Girl of the North Country By Chip of Dale

I.

Diamond of Long Cleeve. She was three-foot seven, a tall lass for her kind, and that was not the only rare thing about her. She had pale hair, almost straight, that streamed down her back like a fall of winter sunlight. Her eyes were cool blue, like the blue of a frozen pool in a deep winter in the heathered downs of the Northfarthing where she had made her home. Her round face and slim lips were held in a tightness that spoke of pride, unbreakable pride, as brittle as crystal. Her mother named her Diamond and she grew into that name.

When she married the son of the Thain, she was only thirty-two, and the Boffins in particular were vociferous in their disapproval of what was clearly a marriage of politics and not affection. They said so knowing it would reach the ears of the mind behind the match, that of Esmeralda Brandybuck, the Thain’s sister and the most manipulative mind in the Shire since the late unlamented Lalia Took.

Folco Boffin, who had finally settled down into the role of a solicitor in the grand line of Boffin jurisprudence, drew up the marriage contracts, which were signed by the Thain and Sigismond Took, Diamond’s father. Much of it concerned lines of inheritance, both leading up to the married parties, and away from them. It clearly suggested the meaning behind the union: the reassertion, in this new Age of the return of the King, of the power, preeminence, and most of all, the authority, of the Tooks, over the other Great Families and the common hobbitry of the Shire.

When Diamond was presented to her betrothed, at the marriage banquet of Meriadoc Brandybuck and Estella Bolger, it was hoped that affection would grow between them. Esmeralda had engineered the match of the Bolger daughter to her son, but Merry was deeply in love with Stella, and she with him. It was hoped, by Esmeralda, by Lady Eglantine Took, and, secretly, by the Thain himself, that such love, and the bliss it bestowed upon an arranged marriage, would come to flower between Diamond and the Thain’s Heir, Peregrin. And, to Esmeralda’s practiced eye, something did come to light in the sea-green eyes of her tall, dashing nephew, as he bowed to Diamond and led her to dance.

But no such light came to Diamond’s eyes; she knew she was simply a tool for all these elders, and when she looked up into the sweet, sharp face of her future husband and saw no such knowledge in his mind, she thought him a fool, and despised both him and his pity.

They were wed in the great hall of the Tooks, in Great Smials, and all the Families, and the leading figures in every town, was invited. Some of these sniffed secretly behind their handkerchiefs as Samwise Gamgee came to perform the ceremony. It still rankled among some that this son of a gardener had risen to become not only Mayor but also master of Bag End. The Bagginses, represented by Dora’s children, were blamed for this oversight. But Mayor Samwise was a close friend of Peregrin, being a fellow Traveller. And he was duly elected by the people, of course. It wasn’t called suffrage for nothing, Adelard Took would remark.

But the crowd was silenced when Diamond appeared on her father’s arm. She wore a dress of white satin and white lace, holding a bouquet of lilies, and around her neck, a string of her name-jewels, a costly treasure from the horde of the Bullroarer. Like a snowflake come to earth, like a gem, cold and brilliant, she was led to the foot of the staircase, as the Thain’s Heir came to meet her, his deep black mantle and somber foreign livery in black and silver setting off the red in his hair and the green in his eyes.

“My lord Thain,” said Mayor Samwise, “my lady Eglantine; Mistress Esmeralda; ladies and gentlehobbits; esteemed guests. We come to witness the joining in matrimony of Peregrin of Great Smials and Diamond of Long Cleeve. May their union be blessed with joy and fruitfulness for as long as they both shall live.”

With her hand in his, Diamond felt that her husband-to-be was trembling. He was so tall, so frighteningly tall, and unhobbity slim, and his shoulders were like stone; his face was strange though handsome, with its sharp pointed nose, soft curved mouth, the deep lines laughter etched in his cheeks, his set Took chin and his eyes of Tookish green. He looked down at her, as he said, “Thee do I take, my wife and my lady, through days of sun and nights of moon and nights of stars alone,” the words of the ceremony coming through his Tookland burr, and it seemed to everyone there that Peregrin Took meant every word.

But inside, Diamond was screaming.

Their wedding-night, Peregrin came to her, and she could not help pulling the covers up to her neck. She of course knew what was expected of her. This was the whole point of the marriage, after all: a child to unite the Tooks of Great Smials and the Tooks of Long Cleeve. Diamond knew how life was made.

Yet now she watched her husband come to her. He seemed shy. He was wearing a dressing gown and breeches. He looked at her, smiled; she saw his deep dimples flash. “Are you cold?” he asked worriedly. He went to the fire and stoked it.

“Ah,” he said, blushing, “is this—I mean to say, are you—I hope you don’t think this completely ill-mannered, but…”

“I am a virgin,” she responded.

He blushed harder. “Oh. Well, then. Thank you for letting me know.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, and started to reach for her hand. She let him take it. His hands were warm as hers were cold. He smiled again, and then said, “I think I should tell you that, well, I’m … not.”

“I expected you weren’t,” she replied. She knew the rules were different for lads.

“Right,” he said. He took a deep breath, and then stood. He took off his robe and she saw his naked chest and back for the first time.

He had a laborer’s muscles and shoulders as hard as stone. His belly was barely rounded and its thin layer of fat could not conceal the frightening clumps of muscle there. It was as if he were a Man.

And then there were his scars. Diamond had heard the tales of the events in the south, and had paid them as much heed as a hobbit would—although from her childhood bedroom she had a view of Lake Evendim, the deep dark glassy lake among the moors, and the ruins thereon. The King had come again; her husband himself was Elessar’s herald; her husband was a warrior. He had scars on his back, and scars on his chest, from some terrible crushing injury. He had scars on his calves, whip-weals, like the scar on his cousin Meriadoc’s forehead. His right hand was callused by gripping a sword: the sword that even now lay next to the bed, always at ready, the sword he called Trollsbane.

He looked at her, and tried to give her a reassuring smile, and then gently removed his breeches. He heard her gasp, and a worried look crossed his face. Diamond realized her husband was utterly guileless in his expressions, and that those farsighted green eyes were incapable of any dissembling. For a moment his innocence touched her, even as he came to her; his innocent face and his hard, scarred body. And quickly the warmth that came to her froze into contempt. He did not even know how to deceive. What a fool.

But he sat down at the edge of the bed again, and leaned close, and looked at her with those guileless eyes, and asked, “Please, my lady, may I lay with you tonight?”

Duty, thought Diamond. Duty to the family. She loosened the covers, and let him approach her. She closed her eyes, and let him place his mouth upon hers. She opened her mouth, and allowed his tongue to taste hers. She did not let him remove her nightgown, though, letting him make do without his chest and the pale traces of battles touching her skin.

Afterward as he lay next to her Diamond turned away and raged with dry eyes. She hated her father. She hated her mother. She hated these condescending Tooks of Great Smials. She loathed Esmeralda Brandybuck. And she was married to a lumbering brute with a child’s mind. She pulled her nightgown down past her knees and curled up and wished she was elsewhere.

When, a few months later, the physician confirmed she was pregnant, she resolved that there would be only one child.

Her pregnancy was surprisingly easy. Diamond expected worse. She had always been told she had not the build for motherhood: her form was almost as slender as a girl before menarche. It had been the cause of much teasing behind her back when she lived in Long Cleeve; now at the Great Smials, of which she was presumptive Lady, she knew it went on even worse. The Tooks of Great Smials thought her a poor relation, rustic and unschooled, from the wild moors and highlands of the Northfarthing. What did they know? She was a girl of the north country indeed. Did they stand amidst the thunder of a sudden moorland storm and raise up their arms to the wuthering wind? Did they know the various shades of purple amidst the heather and gorse and broom? Did they know the beauty of the lilies in spring, the lilies that littered the valley of Long Cleeve? Did they know the whisperings of the tree-women in Bindbole Wood? She was a daughter of the line of Bandobras Took, foremost warrior in Shire memory.

Now she was married to another.

She saw him one morning in one of the small lawns of the Smials’ endless gardens. His shirt was off and he was covered in clean sweat. In his hands he held Trollsbane his sword. He was at practice. The sunlight gleamed on the ancient steel of the blade, gift of the Barrow-downs, work of the Men out of the Sea. It gleamed also on her husband’s chestnut curls, kindling the gold hidden in each feathery lock. He had been the most irrepressible child, she had been told, and the most thoughtless of tweens; yet still, even before his father’s not-so-unexpected accession to the Thainship, he had been the darling baby of all the Families, the fortunate son. She did not see it.

A scarecrow, stuffed hard with hay and bound by leather, stood at one side. With the steps of a student remembering lessons long-taught, Peregrin paced towards the figure, and struck at it. Slash. Cut. He turned, agile if not graceful, his body gleaming with sweat, drops of it dewing on the hair on his chest and the curls beneath his navel trailing into his black breeches. For a moment Diamond’s breath caught, and she felt a stirring of desire. It shocked her. She repressed it deeply.

Suddenly its wielder spun Trollsbane from flat to edge. Three strokes smote the cool, still, sunny day. The scarecrow fell, cut to pieces.

Diamond watched her husband rise from his knees, raise the blade at his breast, and touch its steel to his forehead. And Diamond remembered the Men she had once glimpsed beyond the North Downs, riding on horses, green-clad and grey-cloaked, with swords and bows, ranging through the Lone-lands beyond the Shire.

Who was he? Who was this person whom she had married? The father of her child? She placed her hand on her swollen belly. What child would this be?

He was perfectly formed, and quiet. He had uttered a cry only once, when he emerged from her womb, and then he had settled into a quiet breathing with the occasional wet burble. His hair was that of the portrait of Gerontius as a young hobbit, dark as a raven’s fledging, the hair also of Gerontius’ granddaughter Primula Brandybuck and her son Frodo Baggins. His eyes had been blue at first, like hers. But quickly they turned green, like her husband’s: wide, and farsighted, and perilously curious.

Her husband named him Faramir. She did not object out loud. Tooks were known for peculiar names. They were given nicknames more suited to them soon enough. Like her husband, whom everyone still called Pippin. Pippin—she couldn’t imagine; bright little apple, they called him, as if they had not eyes to see what he was now. She never called him Pippin. He was Peregrin, to her: she felt it suited him perfectly. Faramir, she thought: would it fit her son? Would he grow into it, as she had into her name, as Peregrin had into his? Within days Faramir had been turned into Farrie.

Gifts came. From Merry Brandybuck, a hanging for Faramir’s crib, with running horses and silver trees and birds in flight. From Merry’s wife Estella, a lush blanket of fine wool that she had woven herself; both poignant gifts, as Merry and Estella were still childless, a shadow lying on the nursery in Brandy Hall. From Folco Boffin and his wife Fox, a box of round toys of soft wood. From Fredegar Bolger, jars of minced fruits and nuts, with instructions for the Smials’ cooks on how to make more. And from Samwise Gamgee, an Elvish jewel that shone with its own light, obviating the need to keep a candle burning in the nursery all night.

