The Treason of Isengard (46 page)

I return now to the narrative, which as I have said recommences here in its primary form (and thus we meet again here the names Gal(a)drien, Hathaldir, and Elfstone, which had been superseded in the rewritten section of the draft text).

'Yet let not your hearts be troubled,' said the Lady Galdrien.

'Here you shall rest tonight and other nights to follow.'

That night they slept upon the ground, for they were safe within the walls of Caras Galadon. The Elves spread them a pavilion among the trees not far from the fountain, and there they slept until the light of day was broad.

All the while they remained in Lothlorien the sun shone and the weather was clear and cool like early spring rather than mid-winter. They did little but rest and walk among the trees, and eat and drink the good things that the Elves set before them.

They had little speech with any for few spoke any but the woodland tongue. Hathaldir had departed to the defences of the North. Legolas was away all day among the Elves. [Marginal addition of the same time as the text: Only Frodo and Elfstone went much among the Elves. They watched them at work weaving the ropes of silver fibre of mallorn bark, the [? trimming] of arrows, their broidery and carpentry.]

They spoke much of Gandalf, and ever as they themselves were healed of hurt and weariness the grief of their loss seemed more bitter. Even the Elves of Lothlorien seemed to feel the shadow of that fall. Often they heard near them the elves singing, and knew that they made songs and laments for the grey wanderer [written above: pilgrim], as they called him, Mithrandir.(17) But if Legolas was by he would not interpret, saying that it passed his skill. Very sweet and sad the voices sounded, and having words spoke of sorrow to their hearts though their minds understood them not.(18)

On the evening of the third day Frodo was walking in the cool twilight apart from the others. Suddenly he saw coming towards him the Lady Galadrien gleaming in white among the stems. She spoke no word but beckoned to him. Turning back she led him to the south side of the city, and passing through a gate in a green wall they came into an enclosure like a garden. No trees grew there and it was open to the sky, which was now pricked with many stars.(19) Down a flight of white steps they went into a green hollow through which ran a silver stream, flowing down from the fountain on the hill. There stood upon a pedestal carved like a tree a shallow bowl of silver and beside it a ewer.

With water from the stream she filled the bowl, and breathed on it, and when the water was again still she spoke.

'Here is the mirror of Galadrien,' she said. 'Look therein!'

Sudden awe and fear came over Frodo. The air was still and the hollow dark, and the Elf-lady beside him tall and pale.

'What shall I look for, and what shall I see?' he asked.

'None can say,' she answered, 'who does not know all that is in your heart, in your memory, and your hope. For this mirror shows both the past and the present, and that which is called the future, in so far as it can be seen by any in Middle-earth.(20) But those are wise who can discern [to] which of [these] three [the]

things that they see belong.'

Frodo at last stooped over the bowl. The water looked hard and black. Stars were shining in it. Then they went out. The dark veil was partly withdrawn, and a grey light shone; mountains were in the distance, a long road wound back out of sight. Far away a figure came slowly: very small at first, but slowly it drew near. Suddenly Frodo saw that it was like the figure of Gandalf. So clear was the vision that he almost called aloud the wizard's name. Then he saw that the figure was all clothed in white, not in grey, and had a white staff. It turned aside and went away round a turn of the road with head so bowed that he could see no face. Doubt came over him: was it a sight of Gandalf on one of his many journeys long ago, or was it Saruman? (21)

Many other visions passed over the water one after another.

A city with high stone walls and seven towers, a great river flowing through a city of ruins, and then breathtaking and strange and yet known at once: a stony shore, and a dark sea into which a bloodred sun was sinking among black clouds, a ship darkly outlined was near the sun. He heard the faint sigh of waves upon the shore. Then... nearly dark and he saw a small figure running - he knew that it was himself, and behind him

[?stooped to the ground] came another black figure with long arms moving swiftly like a hunting dog.(22) He turned away in fear and would look no more.

'Judge not these visions,' said Galadrien, 'until they are shown true or false. But think not that by singing under the trees

[? and alone], nor even by slender arrows from [? many] bows, do we defend Lothlorien from our encircling foes. I say to you, Frodo, that even as I speak I perceive the Dark Lord and know part of his mind - and ever he is groping to see my thought: but the door is closed.' She spread out her hands and held them as in denial towards the East.(23) A ray of the Evening Star shone clear in the sky, so clear that the pillar beneath the basin cast a faint shadow. Its ray lit the ring upon her finger and flashed. Frodo gazed at it stricken suddenly with awe. 'Yes,' she said, divining his thought. 'It is not permitted to speak of it, and Elrond [?said nought]. But verily it is in Lothlorien that one remains: the Ring of Earth, and I am its keeper.(24) He suspects but he knows not.

See you not now why your coming is to us as the coming of Doom? For if you fail then we are laid bare to the Enemy. But if you succeed, then our power is minished and slowly Lothlorien will fade.'(25)

Frodo bent his head. 'And what do you wish?' he said at last.

'That what should (26) be shall be,' she said. 'And that you should do with all your might that which is your task. For the fate of Lothlorien you are not answerable; but only for the doing of your own task.'

Here the narrative ends (and on the last page of the manuscript my father wrote 'Chapter ends with Lady's words to Frodo' - meaning of course the whole story from Dimrill Dale), but the text continues at once with Sam's vision in the Mirror (see note 19), which my father did not at this stage integrate with what he had just written. What Sam saw in the water appeared already in the preliminary outline (p. 249), though there given to Frodo.

(Put in Sam's vision of the Shire before the ring scene.) Sam saw trees being felled in the Shire. 'There's that Ted Sandyman,' he said, 'a-cutting down trees that.shouldn't be.

