Family Matters

Prologue: Background and Explanation

It can sometimes be difficult to write reams of fanfic, all intertwined and related, and keep track of all the threads. The "writing reams" part came about almost by accident; LOTR was my comfort during a long stretch of ill health; I read and re-read the epic and imagined what happened to the characters during gaps and after Sam returned from seeing Frodo off at the Grey Havens. Then after the first film came out, someone introduced me to the phenomenon of fanfiction, and I had an outlet for my imaginings! Plus a wealth of related reading material. It felt, somehow, like I'd won the lottery.

The Greening of the Year (set in the summer of the year the Treasury was recovered after Pippin became Thain; see StarFire) has been nagging at me for a while now, and while re-reading Runaway I suddenly realised why. Tolly's children in Runaway are older than they ought to be, considering the timeline of stories that have written themselves over the past years. (And the fault is mine, not Jo's, for I gave her free rein in the writing, and didn't think to cross-check older stories when I fixed the date of Tolly's wedding in StarFire.)

The Muse has been chewing at the problem for some time now, and suddenly snatched this story from where it had been ripening on a dusty shelf in the lumber room, laying it out on the table and demanding that something be done. 

Originally an epilogue of sorts, detailing Eglantine's triumphant return to the Great Smials after going missing and being feared dead, this sort of ballooned into a larger story centred around Tolly, his coming to terms with to being rescued by one he was supposed to be safeguarding, and just how he and his wife came to have children older than their marriage. 

Don't worry; the other in-progress stories are still in progress. Will keep posting updates to all the WIPs as planned. While much of this is from the viewpoint of an OC, Pippin (and perhaps Sam and Merry) will have much to do in the story, at least the way the draft reads at present. I even managed to have a little fun with Pippin, who has to deal with something of a role reversal when, as the story plays out, he finds himself the only sensible one in a growing body of (seemingly) nonsensible Tooks. 

Short synopsis of The Greening of the Year:

Tolibold Took, the head of the Thain's escort (expert archers who are responsible for the safety of the Thain and his family), is escorting Pippin's mother, Eglantine, through the wild Green Hills as she returns to the Great Smials from a visit to her daughter Pearl on the family farm near Whitwell. Heavy rains have led to instability, and a landslip occurs as the travellers are riding across the flank of one of the great hills. Eglantine and her escort are trapped in the debris. The mother of the Thain manages to free herself, but Tolly is caught and helpless under the bole of a large fallen tree, reversing their roles, where she is protecting him, making Tolly endure the humiliation (as he sees it) of needing help and protection. When the travellers are overdue, and a farmer brings word of the unfolding natural disaster to the Great Smials, Pippin (pardon the impending pun) moves heaven and earth to find his mother and her protector. Family Matters begins just after the missing hobbits have been found and rescued and are on their way back to the Great Smials.

*** 

Chapter 1. Awakening

~ S.R. 1435, summer ~

'Tolly!' The voice was close at hand, more of a hiss than a whisper, his younger brother's voice, he thought, and his dream turned to younger days, and he was being roused out of his bed for some kind of mischief or other. 

'Le’ me sleep,' he moaned, and tried to lift his hands to pull the bedcovers over his head, though something resisted his efforts, and the movement scored his ribs with pain. What mischief had he done himself? A deep breath sent a knife into his ribs, and without conscious thought he adjusted his breathing. Shallow breaths, yes, that was a help. It didn't hurt half so much, though he had to breathe at a quicker rate to get enough air. 

There was a rustling; he had an impression of movement nearby, of someone giving way to someone else, yes, for another voice murmured, 'Tolly! Tolibold, are you with us?' A hand touched his shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze before simply resting there. 

' 'Twould be better if we could keep him awake,' he heard his older brother Mardi say from his other side. Mardi was using his healer's voice, which made Tolly wonder what hobbit had been injured. It began to dawn on him, as his dreaming burst slowly asunder and began retreating in shreds, that somehow all this bother concerned himself. 

'Mardi?' he whispered. 

'That’s it. Keep awake, Tolly-lad, mustn't sleep now,' Mardi said, still in healer's mien. 

'What...?' Tolly said, lifting his head and striving to open his eyes. 

'There now, lad,' came a soothing female voice, somewhat cracked with age and weariness, and a few strides away, he thought, not right beside him as had been through the dark hours, was it in his dream, or was it...? 

...and memory came back in a flood: riding along the muddied track partway up one of the great Green Hills, the trees above them on the hillside bending as in a strong wind when there was no wind, the sudden realisation that the whole side of the hill was coming down, pulling his unstrung bow from the quiver to strike a sharp blow upon the rump of Mistress Eglantine's pony ahead of him, the path slipping away from under their galloping ponies, the sensation of falling forever, only to waken to worse nightmare... 

Something touched his cheek and he jerked away, but his arms were pinned. 'No!' he cried. 

'Tolly, lad,' someone said. 