One pair of gifts came on Faramir’s first birthday, brought by a messenger bearing the tokens of the White Tree and the Winged Crown. It was in a silvered box of black leather, bound by silver ribbon. Her husband opened it as they sat at breakfast, and he crowed: for inside was a tiny suit of black mail, and a wee baldric of black velvet with the White Tree upon it, and a tiny pair of fur-lined, fingerless black mittens. With my deepest joy on the birth of your son. May there always be friendship between the House of Telcontar and the Tooks. The King Elessar (Strider to you.) And another gift: a mantle of grey fabric like the cloak her husband often wore. It is not as fine work as my grandmother’s which you wear, but it is blessed with what grace I have to bestow. My love and happiness for you, dearest Pippin, and to your lady wife. Children are the deepest blessings of Iluvatar. Arwen.

“Look at this, Di!” Her husband was beaming with childlike glee. “Let’s dress him up in it right now!”

“So he can look just like you?” she said before she could stop herself. She saw the look of hurt that flashed in his face before he swallowed it. He was learning how to hide his feelings. She was teaching him. She did not see if Faramir ever wore the livery.

She did see the effect of another missive from the south, where, she now knew better than ever, her husband’s heart turned to more and more. It was a book of letters and runes for when Faramir was older. It came with a letter. She espied her husband reading the letter in his private sitting room, where she seldom entered: a comfortable, shabby hole in the Smials with a large fireplace, a nearby pantry, stacks of books about Westernesse and the Kings, and a great ruined armchair in which her husband, oversized and lanky, would curl up like a lad. The gift, and the letter, came from the Prince of Ithilien, the Steward of Gondor, Faramir’s namesake. Whatever the letter said, she did not know; but she knew it made her husband weep.

Diamond hesitated at the door, seeing him cry. It was not like a hobbit would cry. His face did not contort into the almost comical twists that passed for hobbit sadness. Peregrin’s face was smooth and set as stone, and the tears trickled down his cheeks from unblinking eyes. It was like a statue weeping. He looked so handsome, and at once both vulnerably young and ancient beyond telling. For a moment a thought came to her: you fool. But for once she did not mean him.

Embrace him. You are his wife. It is your duty. And another, deeper thought, deep inside her past the ice she had put there: he needs you. He needs something. Someone. Who will understand.

She almost did it. She almost went inside. But then she thought, But I can’t understand. I never will. There was a gulf between all he had seen, all he had done, the experiences far and away that had set him and Meriadoc and Samwise apart, and all she knew. She could never understand. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know how to love him, even if she wanted to. She was beginning to want to.

She thought then of the long-departed Frodo Baggins, and how, one day, he just left.

Girl of the North Country,2

II.

When Peregrin left her, disappearing into the far south, she was the only one who wasn’t surprised, although she suspected her father-in-law had also expected it. The reaction of the Families surprised her. They rallied to her side: the Boffins and the Bolgers and Grubbs and the Chubbs and the Hornblowers and the Proudfoots (Proudfeet), not to mention the general hobbitry at large, who rightly considered any fellow who would wed a girl and father a child with her and then leave, as beneath contempt, Thain’s Heir or no. And they began to talk about Pippin never was responsible, Pippin never was trustworthy, if you remember the Battle, why it was Mr. Merry who was in charge, that young Took was just a brigand is what he was, bloodthirsty and liking it. Mr. Peregrin Took tried to change his feathers, but they always grow back the same way, don’t they? That overgrown rascal was always flighty. Never did grasp good hobbit-sense or good, well-ordered living. Poor Miss Diamond. These the selfsame hobbits who had cheered when Peregrin, stopping by an inn for food and the comfort of a lass, would sing in his beautiful voice tales of foreign lands he had known.

And under their breath, the Families whispered, Sigismond will have Paladin for this. So much for the new dynasty of the Tooks!

The Tooks themselves were divided indeed, with the North-tooks demanding an apology for the shabby treatment of Diamond by that good-for-nothing son of the Thain. Diamond’s brother went so far as to say Diamond should ask for a divorce—and custody of the heir-presumptive to the Thainship. Meaning that the North-tooks would then rule under the King, and not the Tooks of Great Smials. That could not be permitted. Reginard Took, Adelard’s eldest son and the hobbit in charge of the Tookland’s farms and flocks, and Pearl, the spinster daughter of Paladin II, suggested that the Thain disinherit Pippin and formally name Faramir as Thain’s Heir—of Great Smials.

If Esmeralda Brandybuck had been in form, she would have ridden on her pony Nightingale right to the Bullroarer’s Keep and smacked Sigismond silly. But she was still weak and bedridden from a bad bout of consumption; as Saradoc had long been in no shape to run anything, it was up to her son Merry to speak for the Brandybucks. And for all his sense and intelligence, he could not be trusted to speak objectively on any of this matters: everyone knew he was closer than a brother to Pippin.

In any case, the news came from Gondor, from the King himself, that Peregrin Took had been on board a merchant vessel that had been raided and sunk by Corsairs, with no known survivors. That was that. Peregrin was presumed dead; and Faramir was Thain’s Heir.

At the meeting of the Tooks at Great Smials, Diamond stayed in her rooms, playing with Faramir and his toys. He was only two but already keenly intelligent. He had his father’s daring, but also a quality of reservation and forethought that, she liked to think, came from her.

“Mama,” said Farrie-lad. He was playing with a small wooden pony, but he wanted his other toy. “Pip?”

Diamond looked where he was pointing. It was a gift from Gondor, more a sculpture than a toy really, a cunningly crafted toy bird whose wings could flap by pressing on its talons. It was a falcon, according to the note sent by Faramir and Eowyn of Ithilien; Farrie called it Pip.

She gave it to him and watched him play with it. He stood on his sturdy little legs and made it fly in his hand. The falcon soared and swerved and dove through the skies in his imagination, over lands only he could see.

And suddenly Diamond felt tears prick her eyes. It stunned her. She didn’t cry. She never cried.

“Mama?”

Farrie had stopped playing. He held the toy bird in one hand, and sucking the finger of the other, looking at her worriedly. “Mama?”

Diamond tried to wipe her cheeks, but this strong strange sadness that had erupted from within her, this lonesome yearning and disappointment, would not let her stop. It was her son, who quickly toddled to her, and wrapped his arms around her neck as she sat there, and kissed her cheek, and said, “Mama.” He handed her the falcon. “Pip?”

And she knew her only answer was yes.

She was waiting at the end of the hall when Merry stalked out of the meeting in the Thain’s Study in a rage. She called out his name.

“Diamond,” said Merry, nodding curtly. “May I be of service?”

She wanted to say what was on her mind, but instead said, “How did the meeting go?”

“As I expected,” was his reply. “Reginard and Pearl will have their way. Uncle Pal has no choice. Pippin’s gone. They all think he won’t be coming back.”

His words made her tremble in a way she never expected. It was with effort that she maintained her composure. “And what do you think?”

He looked at her then. She knew him well enough; Estella his wife had befriended her, and came frequently to help with Faramir. Diamond did not want to leave her son with his father’s sisters, the loveless Pearl, the brazen Pimpernel, and the cruel Pervinca. Estella Brandybuck was tender and loving, and her childlessness made her even more adoring of Farrie.

Merry Brandybuck was her husband’s closest friend. They were like brothers, closer than brothers. Merry, too, had gone where her husband had gone, and come back changed. But Merry seemed to have found his stride: he ran the affairs of Brandy Hall now, and when the tenants and landowners of Buckland and the Marish acknowledged the authority of the Master, it was Merry they meant, not Saradoc. Merry even looked like a proper hobbit. He, too, was immensely tall, and wore the colors of his foreign allegiance as often as her husband did; but green and white were hobbity colors, as black and silver never would be. And Merry had a proper hobbit-belly, slight though it was, and his face was hobbit-genuine, and if he, like Peregrin, ever woke in the night from memories of war, Estella never told her.

He looked at her with his keen eyes and not for the first time Diamond felt the cunning behind them, the wheels upon wheels that made up the exacting mind of Meriadoc Brandybuck. Perhaps that was it. That was his secret, to make a place for himself in the Shire, in its closed society and parochial ways: a mind that grasped the entirety of every situation and a confidence that allowed him to pursue his goals over long periods of time. It was Esmeralda’s mind, endlessly calculating, even manipulative when necessary. Fortunately Merry had something Diamond never sensed in his mother: a warm, kind heart.

Her husband, she knew, had such a heart: worn on his sleeve, for anyone to bruise that could. But Peregrin hadn’t his cousin’s mental faculties, the many gears that clicked and whirred and allowed Meriadoc to function as a hobbit of his position and lineage was supposed to function. No; Peregrin had been a lad yet when he went wherever he went, to whatever battle it was where he was broken like a fallen sparrow.

Meriadoc was still looking at her. Eventually he spoke. His face was twisted into a wry smile. He always smiled, even when he was angry, even when he was about to put a plan into motion. Everyone grew into their names.

“What do you hope for, madam?” he asked her. “Your troubles with Pippin were never well-kept secrets.”

“No,” she replied. “I suppose they weren’t.” She hesitated, and he must have noticed it, for he frowned and his smile altered.

“Diamond?” he asked, and his voice was gentler. “What troubles you, my dear?”

What troubled her. She was too young to get married and was forced to by her parents to quell some silly hobbit feud. She was physically frightened by her husband, by his size, his hard body, his skills in violence. She despised his innocence and his guilelessness. She hated his pity. She pushed him away and allowed him to find his comfort elsewhere. He was gone now, somewhere far away, perhaps even dead; and now, seeing his eyes in the eyes of their son, she realized that amid all that, she had fallen in love him, fallen so deep she could not live without him or with him. He had never done a thing to earn her enmity. It had all been on her side; all her resentments and fears and her stubborn pride. What troubled her.

“I never knew my husband,” she said now. She turned to face Merry. “You know him best. Tell me about him.”

“He’s alive,” Merry said first. “Of that I am certain.”

She nodded. She felt that too. “Tell me everything.”

“Where shall I begin?” he asked her.

Diamond thought. Then she asked, “What did he see, on your travels far away, that still makes him cry out in the night?”

And Merry’s smile twisted again. “Come, let’s sit,” he said. “This calls for tea.”

Sauron. The Enemy. Diamond shivered at the revelation. So Peregrin had seen Sauron himself through some magical device, and worse, Sauron had seen him, and spoken with him. Why did he even pick up the thing? Because he was curious. She knew that. Curiosity was her husband’s worst, most unhobbity attribute—and she loved it now.

No wonder he was still haunted. No wonder he still cried out at night for comfort. He had been twenty-eight, a tweenager, not yet full-fledged, when he had been brought into the gaze of the Eye. And she had been frightened of him! Had pulled away from him, when all he sought was the comfort of a friendly touch!

She looked to Merry, who sat slouched by a windowsill gazing out over the Green Hill country.

Suddenly she said, “Why did you let him come with you?”

He turned to her. He had considered this question too, she knew. Merry considered everything.

“He should have turned back at Rivendell,” he answered. “We both should have. Elrond was against his going. But he wanted to come with us. To help Frodo, he said. And, I think, to see the world. You know Pippin. Or maybe you don’t. Pippin’s a Took. I know people always say that, when a hobbit acts peculiar. And blood isn’t the whole story; Pippin’s half-Banks just as I’m half-Brandybuck, and the Brandybucks are much stranger than the good Bankses ever will be. Yet by some chance—if you believe in chance, which I don’t—Pip got the full dose of Tookishness. Gandalf, the wizard, do you remember him? He went around awakening the Took in all of us. Well, he got more than he bargained for when he came across Pippin. ‘Not that much, Peregrin my lad!’ he’d say. When Pippin refused to go home, Gandalf supported him. Of course I had to go too, to keep an eye on him.”