Bless me, if he's not felling them on the avenue by the road to Bywater where they serve only for shade. I wish I could get at him. I'd fell him.' Then Sam saw a great red building with a tall

[? smoke] chimney going up where the old mill had been.

'There's some devilry at work in the Shire,' he said. 'Elrond knew what was what, when he said Mr Brandybuck and Pippin should go back.'(27)

Suddenly Sam gave a cry and sprang away. 'I can't stay here,'

he said wildly. 'I must go home. They're digging up Bagshot Row and there is the poor old gaffer going down the hill with his bits of stuff in a barrow. I must go home!'

'You cannot go home,' said the Lady. 'Your path lies before you. You should not have looked if you would let anything that you see turn you from your task. But I will say this for your hope: remember that the mirror shows many things, and not all that you see have yet been. Some of the things it shows come never to pass, unless one forsakes the path [? and] turns aside to prevent them.'

Sam sat on the grass and muttered. 'I wish I had never come here.'

'Will you now look, Frodo? said the Lady, 'or have you heard enough?'

'I will look,' said Frodo... Fear was mingled with desire.

Here the manuscript ends, with the following notes scribbled at the foot of the page: 'Chapter ends with Lady's words to Frodo. Next Chapter begins with departure from Lothlorien on New Year's Day, midwinter day, just before the sun turned to the New Year and just after New Moon.'(28)

On a separate slip, certainly of this time, is written (in ink over pencil) the passage in which Frodo sees the searching Eye in the Mirror (see note 23). This is almost word for word the same as in FR (pp.

379 - 80), except for these sentences: 'the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit of malice and despair. It was not still, but was roving in perpetual search. Frodo knew with certainty and horror...'

On the back of this slip is scribbled the original draft of the speeches of Galadriel and Frodo beside the Mirror in FR pp. 381 - 2: Frodo offers Galadriel the Ring. She laughs. Says he is revenged for her temptation. Confesses that the thought had occurred to her.

But she will only retain the unsullied Ring. Too much evil lay in the Ruling Ring. It is not permitted to use anything that Sauron has made.

Frodo asks why he cannot see the other rings. Have you tried?

You can see a little already. You have penetrated my thought deeper than many of my own folk. Also you penetrated the disguise of the Ringwraiths. And did you not see the ring on my hand? Can you see my ring? she said, turning to Sam. No, Lady, he said. I have been wondering much at all your talk.

In this passage there emerges at last and clearly the fundamental conception that the Three Rings of the Elves were not made by Sauron: 'She will only retain the unsullied Ring. Too much evil lay in the Ruling Ring. It is not permitted to use anything that Sauron has made.'

With this compare the passage from the original version of 'The Council of Elrond' (VI.404) cited on p. 155: 'The Three Rings remain still. They have conferred great power on the Elves, but they have never yet availed them in their strife with Sauron. For they came from Sauron himself, and can give no skill or knowledge that he did not already possess at their making.' In the fifth version of that chapter (p. 156) Elrond's words become: 'The Three Rings remain. But of them I am not permitted to speak. Certainly they cannot be used by us. From them the Elvenkings have derived much power, but they have not been used for war, either good or evil.' I have argued in the same place that though no longer explicit the conception must still have been that the Three Rings came from Sauron, both because Boromir asserts this without being contradicted, and because it seems to be implied by

'Certainly they cannot be used by us.' If this is so, there is at least an apparent ambiguity: 'they cannot be used by us', but 'from them the Elvenkings have derived much power' - though in 'they cannot be used by us' Elrond is evidently speaking expressly of their use for war.

But any ambiguity there might be is now swept away by Galadriel's assertion: nothing that was Sauron's can be made use of: from which it must follow that the Three Rings of the Elves were of other origin.

A page found wholly isolated from other manuscripts of The Lord of the Rings carries more developed drafting for Galadriel's refusal of the Ring. This page had been used already for other writing, on the subject of the origin of the Rings of Power; but I have no doubt at all that the two elements (the one in places written over and intermingled with the other) belong to the same time. This other text consists of several distinct openings to a speech, each in turn abandoned - a speech that I think was intended for Elrond at the Council in Rivendell, since the following very faint pencilling can be made out on this page: ' "Nay,> said Elrond, that is not wholly true. The rings were made by the Elves of the West, and taken from them by the Enemy..." '

The first of these openings reads thus, printed exactly as it stands: In Ancient Days, the Rings of Power were made long ago in the lands beyond the Sea. It is said that they were first contrived by Feanor, the greatest of all the makers among the Elves. His purpose was not evil, yet in it was the Great Enemy But they were stolen by the Great Enemy and brought to Middle-earth. Three Rings he made, the Rings of Earth, Sea and Sky.

This was at once replaced by:

In Ancient Days, before he turned wholly to evil, Sauron the Great, who is now the Dark Lord that some call the Necromancer, made and contrived many things of wonder. He made Rings of Power Then follows, written out anew, the opening sentence of the first version; and then:

In Ancient Days the Great Enemy came to the lands beyond the Sea; but his evil purpose was for a time hidden, even from the rulers of the world, and the Elves learned many things of him, for his knowledge was very great and his thoughts strange and wonderful.

In those days the Rings of Power were made. It is said that they were fashioned first by Feanor the greatest of all the makers among the Elves of the West, whose skill surpassed that of all folk that are or have been. The skill was his but the thought was the Enemy's.

Three Rings he made, the Rings of Earth, Sea and Sky. But secretly the Enemy made One Ring, the Ruling Ring, which controlled all the others. And when the Enemy fled across the Sea and came to Middle-earth, he stole the Rings and brought them away. And others he made like to them, and yet false.

And many others he made of lesser powers, and the elves wore them and became powerful and proud