'The birds!' he whispered, and the Mistress spoke again. 

'They're well gone, lad, well gone... Do you not remember? The Tooks, they've come, they've found us...!' 

He opened his eyes fully, then, to the light of early morning, and saw that his arms were pinned, not by the bole of a great tree, but blankets, and he was surrounded by hobbits, a brother on either side and Thain Peregrin crouching at his head, gripping his shoulder in reassurance. 

'Tolly,' Eglantine said again, and he turned his head, scanning the faces until he found her, sitting up on a blanket at a little distance, a mug of tea in her hands, though she was too busy with concern for him to be sipping at the steaming beverage. She, too, was mud smeared, wrapped in blankets, her wet and muddy hair plastered to her head, and yet she sat as regally erect as if she were at tea in the sitting room of the Thain's apartments. 'You swooned, lad, not that anyone could blame you, after the night you've had...'

'M-mistress?' he managed. 

'There now,' someone said, Mardi, perhaps? Or perhaps it was the Thain. His head felt muddled, and no wonder. They'd spent the night on the hillside, in the cold and rain, himself half-crushed under a fallen tree and the Mistress by his side, holding onto him with hands and voice, for she'd promised not to leave him. No, she'd insisted on staying with him, even in the face of his telling her to make her way to safety, away from the landslip, to the more stable grassy ground beyond them, where the trail still stood. Some head of escort, you are, a voice in the back of his brain said bleakly. Struck helpless, and the Mistress protecting you from the carrion birds, rather than you watching over her as is your duty.

'Tolly? ' the Thain said again, his grip on Tolly’s shoulder firm, anchoring the head of escort to the present. 'Are you with us?' 

'I'd like to know where else I'd be,' he muttered. At home in bed, preferably. Waking up next to his lovely Meadowsweet, brushing a wayward lock away from her forehead to lay a wakeup kiss there. 

Mardi's tired face lit up in a smile. 'There's the lad,' he said. 'Stay with us, now.' 

Tolly bit down on his reply. He remembered, too, his earlier wakening, from nightmare into deeper nightmare, the touch of cold steel on his leg as Mardi prepared to saw away. In the end the Mistress had stopped them, had not let them take his legs to save him, had ordered them to dig him free though every moment was fraught with the danger of more of the hillside coming down upon them all. His own brother... Somehow it felt like a betrayal. 

He shivered as Mardi lifted the blankets away, that had been tucked so firmly around him that he'd not been able to move. 'You've cracked some ribs, Tolly,' he said. 'We'll need to bind them.' 

He winced as Hilly and the Thain lifted him to a sitting position, for it gave not only his ribs a twinge, but his damaged leg as well. Hilly apologised under his breath. Pippin told him to be steady, as if he had much chance of anything else, held in place between them, while Mardi began wrapping a long strip of cloth around Tolly's torso, lending support to his labouring chest. 

Mardi talked as he worked, a blend of reassurances and healer-talk, about how they'd have him home soon, they had a litter ready and any number of hobbits eager to bear him back to the Great Smials in fine style (and to Tolly's annoyance, Mardi chuckled at this bit of rhyme, and Hilly chaffed their older brother, hoping aloud he was a better healer than poet). 

Tolly distracted himself by listening to other talk nearby. Aldi, the Thain's chief engineer in charge of digging, was talking about the lake that had formed below them when the hillside came down and blocked the Tuckbourn stream that ran through the valley all the way to Tuckborough, and beyond. They were calling it "Bilbo Lake" in jest, for as soon as they figured out how to let the water out without collapsing the earthen dam and sending down a flood, the lake would be disappearing and only the stream would be left to run its course through the valley. 

The main difficulty now was that Eglantine refused to recline on a litter, to allow herself to be carried homeward, at least carried by hobbits. 'I can ride a pony,' she said staunchly. 'I've been riding since before any of you were born, and there's certainly no need to treat me as if I've been injured or incapacitated, when I'm perfectly well and whole!' 

This, from an elderly hobbit covered head-to-toe with mud and soaked to the skin. 

Aldi, of all hobbits, spoke up in her support, in the face of the other rescuers' sputtering protests. He was neither healer nor escort nor son of the hobbit in question, and this gained him perhaps some perspective in the matter. In addition, the sooner the rescued hobbits reached safety, the sooner he could be about his business, and he was nothing if not efficient. 

'By all means,' he said, 'ride! I would that Tolly could ride as well. ...by any chance, can he?' This last was directed to Mardi, who had finished binding his younger brother's cracked ribs, and now turned his attentions to Tolly's injured leg. 

'Out of the question,' Mardi said flatly, his eyes on the work of his hands. 

'I'm well!' Tolly said with a wince. 'Completely well,' he insisted, and then grabbed at Mardi's sleeve. 'D'you have to wrap it so tight?' he said. 