He stopped speaking, and gazed north out the window. “Pippin told me you used to see Lake Evendim from your home in the Northfarthing,” he said.

Diamond nodded. “I did.”

“That you’d look upon the grassy mounds and broken stones that once was Annuminas.”

Diamond nodded again. She never knew that was what she was looking at, until her husband told her from one of his books. His endless books about Westernesse and Arnor and Gondor and all these things no hobbit would care about. She wondered what Merry was getting at.

He must have known she was wondering. “Annuminas was the chief city of Arnor, the North-kingdom. The Rangers are a remnant of it. Arnor was destroyed, over hundreds of years, by the Witch-king of Angmar. A Ringwraith of Sauron; the greatest and most terrible of the servants of the Enemy. I killed him. Well, not really; I wounded him, stabbed him in the knee if you can believe it, and my lady Eowyn struck him down.

“But, you see, knifing a Ringwraith isn’t like gutting your common wild boar. Rather not. You are struck by the dark power of the curse that binds them. And their screams sneak into your mind and your heart and you wither under the Black Breath.

“It took all the power of the King to call my lady back from the darkness. And I nearly followed her. Pippin helped me back.”

Diamond stared at him. Estella had never told her this. Merry sat calmly, sipping his tea, gazing north—toward Angmar, she realized; towards the bleak realm of the monster he’d helped slay. This was Merry’s nightmare, then: Merry’s black beast in the mind, that which kept him up at night.

And Sauron was Pippin’s.

Sauron himself. Her husband all these years since the entire affair of the Ring—the War of the Ring, she told herself, now that she’d heard it; the great battle of their time—her husband, everyone’s Pippin, her Peregrin, had been haunted. Haunted by burning pyres and cruel fathers and despondent sons. Haunted by a wizard’s fall and a city’s burning. Haunted by the whips of orcs, and orcs’ terrible groping fingers. Haunted by the hopelessness of a small soldier at the front before an enemy of overwhelming force. Haunted by crushing memories of war heavier than the troll that had fallen upon him, crushing his lungs, breaking his ribs, mangling his arm, the troll he killed. And most of all, by the memory of the laughter of Sauron at the sight of him. And she thought him strange? Altered? Not hobbitlike? How could he have not been altered? How in heaven’s name could any of them, Meriadoc, Samwise, Frodo Baggins, have ever been expected to fit neatly into this Shire again? Peregrin was not the exception. Merry was the exception. Her husband was the rule.

She felt tears slip out of her eyelids and fall down her cheeks. Merry saw and went to her. He brought out a handkerchief and dabbed her cheeks. “I’m sure Pip never had a handkerchief handy for you,” he said. “It’s probably why he left.”

“I never cry,” she answered, self-conscious. “I don’t quite know what’s come over me.”

“I do,” he said. “You have found that, despite your best efforts, he has snuck his way into your heart; and that in his absence you’ve discovered you can’t imagine a life now without him.”

He gave her his best smile, the smile that despite all his wiles and machinations still earned him his name of Merry. “He does that,” he said. “It’s often quite confounding.”

Girl of the North Country, 3

III.

Merry then came once a week for tea and stories. And Diamond would bring Farrie and sit him on her knee, and they would listen to the story of a hobbit named Peregrin Took, called Pip. How he was born at suppertime to the dismay of little Pervinca. How he once managed to run three dozen head of sheep into the Woody End. How Frodo Baggins taught him how to climb higher than any hobbit ever dared. “His first word?” Merry offered.

“Yes?” Diamond asked, letting herself smile.

Merry’s eyes gleamed. “‘Breakfast’.”

One afternoon into harvest-time Diamond herself bade goodbye to Merry at the Great Door of the Smials. “Thank you so much,” she said. Merry took her hand and kissed it, before descending the Great Stair to the gravel path where his Rohan pony awaited.

She should have expected it. She should have known that the Shire would notice. It was commonly accepted that Peregrin Took was dead. As his widow, Diamond was entitled to the headship of the family upon the passing of Paladin II and Eglantine; and her son, Thain. The girl from the north country had managed to place herself in the very position Lalia Clayhanger had: to become, in time, The Took herself.

And apparently she was carrying on with Merry Brandybuck.

Now the people who had turned on her husband for abandoning her turned their tongues against her. She had planned this all along. She had driven the young gentlehobbit away. She had driven him to drink. She had driven him mad. She would rule the Tooks, and by extension the Shire, once the Thain and Lady Eglantine were dead; perhaps sooner, for Paladin II was in ill health, and Eglantine Banks had never been the cleverest of souls, poor dear.

And what better way of sealing her future position, than to have the fiendish future Master of Buckland in her petticoats? It wasn’t as if Master Merry had a pristine reputation in that regard. On the contrary: everyone remembered the swath Meriadoc Brandybuck had cut through the lasses of Buckland in his day. Why wouldn’t he be beguiled by the cunning charms of this devious girl? Diamond, after all, had proven herself fertile. What would stop her from then seizing the Eastmarch for the Tooks, without one drop of hobbit blood spilled—except perhaps in childbirth?

Diamond heard the stories. She saw the looks her servants gave her. Her husband’s old nurse gazed upon her with unbridled hostility. She refused to give in to them, but it was so hard.

How she longed for Long Cleeve. The valley was poor, but it was beautiful; she loved it even when it stormed. The howling of the wind across the moors. The flood-light of the Moon across the downs. The taste of dark earth. She even missed the plain hard stone Keep of her family, with her old tower bedroom and its sight of the Hills of Evendim.

She knew it was only a matter of time before she would have to answer to the charges. She was only surprised when it happened at dinner.

She was at her usual seat, next to the Thain, far from Eglantine, across from her husband’s three sisters, along with Pimpernel’s and Pervinca’s husbands. Pearl sat directly before her. Diamond could not befriend Pimpernel, a free-thinking, free-speaking hobbit-woman, who wore trousers and hunted; her husband Odo was a bumbling little mouse of a hobbit who worked for Reginard at the Took holdings’ accounts. Pervinca she hated, for Pervinca hated her, ironically because she was Peregrin’s wife, something Diamond had not wanted to be until now he was absent. Pervinca’s husband was her second cousin Everard, Reginard’s gruff, taciturn brother, who Merry said had bullied Peregrin in their childhood.

But it was Pearl who frightened Diamond. Intimidated, in fact. Pearl Took was unmarried. She was almost fifty, yet still she was acclaimed the beauty of the Shire, surpassing her aunt Esmeralda, rivaling the still-unforgotten beauty of the tragic and unfortunate Primula Brandybuck. She lived most of the year at her father’s old farm at Whitwell, which she had built into one of the foremost concerns in the Shire. She had many lovers, it was said, but no husband. Diamond had not suspected why until Merry told her.

“Didn’t you know? She loved Frodo Baggins. Adored him. It was a match made in heaven: the heir to Bilbo’s supposedly vast fortune, wedded to the daughter of the presumptive Thain’s Heir. My mother was all for it, as was Uncle Pal. There were only two obstacles. First, Frodo himself, and the way he was. You understand. I think we all understand. He loved Pearl, too, but as a sister only. Remember, he was not only an only child, but an orphan, the only one in Shire memory. He thought her affection for him was that of a sister. She thought otherwise.

“And the second obstacle was Lalia Clayhanger.”

Lalia Clayhanger. The common-born wife of Fortinbras II. Upon his death, she became The Took, head of the clan, and ruled it with a will as hard as her body was fat. Her son was Thain after his father, but Ferumbras III was a sad, dissipated hobbit, overshadowed by his mother’s iron rule. The Tooks, and all the Families, chafed under Lalia’s tyrannical whims. But that ended when one morning her attendant somehow failed to set the brake of her wheelchair, and Lalia Clayhanger, the Great, the Fat, the Took, tumbled down the flights of the Great Stair to the gardens below and there lay, her neck quite broken.

That attendant had been Pearl Took. And it was said ever after that it was no longer true that no hobbit had ever taken the life of another in the Shire.

“Did she do it deliberately?” Merry had mused. “Did she fail to set the brake? There’s a world of difference between that and pushing the chair down the stairs, Lalia with it. In any case, Pearl was banished to Whitwell, and never saw Frodo again. Not that it mattered. By then, you see, Frodo had inherited the Ring, and his own destiny.

“But the fact was, Frodo could have refused a union—he was a Baggins after all, stubborn beyond hope—but Lalia never proposed it. She had the power. She had the authority. She didn’t use it. And she died. And one Yule long after Ferumbras’ accession ceremony, Pearl was presented back to the family, wearing her jeweled necklace.”

Pearl was wearing that necklace now, as she sat across from Diamond at the table, cutting her meat. Heavy with drop-pearls from the sea, an immense treasure even for the Tooks of Great Smials. She saw Diamond looking and smiled.

“Cousin Merry has been visiting frequently, hasn’t he?” she said to Diamond now.

Diamond felt it then: a trap, like a cage closing in around her.

“He comes to visit Faramir,” she answered. “He is his fosterling, after all.”

“Though he spends most of his time in your apartments,” Everard said, at a glance from Pimpernel.

“I hear you’re making him feel quite at home,” said Pervinca down the table.

Diamond’s heart began to beat in her ears. “He tells me stories of Peregrin,” she said, laying down her silverware. “Of when he was young. Of the War, and their travels. Other things.”

Pearl took her cup of wine. “Other things,” she said.

It was a challenge. Diamond flushed. “It is very pleasant to speak about one’s husband with one of his closest friends, sister-in-law,” she said carefully, “especially when he is absent.” She looked up then, directly into Pearl’s vivid green eyes. “If you had a husband, you would know what I mean.”

There. She hoped it stung.

Pearl said nothing, and resumed cutting the meat before her. The rest of the evening passed without incident. But Diamond could feel the fierce regard upon her: the eyes of the Thain of the Shire.

After dinner he stood as was his custom and passed along his thanks to the cook through his wife. He excused his daughters and their husbands. And then Paladin II spoke to Diamond.

“Join me in the Thain’s study, miss, in about half an hour.” It was not a request.

Diamond nodded. “Sir,” she acknowledged. Her heart was in her throat.

She stopped by the nursery to see her son. He was drowsy, sitting with his nurse, playing with his toys again. She saw the toy falcon. He had dropped it, falling asleep, and as she stooped to pick him up she picked it up as well. “You dropped this, sweetling,” she murmured, nuzzling her nose in his dark feathery hair. “You should take care of him. He needs to be taken care of.”

“Pip,” Farrie said, reaching for the falcon in agreement.

The lamps in the hallway to the Thain’s study had already been turned down when Diamond came. She stepped slowly and steadily past the portraits of Tooks of the past. Isengrim. Isembras. Fortinbras. Gerontius as a young hobbit, dark haired, green eyed, unstoppable. Gerontius as the Old Took, formidable still. The Old Took’s three daughters, Belladonna who married Bungo Baggins, Donnamira who married the Bolgers, Mirabella who wed Gorbadoc Brandybuck, mother of Primula, Took grandmother of Frodo. What was it about Tooks and three formidable daughters? Diamond shook her head. There was Fortinbras II. And there she was: Lalia the Great, in brocade and feathers, like a vast talking couch.

