mind are slower, unhurried and gradual than those of the body, for these wounds are the deepest and bitterest. Parnard watched the townsfolk cheer as the body was cut down and laid into a pine box; the noise drowned out the lamentations of a sobbing woman. The mob surged forward, grabbed the box and threw it into the river. The guardsmen jumped in after it, pulled the box out of the water, and carried it about half a mile to a house, but the crowd followed and broke down the door. The body was dragged far down the dusty road before the guards collected it again.
“What had the man done?” he asked another onlooker.
“He killed a man that stole twenty silver pence of him.”
“Twenty pence - is that all?!” Parnard exclaimed.
“It was all the money he had in the world, so it meant a great deal to him.”
These men, Parnard said to himself, shaking his head in amazement, and rode on to Celondim. He spent all afternoon upon the dock fishing and thinking of what he witnessed. He had never seen a man put to death before. It seemed a very joyful occasion to the village, with a great ringing of bells and much lighting of bonfires and drinking. The harshest punishment of the Wood-Elves was to make a prisoner lie on the floor, closely chained up, and provide only bread and water for nourishment. But he would not have killed anyone, he reminded himself. Murder and thievery were unheard of in the Woodland Realm, and that wicked man may have well endured all the afflictions of this punishment!
On his way through town, he met Rainith, a member of their order who was traveling in the broad valleys of Lindon after her wedding to Galdoriel. She would not allow him to call her ‘Lady,’ and she asked what business Parnard had in Celondim. Rainith was troubled by his answer.
“They did a mischief,” he added lamely, as if this would explain it to Rainith any better. He did not tell her of the weazened, one eyed man who conspired to bring him to his fellows unawares, so ignorant was he of the designs of these robbers. Nor did he tell her that the marks upon his nose and ear were proof of the men’s treachery, and his disgrace and shame. Rainith was surprised to learn that he had not told Lord Anglachelm of his departure from Imladris. He passed her reaction off very lightly, but later wondered if he had made a huge mistake.
I was never commanded to stay, but these Noldor have different laws and their customs are not the same, and those that have lived in the West of old are more different than any I have met, and esteem different things, and I will be judged according to their judgments, not mine. But ignorance is no excuse. Lord Anglachelm will think I am dissatisfied or ungrateful for leaving and I have surely offended him! I must write to him at once and give an accounting of my absence before he learns it from another, and beg pardon for doing such a disrespect.