She stopped before the portrait. She did not know the artist, but whoever had painted it had both skill and no love for his subject. Lalia’s eyes were perfectly captured: cold black beads, merciless and self-indulgent.

“Admiring her?”

From the direction of the Thain’s study came Pearl. She was taller than Diamond, and even at nearly fifty her body was far more voluptuous. Her fiery red curls, bound ever by their green ribbon away from her face, gave her an avian look, like a hawk with fledglings to feed.

“Not so much, actually,” Diamond replied. “I find her rather hateful.”

“Really.” Pearl joined her before Lalia’s portrait. “I’ve heard that people think you have a lot in common with her.”

And there it was. It took a moment and a deep breath for Diamond to master herself. Pearl was formidable, but she was a girl of the north country with frost in her blood.

“I hope you don’t share that opinion,” she said. “I’d hate to fall down the stairs one morning.”

Pearl raised her hand. Diamond saw it and did not flinch. Her fists tightened and she stared right into her sister-in-law’s eyes, knowing hers were colder. In that cold was her strength.

“My brother was the sweetest soul ever born,” Pearl hissed, her face bloodless, her fine features almost harpish. “All he ever wanted was to be loved. He thought he could win anyone over, given half a chance. You never gave him a chance. You made him miserable. And now he’s gone. My darling little brother. My sweet Pip. And you have his inheritance. And you have his son. I hope you’re satisfied, you cold hard witch.”

She withdrew her hand. “I know you haven’t any designs on cousin Merry,” she said. “He’s much too smart for that.” Then she added, “Be careful when you speak with Father. He’s twice the hobbit I am.”

And Pearl turned to leave—but Diamond had something to say.

“Pearl?”

Pearl walked a few more steps, then stopped. And turned, her green dress softly whispering.

Diamond kept her voice as cool and thoughtless as she knew how. It was the only way she could bare her heart before her sister-in-law.

“You’re right,” she said to her. “Your brother deserved more from me. Much more. He did only want to be worthy of me, and I pushed him away. It was my fault, my mistake, and now he’s flown where I can’t follow. But you’re also wrong, Pearl. I am not satisfied. None of the things you said, is enough. Because I’ve fallen in love with your brother, Pearl. I’ve fallen in love with Peregrin, hopeless though our marriage may be. And I won’t be satisfied until what Merry says to me in his visits comes to pass. I won’t be satisfied until Peregrin … until Pippin … until my husband comes home,” Diamond said, and she could not keep her voice cool any longer, and now she didn’t want to. “And I hope he comes home, Pearl. I won’t give up hope. Even if this will never be my home, it will always be his. And his son will be waiting for him here. That, I promise you.”

She lifted her chin, and she was defiant. “North-tooks do not break our promises.”

Pearl stood there for a moment. Diamond could not read all the things that flashed on her sister-in-law’s sharp face. Then Pearl nodded grimly.

“I believe you,” she said. “Well, then. Go on. Father is waiting.”

Diamond nodded, unable to believe she had won; and won by admitting defeat.

“By the way, you are a lot like her.”

Diamond stopped, but didn’t turn to look at Pearl, or at Lalia.

“Both of you as hard as steel,” explained Pearl. “But don’t worry. You won’t meet her fate.”

Diamond whirled. “Do you mean—you really did—?”

Pearl smiled enigmatically. “Does it matter? I believe you. That’s all that we both need to know.” She beamed so that her dimples showed. On Peregrin it was adorable. On Pearl it was unnerving. “Good night, sister-in-law.”

Girl of the North Country, 4

IV.

“Sit,” said Paladin II.

Diamond looked at the nearest chair and did as she was told.

“Good,” said the Thain. He paced across the room to the drinks cabinet. “Brandywine?”

“Thank you, no,” Diamond said. Spirits went straight to her head.

But Paladin was having none of it. “Nonsense,” he said. “Do you good.” He poured a splash of brandy and filled the rest with water. “Ice?”

“Please.”

He put two large chips from the bucket into her glass and handed it to her. She waited as he circumnavigated the room until reaching the tall, graven oak chair behind the deep desk. The desk was utterly neat. A jarful of quills, a horn of ink, and a writing pad of green velvet next to a box of blotting paper and a shaker of sand. At one side, the Seal of the Shire.

Paladin II, Thain of the Shire, sat at his desk and regarded his daughter-in-law. “So,” he said. “What’s this about you and Meriadoc Brandybuck, then?”

Diamond was glad she hadn’t taken a drink. She held it in her hand and let the cold ice numb her hand.

“Nothing, sir,” she said. “Nothing but idle gossip. Merry comes to me as a friend.”

“A friend can mean many things,” said the Thain.

“Indeed,” agreed Diamond. “Counselor, teacher, and confidante among them. All these things Merry is to me.”

“Is he,” said Paladin. “And what does he counsel you?”

“That Peregrin is alive,” Diamond said flatly. “And to hope for his return.”

Paladin nodded, as if he’d expected this answer. “So he counsels me as well,” he said. He sighed, and a bit of the grimness of his authority slackened, letting Diamond see the farmer he had once been. “It is tempting to believe him. After all, I lost my son before, only for him to return, unlooked-for, at the darkest of hours of our Shire.”

Paladin smiled. “Did Merry tell you that story? Surely not. He wasn’t here to see it. Sharkey’s ruffians had sealed off the Tookland. We could neither get in or out. I sent patrols on every hillock and vale with orders to slay any Men on sight. It was, as the Rangers say, a stand-off.”

He took a drink of his own glass of brandy. “It was evening. The main road from the Four-Farthing Stone was sealed off by a band of some twenty ruffians. Our own guard were in the wood a quarter of a mile distant. Our watch recorded the sound of a galloping pony. They heard the sound of an argument, and looked towards the ruffians. They described a figure on a black pony, with a black cloak and clothing. They said a fight broke out. The rider drew a sword. He fought with the ruffians, and wounded several, and then spoke so that even our patrol could hear him. ‘I am Peregrin Took, son of the Thain of the Shire.’ That is what he said. ‘This land is mine and my family’s into days before the fathers of your grandfathers were born. Begone from it, or begone from this Middle-earth.’ Apparently they didn’t listen to him. He left few alive, and none in any condition to do further harm.”

Paladin closed his eyes. He was nearly seventy, and growing old. But his voice stirred when he spoke next. “He rode into Tuckborough and all the windows opened at his cry. ‘Rouse the Shire!’, he called, ‘rouse the Shire!’ And he rode up the lane to the gate where the sentries stopped him. And once again he declared himself, ‘Peregrin Took, Paladin’s son. Where is my father?’

“His sister Pimpernel was captain of the watch that evening. She recognized him first. She took him to the Smials, where his mother saw him again, and Pervinca, and the others. I was out riding at the Southfarthing border. I came home only after he had ridden back to Bywater with the hobbits he’d raised.”

His gaze narrowed upon Diamond. “I know your thought about Peregrin when you first saw him. I know because I thought the same thing. ‘How can this be my son?’ He was four and a half feet tall, broad-shouldered, and his eyes were fierce. And he was wearing foreign garments, the livery of someone else’s house and land. The livery, I knew, of Gondor, and not just of Gondor, but of the King. I knew then that I’d lost him. Lost him to wizards and elves and Dunedain and all the rest of that wide world.”

Paladin II sighed. “My son has never come home.” He looked at her. “And now … they tell me I must lose him for good.”

Diamond could guess who “they” were. The other Tooks. The other Families. Everyone, possibly, except her father and her brothers.

“And what will you do?” she asked the Thain.

Paladin took another sip of his drink, and set it down on his desk with a soft thud. “What would you suggest? Tell me.”

He was testing her, she knew. She decided to respond in kind.

“If the stories about me were true,” Diamond began, “I would tell you not to disinherit him, because it would benefit my own position. As his wife, I share in his family authority, and in case of his death, would hold what position he should have borne. So in time I would become Took, and my son, Thain.

“But I won’t suggest that. Because for one thing I do not think he is dead. I think he will come back, when he is ready; when he has done whatever it is he feels he needs to do, wherever he has gone. And for another reason: because he does not deserve that. Because you know his quality. Because you love him.”

She let out a small breath. There. She had said her piece.

The silence from the Thain grew ominous. Diamond looked at her father-in-law. He was watching her, his craggy face all but inscrutable, quite a trick for a hobbit: but Tooks were no ordinary breed of hobbit.

Then finally he spoke. “Yes. I love him,” said Paladin II. “Damn the stars, I’ve never been able to figure that boy out, but yes, I love him. He is the child of my old age and the hope of all our families. He always drove me to distraction with his wild ways—and Merry Brandybuck has much of the fault here. But yes, I love him. I love him and I hope he will return.” Then he lifted a finger and pointed it at her. “And now you love him too.”

Diamond nodded. “And now I love him too.”

The Thain of the Shire gazed at her, and then smiled, and for a moment, he looked like his son.

“Girl,” he said, “could not you have found a way to do that, before you lost him for all of us?”

Diamond had no answer to that. She knew her own fault in this matter. She would have her own sins to atone for.

She looked up, and saw Paladin standing before her. He raised her face with his hand.

“I will not disown Peregrin my son,” he said with authority. “Neither will I accept his death. You, daughter, are his wife. I expect you to do the same.”

To that Diamond agreed.

The Thain’s decision caused much consternation among the Families. The North-tooks were confounded that Paladin would not accept a finding of deceasement regarding Peregrin. The other Families were befuddled with facing the clear possibility of Diamond becoming a second Lalia with the full cooperation of a strong and respected Thain, Paladin II. As for the common folk, they lost interest. The gentlefolk would do as they had always done. As long as it helped the well-ordered business of growing and saving and cooking and eating food, it was tolerable. And what government they thought of was centered not in Tuckborough, but in Michel Delving, in the stout and steady hands of Samwise Gamgee.

In the Great Smials Diamond found herself increasingly isolated. The strange truce she had somehow made with Pearl only made Pervinca’s open enmity worse. Pimpernel was frequently absent, but her husband Everard remained behind, and he did not hide his dislike either. The servants barely tolerated her. By the first touches of November rain, she began to pine for the Northfarthing, where the only snow the Shire could expect would lightly fall. She had not seen snow for seven years.

It was at this time that her mother-in-law surprised her. Eglantine was a nice lady, sweet-tempered and solicitous, though slightly absentminded and, if not dimwitted, a bit slow to comprehend what lay before her. A little like Peregrin when he was distracted, which he often was. But Eglantine made beautiful quilts, painstaking embroidery, and now she decided to bring Diamond into a sewing circle. And Diamond found she enjoyed the small, open talk among the ladies, and the intricate patterns of their lacework and their weaving, the grids of thread and yarn that became flowers, and leaves, and butterflies.

One afternoon, after the circle was completed, Eglantine lingered for a while as Diamond folded the day’s work. “I must say!” said the pleasant hobbit-woman. “Two-over crosstitch can be quite exhilarating on a rainy day, can’t it, dear?”

Eglantine twittered at herself and carefully put away her sewing kit. Diamond went to the window and stared out at the cold November rain. It always rained in the Green Hill country. Never snow. Never a real deep snow, blanketing the moors in shades of white and blue.

“He’s not home yet, is he?”

Diamond turned to look at her mother-in-law. Eglantine was sitting with her hands folded and her eyes guileless and calm. Diamond was reminded of her husband. So his innocence and his implicit faith in others’ good nature came from Eglantine. What a disastrous combination with the recklessness of Tooks.

“Who is, ma’am?” she asked.

“Why, our Pippin, of course,” said Eglantine with a smile. “He’s always off somewhere, in some misadventure or another. How long has it been now?”

For a moment Diamond could not believe she had heard this from her husband’s own mother. A misadventure? Off somewhere? Far Harad, Merry had told her: Peregrin had flown as far south as south could go. If he was alive. Some days she believed it; others…

“Eight months, ma’am,” Diamond said to Eglantine. “Peregrin has been gone eight months.”

“Oh, is that all?” Eglantine said with a little hiccup of relief. “Well that’s nothing at all. Why, he was once gone thirteen months and came back twice his size—and not sideways!” She shook her head, her pleasant, chubby jowls quivering like her gaily rollered hair. “So much like Pal I don’t even know why they never get along. Or maybe that was it, wasn’t it, dear? Pal always wanted to travel too, but he had such duties, what with the farm and all. Did you know he married me against his will? Poor dear. But his father needed money, and, I’m not ashamed to say so, we Bankses may not be among the Great Families, but we do know how to make our way in the world!

“Ah, well.” Eglantine sighed contentedly. “Pal was good to me. He’s been all I could ask for. And such a strong hobbit, going from gentlehobbit farmer to Thain! Why, you would not credit how surprised I was! Little me, Lady of Great Smials, and Pal, Thain! And hasn’t he been a good one? Especially with all that unpleasantness with Lotho and his Men and that frightful Sharkey. Oh, my, the thought of him still makes me faint!” Eglantine fanned herself. “Who knew that the Thain would ever have to muster the Shire-moot or the hobbitry-at-arms? But Pal did it. Pal always does what he has to do, before he even thinks of doing what he wants to do.

“But let me tell you, dear, he had his own dreams. He’s a Took like the rest of them. Oh, silly me, I am so forgetful! You’re a Took too, dear, aren’t you?” Eglantine blushed. “You have your own dreams too, I suppose? I’m sure I can’t imagine. A girl from the north country like you, with all that snow and those windy downs and all. And the blood of the Bullroarer. I have to say, I so admire you, my dear! I wish I were strong like my girls and you.”

Eglantine heaved herself up from her settee and straightened her dress. She beamed at Diamond. “I am so glad you and Pippin have found some affection for each other. It does grow in time, my dear. And it’s the best thing for the children. He’ll be so happy to see our little Farrie-lad when he comes back.” She touched her lips. It was a funny gesture, the chubby hobbit-woman with the big, innocent eyes, pressing a fat forefinger to her pert and mobile mouth. “He will come back,” she said, and Diamond couldn’t tell if it was a question or just another absent-minded thought.

Her own dreams. Diamond went to her apartments, the rooms she had taken, separate from her husband’s, except for the bedroom that now neither of them had spent much time in. She stared at her world as if for the first time. She had added nothing to the décor since she moved in. Even the gowns were made in the Smials, the brilliant, expensive fabrics from across Middle-earth, made or remade for the future Lady of the Shire.

What had she done? Why had she not made a life here? Why did she push everyone away? Surely her parents had wronged her by pushing her into a marriage she did not want. But she didn’t make an effort either. Peregrin was not her enemy. He had never had been her enemy. She looked, and under the Mannish soldier was the bright little apple of everyone’s eye. Pippin. Pip.

Diamond of Long Cleeve stood in the midst of rooms that were not her own, and though now she didn’t cry, she tightened her fists in impotence and rage. At herself.

Then she made her decision.

She went to her dressing-room and pulled out her trunk, the trunk she had brought with her from Long Cleeve. It was worn and beaten and marked with her initials, D and T, over its lock. She flung it open and quickly turned to throw her oldest and dearest clothing into it.

She saw it before she could bury it under the clothes she held: a parcel, wrapped and unopened, with a small card. She didn’t remember placing it there. She didn’t recall ever seeing it before.

She knelt and reached for it. She noticed her hand was trembling. She picked it up. It crackled faintly, and she smelled lavender and heather. She tore open a corner of the parcel.

It was a bouquet of dried flowers, of heather and lavender and all the other blooms and verdure of the Northfarthing. It was old and dry and crumbled in her hands, but that only made their perfume all the stronger. And Diamond’s head swam with memories and fantasies and her lost girlhood dreams.

Eventually she picked up the card and read it, though she already knew what it contained. Still, the words smote her heart.

Missing home is the worst feeling I know. I hope this makes you feel better, my lady.
Always at your service,
Peregrin

p.s. I picked them myself!! Pip.

It was dated two years before, on her birthday: a private gift from her husband to her. He had gone to her home, to the moors of the Northfarthing, and had cut these blooms with his own hands. He had snuck into her rooms and placed it in her trunk probably hoping it would make her happy as a surprise. It must have broken his heart when she never spoke of it. But she had never seen it. She had never opened her old trunk, even though she had kept telling herself she wanted to leave. What had she given him that birthday? Probably a scarf. He looked good in scarves.

Diamond pressed the dried flowers to her face. She had never wanted to love Peregrin Took; had shied away from his touch; had rewarded his hope with disappointment, over and over again, to spite her parents and all who had maneuvered her from her happy solitary days in the north country. Finally he left, disheartened and disappointed in himself and his inability to make anyone happy, especially his own wife, the mother of his child. That it was only now, when it was too late, she had learned to love him—too late by far; that was her tragedy. Pippin had always loved her. He had never stopped hoping to be loved back.

Diamond wiped her cheeks. She was right in her decision. The flowers proved it. It was the only thing to do.

She was going to find her husband. She didn’t care how far she had to go. She would find him and bring him home.

Pervinca was scandalized.

“What do you think you can accomplish with this insanity, Diamond?” she protested. “Ride off to find him, when he must be dead or gone. You don’t think you can make up for what you’ve done to him?”

Diamond stopped and turned to Pervinca and said, “A girl has to try.”

“You can’t take Faramir!” Pervinca persisted. Her fair cheeks were purple. “Father won’t allow it! I shall tell him!”

“Tell him all you want,” Diamond replied. “Faramir is my son and Peregrin’s. Not even the Thain can stop me if I wish to take him. And Paladin will not. Nor would Peregrin.”

And she was right.

She rode to Buckland, to Brandy Hall, sending a rider ahead of her carriage to announce her arrival to Merry and Estella. They both rode out to meet her, at the Brandywine Bridge.

“I always knew you had spirit in you,” he said. Diamond was surprised at his attire. He was in the garments for a long journey: the grey elven-cloak, leather armor, packs and gear. She also saw, at the periphery, Men, in dark green and rusty brown. Rangers.

“Merry? Where are you going?” She looked from Merry to Estella, and back.

Beaming, his eyes dark, Merry produced a scroll with opened seals. “A letter,” he said. “Received this morning from the Steward of Gondor. Faramir sends his regards to you and his namesake, and this news…”

But Diamond already knew.

“Peregrin,” she breathed.

“He’s alive,” Merry nodded. “I’m leaving for Gondor at once.”

Diamond did not hesitate. “I’m coming with you.”

Girl of the North Country, 5

V.

They rode to Gondor in the escort of Rangers until Tharbad, where they were met by horsemen in the livery of the White Tree and the Winged Crown. Diamond rode with Faramir in a fine wain out of sight of the Men. The spirit Merry had remarked at wasn’t always so strong. Men scared her. She couldn’t help it. And she knew, when she saw Peregrin again, he’d still remind her of them.

But that was a path to be taken another day.

On the Greenway, the great highway south to the Gap of Rohan, she saw for the first time the races of the wide world beyond the Shire: Men, mostly, with their families and children, moving from the south into the lands now made secure by the return of the King. Also Dwarves from the Blue Mountains, pursuing the lure of work and smithcraft and masonry. Tharbad was being rebuilt, as an inland port on the Greyflood, and there was talk among the Men and Dwarves Merry spoke with, that Fornost itself would be rebuilt for the coming of the court of King Elessar in a few years’ time.

“Not Annuminas?” Diamond interrupted, thinking of the ruins from her window.

“No,” Merry said after a moment. “Strider has chosen to leave Lake Evendim as it is.”

For some reason that gladdened Diamond.

After that evening Diamond asked Merry what would become of the Shire once the court of the King returned to the North. “Will we become vassals to the Men?”

“No,” Merry replied. “Not directly. Not, in any case, as long as Strider will have a say in it; and that’s quite a long time, since he is the King Elessar and founding a dynasty of his own. The Shire will be a free country under the Northern Scepter, administered according to the will of its inhabitants. The Mayor will run things as he has always done, and the Masters will do the same in Buckland.” A clever glint lit his eyes, and he turned a mischievous brand of smile upon Diamond. “Of course, we are all worried about the fact that the Thain has and will continue to be the King’s steward in the Shire, chief among chiefs and in point of fact Prince of Halflings. All of which sounds grand, doesn’t it. Until you realize we’re talking about Pippin.”

“Oh, dear,” Diamond responded wryly.

“Indeed,” said Merry. He nodded down at the lad sleeping with his head on Diamond’s lap. “Though I have high hopes for this one.”

“I have high hopes for the one we have at hand,” Diamond replied. “Whatever else he may or may not be, Peregrin will make a fine Thain. As fine as his father, if not moreso.”

Merry looked at her with a measuring gaze. “And his Lady?”

Diamond sighed and said nothing, merely stroking her son’s hair.

They turned east into Rohan, where their Gondorian escort was replaced by Riders of the Mark. It was almost December, and the wind had a welcome chill. Diamond noticed the change in Merry, indeed in Merry’s horse—it was a horse, not a pony—as they passed into the green fields of the lands of the Eorlingas.

“Don’t tell me you wish to move here,” she teased him. “What would Estella think?”

“Stella would come with me,” Merry replied confidently. “She can hold her own on a saddle, you know.”

“She’s saddled you perfectly,” Diamond needled.

“I resemble that remark!” said Merry, but his eyes glowed with humor. Diamond was touched. How could anyone ever have seriously thought he would leave Estella for her?

“I am envious of you and Estella,” she confessed as they stopped for a few days in Edoras. She had met the King of Rohan, perhaps the scariest Man she had yet met, and had kept herself to herself next to the dark-haired queen Lothiriel, who was much quieter, especially since Merry and Eomer proceeded to attempt a drinking game.

Merry was still recovering, though he didn’t seem unhappy about it. “Envious,” he said. “How so, if I may ask?”

“You already know,” Diamond said. “You and Estella have loved each other since you were children.”

Merry was wry. “And yet, if you believe the stories, I was quite the rake in my day. What’s the phrase? ‘Cut a swath through the lasses of Buckland’? Or something to that effect.” He chuckled, and then rubbed his aching head. “And I did, Diamond. I did.”

“And yet you loved Estella.”

“Of course I did,” said Merry. “But that wasn’t why we were married. We were married because an arrangement was made between Odovacar Bolger and my mother. It just so happened that we did love each other and wholeheartedly embraced the pairing. If we had been pledged to others, we would have gone along with it, painful though it might have been. I like to think my esteemed mother for once took our personal feelings into account, due to my being, well, her only child and so forth.”

Diamond shook her head. “How could you think of doing that, Merry? How could you think of letting your mother wed you off to some lass you didn’t even know? Especially when you had someone like Estella?”

Merry’s answer was clear-headed and plain. “Because I’m pragmatic, Diamond,” he said. “I know how the silly Shire works. I know how the old Fallohide families keep trying to hold onto their ancient positions in the face of the inevitable passing of their time. I know that hobbits like you and I and Pippin and Estella, Pearl and Frodo, Paladin and Eglantine and my mother and my Da and on and on uncountable, have ever been pieces in this game of prestige and politic. This stupid, silly game I play as well as anyone. Some are pawns. Some are queens. Some are kings. And some are knights, who move in unpredictable ways.” He nodded at her so that she knew whom he meant by that. “I’m not the dreamer,” he continued. “Neither me nor Sam. We appreciate it when we see it, but we have our feet grounded in earth. For better or worse. Frodo was a dreamer. Pippin is one too. And so are you.”

He grimaced. “I think they’ve been holding out out me, the Eorlings,” he said. “The brew they export to Buckland is not half this heady. I must have a talk with Eomer about it.” He took his leave of her. “We’ll be in Minas Tirith in a week,” he informed her. “From there we’ll see if we can track down our stray.”

He paused. They were staying in an anteroom of Meduseld. He stopped at the threshold to the hall. “When I called you a dreamer, I wasn’t being snide,” he told her. “I admire that in you. I admire that in Pippin. I always admired it in Frodo.” He smiled sadly. “I envy you, Diamond. And not just for Farrie.”

If Edoras intimidated her, how could she describe her reaction to the sight of Minas Tirith? She could not believe anything so immense, so tall and strong and bright, beaming white in the warm southern sunlight, could ever have been builded by mortal things.

“Oh, well that’s flattering isn’t it?” Merry commented as they rode through the city’s great Gate. “When they made new doors they put us on them: the Fellowship of the Ring!”

Diamond looked, and saw, among portraits in steel of Kings and Stewards, nine figures, great and small: a Wizard wise and bearded; a Man, bold and proud; an Elf, graceful and keen; a Dwarf, fierce and fearless. She saw another Man, grave and noble: the King, she thought, Elessar; and then four hobbits. Mayor Samwise, looking young yet and devoted. Merry himself: not much had changed. At the center of the figures, arranged in a circle, was Frodo Baggins, with a guard of stars, his hand, four-fingered, raised in blessing, or farewell. And up high, as if about to escape, her husband, alone among the figures graven as almost smiling.

Merry peered with his keen eyes at the runes engraved around the circle. “Mithrandir, messenger of the West. Boromir, Lord of Gondor. Legolas, Elven prince. Gimli, warrior of the Dwarves. Aragorn, the King Elessar.” His breath caught. “Iorhael, the Ringbearer, savior of Middle-earth.” He recovered. “Perhael, ever-faithful, ever-hopeful. Sam would blush if he heard that. Oh, my: Gelir, the happy-hearted, Nazgul’s bane. My word.” His voice softened. “Cordof,” he said. “Prince of Halflings.”

Peregrin, Diamond thought.

They took rooms in one of the inns on the wide First Level and then proceeded on horseback up to the Citadel. Merry sent messengers announcing their arrival. They came back, with the King Elessar’s personal invitation to “second breakfast” in the royal residence’s private hall.

Diamond was briefly horrified that she would not have a chance to change into more suitable attire before meeting the King of the West. Merry’s reassurances did not appease her. Still, what was there to do? She washed her face and dabbed some rose oil behind her ears and hoped to arrange her shawl in something approaching a becoming manner as they were brought by a servant to the hall within the residence. They entered.

Diamond saw a table, not particularly large, at which were seated four adults of Men and a small child. Two of the Men were very similar, dark-haired, clear-eyed, though one was older and had eyes of grey, while the other was kindlier and had eyes like her husband’s, like her son’s, sea-green. This one sat beside a lady who seemed to Diamond to resemble herself, though more beautiful, with her golden hair and pale white gown. And finally there was the dark-haired lady at the side of the older Man. And Diamond realized this was no woman of Men, but an Elf.

Diamond trembled, but swallowed her fear.

The older Man stood. He was tall and lean. “Merry,” he said, and his voice was warm and friendly.

“Strider,” Merry greeted happily. And then he quirked his mouth and bowed gravely. “I do beg your pardon: my lord King Elessar,” he said.

“Master Meriadoc, Esquire of Rohan,” replied Aragorn evenly. In the same tone he continued, “What did I say to you about bowing to me?”

“We bow to no one,” Merry replied. “A terrible trial, that commandment, my liege.” Diamond watched his eyes drift from the King to the fair woman, who had risen and was now smiling broadly. “My lady,” he said, and Diamond recognized Eowyn of Rohan, Princess of Ithilien.

And that meant that the man beside her—

“Forgive me,” that man said, rising and bowing to Diamond. “I fear Master Meriadoc has again revealed how smitten he is by the charms of my wife, that he must neglect the proprieties. Welcome to Gondor. I am Faramir of Ithilien, Steward of this land. You must be the lady Diamond of the Northfarthing of the Shire, my dear friend Peregrin’s wife.”

Diamond could only curtsy. “I am,” she said, speaking familiarly out of habit. “Diamond of Long Cleeve, at your service and your family’s.”

“On the contrary,” said the Steward of Gondor, “it is I who am at your service.” He looked upon Farrie, who was having a staring contest with the other toddler in the room. “And who is this young lord?”

“Your namesake,” said Diamond artlessly. “Faramir Took of Great Smials.” She tugged at Farrie. “Don’t stare,” she said.

The Elf-woman laughed gently. It was like a shower of silver. “He seems to have made the acquaintance of my son,” she said in her low, sweet voice that seemed to Diamond to be both young and full of ages. “Perhaps they shall be playmates. Welcome indeed to the City of Men, lady Diamond. I am Arwen. This is my son Eldarion.”

“You look tired,” said Merry afterward, as they walked along the Embrasure of the Citadel.

Diamond glared at him. “I am exhausted!” she snapped. “Did you expect me to be pink and fresh after traveling all night and all morning and then being brought before royalty without so much as a chance to dress properly? Don’t you laugh at me, Meriadoc Brandybuck.”

Merry raised his palms in surrender. “Far be it from me to poke fun at a girl of the north country,” he said. He looked out across the vale of Anduin. “There’s Mordor,” he said.

Diamond shuddered. “You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not.” Merry pointed. “Those mountains are the Ephel Duath, the Heights of Shadow; beyond them lie the plains of Gorgoroth and Mount Doom.” He looked at her. “It’s not a pleasant place, or so I hear; but then, it’s pretty much empty now. And to the south is the somewhat friendly colony of Nurn, run by former slaves of Sauron.”

Diamond stared at the distant mountains and the names out of storybooks with unhappy endings. She could not imagine living here. She could not imagine living in a city of white stone, so high up; she was beginning to feel faint simply from standing here. Neither could she imagine living within sight of the land that she had once thought existed only in bad dreams and cruel fairy tales.

And her husband had come here? Had gone there? Had fought within sight of the Black Gates—at twenty-eight? Had become one of these people, so much so that he still often said, “I love Minas Tirith,” when the subject came up?

She had come here hoping to make everything all right. But more and more she was beginning to accept what she already knew in her heart: it could never all be right between her and her husband. He was alive, Faramir said: a Ranger at sea had told him so. But that was months ago, apparently.

“Merry,” she said, “do you still think Peregrin is alive, and coming back to us?”

For the first time she could remember, she saw Meriadoc Brandybuck lose composure. His ever-present smile completely vanished. In its absence his face was dark, almost cruel.

“He must be,” she heard him say, low and soft. “He must.”

Days passed. Diamond, wasting away in the white city, longing for fields and growing things, accepted gladly the invitation of Faramir and Eowyn to stay with them in their new town of Emyn Arnen. There the buildings were made of darker stone, and everything plainly new, and the fields and groves of Ithilien suited Diamond better. She did, however, often go to Minas Tirith, for Merry remained there, set to work at his various interests, only one of which concerned their search for Peregrin. Treaties, business arrangements, issues of tariffs and levies, even what he called “research into the herblore of ancient Numenor” for a book he was writing. A book!

And her own Faramir had decided that the little prince Eldarion was his own little brother. “Dario,” he pleaded, wanting to play; and she would take him to the nursery in Minas Tirith and he would proceed to manhandle the son of Aragorn and Arwen. “Mama, Dario pew,” he would complain, carrying Eldarion to Diamond like a sack of flour. Eldarion was barely a year old, and Farrie was just two, and they were the same size. Arwen, the Queen Arwen, would laugh gaily at the sight of her son giggling at the attentions of an overinquisitive hobbit child.

She was introduced to many people, too many for her to recall, including the Elf-lord of Ithilien, who led his people in dance and song in the dells of the spiced forests at night. She had to admit, Legolas was the most beautiful male being she had ever seen. “Oh, don’t tell me you’ve been smitten too?” Merry bemoaned theatrically.

There were many faces, too many faces, and too many places for her. Traveling from the Northfarthing to the Tookland had been such a drastic change; to be in Gondor, among Men, and Elves, even friendly Men and kindly Elves, was almost too much for Diamond to comprehend. Still, she persisted. She knew her husband belonged among these people, and if he were to come back, he would come here first. And whatever happened after that, he had to know she loved him now. She had to tell him.

She was surprised when she began receiving letters from the Shire. Of course the messengers of the Kingdom were once again riding through the lands, but somehow she had assumed only the most important missives, like proclamations from the King or letters from him to his friends in the Shire, were carried. But now she received letters, from Estella, from Eglantine, even from Pearl.

She also received letters from her father and mother, pleading with her to come home. She wrote back, saying she would not come home until she had settled things with her husband. She knew they wanted to believe Peregrin either dead or lost forever and never coming back. She wondered if they thought she, too, had gone insane.

“Perhaps I have,” she mused to herself from her rooms in the Prince’s castle at Emyn Arnen, within sight of the White City. “Look at me: sitting in a fresh-built palace in Gondor, guest of a prince, waiting for a husband who deserted me, with my son the new best friend of the future King of all the western lands.” Suddenly she began to laugh and could not stop herself. Not too shabby for a girl from Long Cleeve!

She also received letters from Paladin. They were short and to the point. Has Peregrin come back? What have you heard? How is Faramir? Whom have you met?

She wrote back to all of them after a time. Not that she missed the Shire all that much. The vast majority of the Shire had been as alien to her as this foreign land, after all. Home was the Northfarthing, with its severe beauty and its bracing cold.

On Midwinter’s Eve, however, she felt terribly homesick, and she stayed inside, singing Yuletide songs to Farrie. Merry was away visiting Rohan, and would not be back for some days. Gondor did not celebrate Midwinter’s Eve; winter here was a concept, not a reality. She missed snow more than ever. At least at Great Smials she had succeeded in having a Yule tree and a circle of candles and an exchange of gifts, in addition to the banquet. Here, all she could manage was an evergreen, some lace, and a few tallow tapers. She had bought Farrie a new toy, a plush bear cub, and he played with it as she sang.

The sharp rap on the door startled her. Rising, she went to open it. Just then, something dropped through the chimney onto the fireplace in a terrific crash.

“O-ho there!” said the apparition, all hair and beard and twinkling metal and gems. “Merry Yuletide!”

Diamond screamed.

The door was flung open and Merry stumbled in. “Di, Di, calm down, it’s all right, it’s only Gimli. You remember Gimli, don’t you?”

Diamond stared as the dwarf shook off some of the soot from the chimney and bowed deeply. “Gimli, Master-delver of the Glittering Caves, at your service, my lady,” he said gallantly. “Forgive me if my entrance caused you alarm. Ah, hey now. What’s that burning?”

“That would be you, good dwarf,” Diamond replied, trying to recover her compusure, pointing at Gimli’s rear.

“Ah,” said Gimli. “Yes, of course. I meant to do that. Where may I douse myself?”

Diamond pointed to the washbasin and water-pitcher.

As Gimli put himself out, Diamond turned on Merry. “What is going on? I thought you wouldn’t be back for days yet?”

Merry was wearing his impish smile. “I lied,” he said. “I knew Midwinter would be difficult for a Northfarthing girl here where it never snows.” Diamond smiled back at him.

“And,” he said, “I brought some friends who know about Yule.”

And to Diamond’s awe there came to her room the King Elessar and the Queen, dressed simply and bearing boxes of gifts and plates of food. And they were followed by Legolas, playing a harp, and Faramir and Eowyn, dressed as the Good King and the Snow Maiden from Shire fairy stories.

Diamond was speechless. “This is … far too wonderful of all of you,” she said.

It was Eowyn who answered. “You came here to a far country seeking for our beloved Pippin,” she said, reaching for Diamond’s hands and taking them. “We thought we should do our best to honor your courage.”

And Eowyn leaned close, and said quietly, “I know what it is like, to leave your northern home, and come to a strange place for the sake of the one you love.”

Diamond felt tears threaten, and she blinked them back, as Merry lived up to his name and Legolas and Gimli began to sing a boisterous carol that eventually the King took up as well.

So passed the months, Merry riding here and yon, Diamond remaining in Ithilien, spending her time exploring the countryside. It was like the Northfarthing, without the cold: wild and free, with a rolling wind filled with the scents of the flowers and the fields. She spent many times picking wildflowers and following streams, often with only a young Guardsman from Minas Tirith for company. His name was Bergil, he said, and he was a friend of her husband’s.

“We saw him off when he went into Far Harad,” he told her. “Do not fear, my lady. The lord Peregrin is a mighty adventurer.”

“For his size,” Diamond added smartly, making Bergil blush.

The truth was, her thoughts often turned to her husband. Where was he now? What was he doing? Was he in some hot southern land, where beasts dwelled she knew of only from nursery rhymes? Was he climbing a mountain just to see how high he could go, or sailing a sea so vast it wrapped right around the world she had just learned was actually round? Was he wandering, stripped to his essence, through some steaming forest, like a Fallohide hunter of old? Or was he lost out in the deserts she was told stretched far south of Umbar? Had he become a pirate? Had he become a warrior? Had he lived?

Had he met some woman—he was big enough for it—and fallen in love with her, if only because she would love him back?

Or was he on that horse Merry had given him, riding home even now, and only took so long because he was so far away?

Emyn Arnen looked eastward toward the south road to Harondor and beyond. Sometimes it seemed it was an endless road. Still Diamond would watch it, waiting for the sight of him, whatever else might follow after.

Girl of the North Country, 6

VI.

March came, and Gondor prepared for its great feast of the New Year. Faramir and Eowyn informed Diamond that it had become their custom to remove to Minas Tirith for the duration of the festivities. She was welcome to stay … but the town would be quite lonesome.

“I will go with you,” Diamond said.

Merry had come back. He had ridden back to the Shire suddenly in January, for his father had been stricken suddenly and had lost some movement in his right side. He had returned only a week before. Saradoc was as well as could be, he said. It was clear to Diamond, who had come to know her husband’s dearest friend well over these many days, that something of the mirth and gaiety of Merry Brandybuck had slipped away for good on that visit back to Buckland. In its place turned the cold wheels of metal that made up his mind. He would be a formidable Master in his day … which seemed to come soon.

Merry’s trip back had given Diamond the thought of going back to the Shire herself. It was almost four months now, from early December to late March, and no further word had come of Pippin. Certainly there were rumors, come from mariners who sailed to Umbar, of great things that stirred in Far Harad—half-fancied stories of fallen stars and the wars of gods and men. Diamond would not have given them any credence, had it not been for one aspect the stories had in common: they all involved “the falcon”, which she had begun to assume was not a simple bird. She had learned, from Bergil and others, that “falcon” was her husband’s nickname among the Tower Guard; that the falcons she saw here in Gondor were called peregrines, and thus her husband had been called the same.

But it was a small hope to latch onto, fainter than any she had ever tried to hold. She gave serious thought to returning to the Shire. To the Northfarthing, if the Tooks of Great Smials let her. That would be a problem. Faramir was still in the succession. Pearl and Reginard would not allow it to pass to a boy raised in Long Cleeve.

Diamond decided that she would never play the game, as Merry called it. He could play it if he chose; indeed, she watched him now, and she knew that he would make himself a king among the other pieces, moving little, manipulating all. That was his choice. Her husband would ever be the wayward knight. But she, she would neither be queen nor pawn. Nor would her son. When Faramir wed, she promised, he would wed for love, no matter if the girl were of the fairest Fallohide blood or just the granddaughter of a common gaffer. Her son, Diamond swore, would marry for love; she intended to make sure of that.

She broached the subject of returning to Merry. As she expected, he did not turn any arguments directly her way. He would wait. All he said was, “Wait until after the New Year. You should see it while you’re here. The full Court will be in all their splendor. And it would be appropriate for the Shire to be represented by its future Lady.”

Diamond acquiesced. What harm would it do? And Merry was right. It was her duty.

There was a ceremony at daybreak upon the Fountain Court, with the King speaking in an Elvish tongue about the events of thirteen years before. Legolas and the Queen sang a song honoring the great Elf-friend heroes: Beren, and Hurin, and Turin, and Tuor, and Frodo. It was that which finally made Diamond understand the extent of the deeds and the depth of the sacrifice made by Frodo Baggins, whom she had never known, and had only heard spoken of as the poor queer old bachelor alone in his grand and empty hole. “Egleria, Iorhael, Daur en Annun,” sang Legolas and Arwen, facing against the sunrise, towards the West. Diamond listened, uncomfortable and deeply moved, as she saw Merry weeping openly for his foster-brother and friend. Frodo Baggins. Savior of their world. She wondered what else lay hidden in all the hobbits she thought she knew.

Guests from all the fiefs of Gondor would now come before the King and Queen in full regalia, as well as friend and allied countries and ambassadors from other lands. Diamond saw Haradrim embassies in long robes and tightly wound turbans; Easterling messengers in fur and bone; the various princes and captains of Gondor’s realms, from the Cape of Andrast to the vales of the White Mountains to Dol Amroth by the sea. There were representatives from the grain-fed isle of Tolfalas in the Bay, and even settlers from the new lands in the west. Faramir walked alone, as Prince of Ithilien, holding the rod of the Steward of Gondor. He bowed deeply before Aragorn Elessar on his throne, and Arwen upon her chair, before going to his own chair across the dais from hers and announcing the first of the allied realms: “Eowyn of Rohan, Princess of Ithilien, daughter of the house of Eorl.”

And Eowyn walked in, in a long white dress of Rohan, with a jeweled front piece, her hair intricately braided into a coronet around her head. “On behalf of my brother Eomer King, Rohan greets Gondor upon her New Year,” she said as she bowed before Aragorn.

“Gondor gladly accepts Rohan’s friendship,” Aragorn replied.

Then came Legolas. He spoke in Elvish. “May the blessings of Elbereth and all the Valar be upon the realm of the Men of Numenor upon the coming of the New Year,” he said. He was followed by Gimli, leading a delegation of Aglarond Dwarves. There were ambassadors from Dale and Erebor, and from Eryn Lasgalen, and from Lorien. There was even a surprise for the Queen: her brothers, Elladan and Elrohir, come all the way from Rivendell. Their meeting was joyous in the quiet manner of Elves.

“For the free land of Buckland under the Scepter,” announced a herald, “on behalf of Saradoc its Master, his son Meriadoc Brandybuck of the Fellowship of the Ring, Master’s Heir.” And Diamond saw Merry, not in his Rohan livery but in his best frock coat and waistcoat of Buckland, march to the King’s throne and bow.

And then it was her turn.

“For the free land of the Shire under the Scepter, on behalf of Paladin II its Thain and his son Peregrin of the Fellowship of the Ring, Thain’s Heir: her ladyship, Diamond of Long Cleeve.”

So Diamond took a breath, took up the skirt of her gown, and walked out into the Hall of the King.

It was longer than she remembered from even the day before, and filled with people who remarked upon her as she passed: Haradrim and Easterlings, Gondorians of high race and low, Rohirrim, Dwarves, Elves. She kept her head high and her face as still as she could. Ice, she thought: ice flows in my veins.

Before Arwen on her white chair and Faramir standing before his black chair, before the throne of the King and Aragorn Elessar seated thereon, Diamond descended into a deep and graceful honor. “My liege,” she said. “On behalf of my husband, my Thain, and my people, may you and all Gondor have a joyful and bountiful New Year.”

The King Elessar’s grey eyes were warm upon her. “Gratefully do we receive these wishes from our friends and loved ones in the sweet and unspoilt Shire,” said Aragorn, “home of three of the Fellowship of the Ring, and the land that gave unto us our savior, which the Ringbearer, Frodo. This day three years ago and ten he went into the Fire of Doom and caused our Enemy’s end. Thus we call this New Year’s Day: for Frodo.” At the name all of Gondor bowed in homage.

Diamond remained in her bow, until she felt it time to rise. And she saw Arwen smiling upon her, and Faramir as well. And Faramir took her hand and escorted her to a place of honor among the nobles of the lands.

Diamond saw Merry beaming at her. She nodded. Again she thought: not bad, for a girl of the north country, who grew up covered in burrs from the downs.

The last of the embassies and presentations was near completion when a Guardsman hurriedly made his way towards Faramir on his chair. Diamond noticed the Steward of Gondor’s face alter in surprise, and her heart beat faster. Faramir rose and went to the King and spoke quietly with Aragorn, who nodded and looked at the door. Just then, outside, she heard a falcon’s cry.

“Merry,” she said out loud, and Merry turned to her in alarm.

When the doors swung open again, she knew. And even as the herald announced it, she fled into the crowd, suddenly overcome with doubt.

She glanced through the throng, to the open Hall, catching glimpses of him as he walked, smart and almost swaggering, the long wolfish lope she had come to know, grown even more easy and heedless than she remembered. She heard him call out “Strider!” in the presence of all the nobles and embassies gathered to honor the King Elessar; and even in her state she nearly laughed when Aragorn responded in kind.

Then Merry called out to him, and the wandering vagabond, browned by sun, clad in a leather shirt both sleeveless and worn open, tattooed and bearing beast’s tooth and pirate’s dagger and his own ancient sword, hair spun a ruddy gold, suddenly became a thoughtless tween again, running pell-mell and crashing against his oldest and dearest friend like an avalanche among the mountains. “Merry, Merry, Merry!” he cried, and his voice was both changed—lower, tougher, mature—and as cheerful as ever.

It was him. It was her husband. Diamond balled her fists and forced ice once more into her mind. It was all she could do to hold herself from breaking, from running out and into his arms and covering him in a torrent of regretful tears. She reminded herself that she had her pride, and her pride would protect her even now.

But when he himself espied her, Diamond knew there was no escaping. And quick as a rosy dawn could turn into a bright new day, she knew what she had to do, what she would say, and how she would say it.

She stepped into the sunlight, into his eyes; and the touch of his sea-green gaze melted all the ice left in her heart.

He said her name, in frank disbelief.

She responded in kind. “Peregrin,” she said.

Her husband was dumbfounded. “But how—why—?” he stammered. “What are you doing here, Di?”

Di. No one ever called her Di. “Silly hobbit,” said Diamond of Long Cleeve to the husband she loved: “I came to find you.”

Girl of the North Country, 7

VII.

Three years later, Diamond sat outside the Thain’s bedroom with her in-laws and her son. Pervinca was weeping copiously. Pimpernel was fidgeting with her beltknife. Pearl sat quietly, her eyes gleaming but calm. Reginard, Steward of the Tookland, stood by the door like a sentinel. Only Eglantine seemed unaware, blissfully working a new pattern into a fresh square of cloth.

Faramir her son came to her. He held a cup of water. “Mama?” he asked. He was sober and thoughtful lad of five, wise beyond his years. “Is Dad…” He glanced at the door.

“Yes, dear,” she said. “Dad’s still with Grandpapa.”

He sat down next to her. “It’s so sad for Dad.”

“I suppose it is,” Diamond agreed.

The door opened and Pippin stepped out. His face was both grim and calm, belying the tracks of tears down his cheeks. “Mother,” he said in quiet urgency.

Eglantine’s hands fluttered. “Oh my,” she said, dropping her embroidery and hurrying into the room.

Pippin closed it and looked upon them all. He smiled a little. It always made him look young.

Pervinca burst into a new set of tears, and Pippin with gentle strength lifted up his sister and let her weep into his chest. Then Pimpernel rose too and he embraced her, and then Pearl too.

Diamond held back, watching her husband comfort his sisters. He was the youngest of them: forty-five, in the morning of his prime, with just the first touch of silver in his chestnut curls of hair. And yet as he held them, tall and lean and strong, he was clearly their pillar, their heart, the center and head of their vast and peculiar family.

He caught her looking at him, and his eyes, she saw, were still innocent, and still guileless: yet somehow now they shone with a deep wisdom that sometimes left her breathless.

Eglantine emerged. Her round, sweet face was streaked with tears, but she was smiling, and she nodded to everyone there.

“He’s better now,” she said, and Diamond hugged Faramir.

Then Eglantine lifted her hand, and Diamond saw in it she held the Thain’s signet ring. She watched as Eglantine went to Pippin. Pearl, Pimpernel, and Pervinca withdrew, swallowing their tears, watching their mother with Diamond. And Eglantine reached for Pippin’s left hand and raised it up and slowly, gently, solemnly, slipped the Thain’s ring upon the forefinger of her son, and then squeezed.

“Now,” she said, “you’re the Thain,” and she threw her arms around him and cried. Pearl, Pimpernel and Pervinca joined them, weeping openly once again.

“Mama?” Faramir asked Diamond, and Diamond nodded, and let him go. And he pushed through his aunts and grandmother and found his father’s leg to hug.

Diamond watched them for some time. She saw her husband looking at her, and for him she smiled. Then quietly she rose and withdrew from their company, knowing she was not needed.

The ceremony of accession involved a banquet, for which the common gentlehobbits invited were thankful; for if anything better represented the strange ways of the old Fallohide families, it was this bizarre ritual, half election, half Numenorean mimery, and streaked through with the memories of the ancient days when Harfoots were the small sensible breed and the Fallohide hunters the strange, pale, and wild.

Diamond sat next to Eglantine, who still held her seat at the table; she was The Took, as Paladin’s widow, until her death. Of course everyone knew she was only The Took in name; the real head of the family, and not a few thought this the biggest irony of the age, was Pippin, now Peregrin I, Thain of the Shire. Diamond was now Lady of the Shire, replacing her mother-in-law. And her parents were pleased.

She went to her husband’s side at his proclamation, outside the Smials on the landing of the Great Door, where hobbits from across the Four Farthings and Buckland, and some from Breeland as well, had come. The Mayor’s duty it was to declare to the common Shirefolk their new Thain and liege lord under the King. All meaningless terms, of course, to most hobbits, but it was a good excuse for a large party.

Samwise Gamgee was making a speech. Diamond waited with Pippin behind the Door. He was nervous, she could tell. His pulse was showing in a corner of his throat.

“You’ll be fine,” she told him.

He looked at her worriedly. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“You’re too old and too honorable now to throw up.”

“Is that so, my lady?”

“It is so, milord.”

“As you wish, then.”

Diamond hesitated. She had something to say, and she had to say it sooner rather than later; but not now, she thought, not now.

The Great Door opened.

Pippin took her hand.

Diamond looked at him and nodded.

Mayor Samwise said, “Hobbits of the Shire, meet your Thain!” and Diamond followed Peregrin into the bright sunlight.

She heard his telltale knock on her door. She took a deep breath, looked around at the state of her affairs, and then said, “Come in.”

He poked her head through the door. “Are you decent?” Pippin asked. He strode in, still wearing his accession suit and mantle. “Well! That was quite a day. I don’t quite know how Father ever managed it. I suppose I’ll have to learn.”

“Don’t be silly, Peregrin,” Diamond said. “You learned how to lead years ago.”

“Lead, yes,” Pippin said. “Manage, no.”

Diamond looked at herself in her mirror. “That’s what Reginard is for.”

“I suppose you’re right, as usual,” Pippin said. She waited for him to notice. Finally he did: her packed trunk, her bare rooms.

“Di?” he said quietly, and the false childishness was gone from his voice and manner. “Where are you going, my lady?”

Diamond closed her eyes, and then turned and went to him.

“Home, Peregrin. I’m going home. To the Northfarthing. To Long Cleeve. I’ve stayed here long enough.”

He didn’t protest. He didn’t try to argue. He didn’t say, “But this is your home,” or, “What can I do to make you stay?” or even “Why?” He knew the answers to all those questions. All their questions had been answered long ago.

All he said was, “Will you take Fledge?” That was what he called Faramir.

She shook her head. “For summers, if you’ll let me,” she suggested. “But for the rest of the year, no. He should stay with you. A boy should learn from his father. Especially someone like Faramir. Like Fledge.”

He nodded. “Agreed,” he said. “Thank you.” He found a seat on her dressing table. He seemed to be lost in thought. She waited for him to return from wherever he went in those moments.

“Somehow I thought this wouldn’t hurt so much,” he finally said.

She felt a tear coming. She let it go. “That’s one reason why I’m leaving,” she told him. “I only hurt you, Peregrin. You know that. We were never suited to each other. And I don’t want to hurt you.” Diamond looked down. “I never really intended to hurt you.”

“Love hurts,” was his reply, and for a moment she thought to stay for the thrill of his heedless defiance.

Instead she reached for his hand and squeezed it, and before she knew it he had wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to him. She did not flinch now. Rather she let herself linger against his skin, breathing in his scent, of pipeweed and cider and distance.

“Where did we go wrong, Di?” he murmured against her pale silken hair.

“We were wrong from the beginning, Peregrin,” was her answer. She pulled away just enough to caress his cheek and look deep into his eyes. “What’s amazing is where we went right.”

“Fledge, for one,” he said with a little laugh.

“Fledge, indeed,” she agreed.

They held each other for a long time. Then together they released each other and stood.

“I’ll arrange to escort you to Long Cleeve myself,” Pippin said. “Do me good to rub your father’s nose in my new signet ring, hey?”

Diamond laughed. “You rascal.”

“At your service, my lady,” Pippin replied. He grew serious. “Shall we tell Fledge?”

Diamond nodded. “Let’s do it together.”

The news resounded in gossip and hearsay throughout the Families and the folk at large. The Thain and his Lady, living separately from each other? The Thain in Tuckborough in the south, and his Lady in Long Cleeve in the north? It was unheard of! It was scandalous! Those impossible Tooks!

Diamond paid the talk no heed. Neither did her husband. He did as he promised, riding escort for her carriage, on the leisurely ride from the verdant Green Hills to the rocky, windswept moors of the north country. Faramir—Fledge—spent part of the trip in the carriage with Diamond, and part on his father’s steed Tempest with Pippin.

He had accepted the news with his typical understanding. “Will I still see you both?” he had asked, and they said yes. “Will you fight less now?” They said yes also. “Good,” said the lad. “I like it when you don’t fight.” He then smiled hopefully. “Do I get two rooms one in each home?”

On the way they stopped by Bindbole Wood and Pippin laid out a picnic. They ate to their content, and then Diamond relaxed and watched her husband at play with their son. He was swinging Fledge from wrist in ankle, making the lad feel like he could fly. “Higher, Dad! Higher!” squealed Fledge.

Diamond found herself smiling. More importantly, she was finding herself at peace. She felt the sting of the air of the Northfarthing and the murmur of the trees of Bindbole Wood.

The trees. A thought came to her. “Peregrin,” she called.

“Yes, milady?” Pippin answered, coming to her holding their son upside down by one ankle. Fledge was giggling uncontrollably.

“Put him down properly,” Diamond said, “and let me ask you something. What was that story you tell about the tree-shepherds? The Ents?”

“The Ents, yes,” Pippin said. “What story in particular?”

“The one about their wives.”

Pippin lay Fledge down on the picnic blanket and knelt on one knee. “The Entwives,” he said. “The Ents loved the Entwives, and tried to win them with their wild ways. But the Entwives turned from them, preferring their own lands and their own wills. Long ago they left, and the Ents have ever sought them since.”

They were silent for a time, both realizing what the story meant for their own tale. “There were no Entings,” Pippin added.

Diamond inclined her head. “At least we don’t have that problem, thank heaven.”

“Thank heaven,” Pippin agreed. Then he frowned, and he asked curiously, “What made you think of the Entwives now, my lady?”

Diamond felt herself smile as if she were a girl again, a girl of the north country with a tale to tell. “I think,” she said, breathless and excited, “I think they live in Bindbole Wood!”

Together they looked into the Wood, and so did their son. And then they turned to each other.

“Do we?” Diamond asked.

Pippin grinned. “Let’s do.”

And off they went.

THE END