Mardi patted his brother on the shoulder. 'Let the healer do his work,' he said, meaning of course himself. He pulled the bandaging cloth tighter yet, wrapping in an intricate pattern to support the damaged leg, though he was careful not to cut off the flow of blood. 

Ferdibrand, the Thain's special assistant (and the finest hobbit Tolly knew, as close as one of his brothers to his heart) rolled his eyes about the same time Tolly did, and then the two of them smiled a matching smile. Healers! Bad enough by themselves, but when one was a blood relation... Of course, Tolly could hardly demand a different healer, not, at least, until he got back to the Smials. Which was the topic under discussion, after all. The sooner he got back, the better. 

Aldi shook his head. 'I don't like it,' he said. 'In all likelihood...' 

Pippin took the hint. 'In all likelihood... what?' 

Aldi swept a hand across the brightening landscape. 'Look at the footing – treacherous for an able-bodied hobbit bearing only himself. Litter-bearers, now... one slip, and the Mistress, or poor Tolly, goes rolling down the hillside and into the lake!' 

'Ponies can slip just as well,' Ferdi began, but Aldi held up a staying hand. Tolly noticed then, idly, that Ferdi was holding a steaming cup, just holding it, letting the good warmth go to waste. Perhaps he was simply too wrapped up in events to notice.

'They've twice as many feet, to keep them stable,' the engineer said. 

'Twice as many feet to slip, that is,' Ferdi argued, but Pippin was considering, and not listening to further argument. 

'You'll be home much faster, and out of danger of the flood that might come down,' he said slowly. 

'I'm all for that,' put in Tolly, sitting up straighter from where he sat propped against Hilly, though he grimaced in pain and spoiled the effect he meant to give. 

Mardi hushed him and told him to drink his tea. 

Tolly frowned in answer, but he was shivering, to be sure, and all could see it except perhaps himself. I would, if I had any. He'd had a cup in his hands, or thought he'd had; he'd begun to drink from it, even, though he had no idea what had happened to the cup in the meantime. If I had any, I would... But it seemed too much trouble to say so. A mist was gathering before his eyes, and sleep beckoned, despite Mardi's insistence on his staying awake.

'Yes, drink your tea,' Eglantine said, gulping at her own cup for good measure. 'Drink it whilst it's hot, there's a good lad.' Ferdi gave a start at that, and reached to place his cup in Tolly's hands. Evidently it had been Tolly's cup all along, only Tolly'd not been aware of it, and Ferdi had for the moment forgotten.

Since it was a direct order from the Mistress, he swallowed the contents of his mug in a series of steady gulps, and the warmth went down and spread through his chilled innards and brought him once more to alertness. 'There,' he said. 'I did drink, I drank, I have drunk. Bring on the ponies!'

*** 

Chapter 2. The Long Ride Home

After a three-way consultation with Aldi, the chief engineer of the Tooks, and Mardi, as the healer on the spot, the Thain directed those returning to the Great Smials to ride along the dry streambed, which was “as wide as one of the King’s high-ways”, as Pippin described it. ‘A little rougher, perhaps,’ he added, conceding the jumble of rocks and silt uncovered by the damming of the Tuckbourn’s waters by the landslip that had nearly taken the lives of Eglantine, mother of the Thain, and Tolibold, her escort. 

‘But you’ll make better time in the valley than riding up and down the great hills in this part of the Green Hill country,’ he said. ‘And Aldi thinks the dam will hold.’

‘He thinks so, does he?’ said Ferdi, head of the Thain’s escort – at least until the annual archery tournament should take place later in the summer. This year, Tolly was favoured to win, due to Ferdi’s recent fall while racing, resulting in injuries that threatened to permanently affect his shooting. He added wryly, ‘That might be a comfort... or so one might think.’

‘The dam should hold,’ the engineer clarified, unperturbed. ‘In fact,’ he said, pursing his lips and taking a moment to survey the spreading floodwaters below them, ‘did we wish for a lake at this spot on the map, ‘twould take little enough reinforcing and perhaps some yearly maintenance to ensure the dam’s continuance for years to come...’ He stomped a foot, albeit somewhat cautiously, considering the unstable slope upon which they stood. ‘See? Solid!’

‘If not Bilbo Lake, then Lake Paladin,’ Ferdi said. ‘Or Peregrin, perhaps.’

‘Lake Eglantine,’ Tolly contradicted stoutly, still feeling warmed and invigorated by the tea Mardi’d administered, even though now the fire had been extinguished and the tin cups and kettle had been packed away, preparatory to the departure of rescuers and rescued. ‘Lake Eglantine,’ he said, and of a wonder, despite the pain of his injured leg and cracked ribs and the still-fresh memories of the desperate night they’d only recently passed, he felt a grin stretch his lips as he added, ‘Sparkling in the sunlight.’ Had he been in his right mind, he might have mentally kicked himself for such familiarity, but for the feeling of relaxation spreading through his body. Taking strict hold of himself again, he blinked at his brother Mardi in sudden suspicion – had there been more than just tea and sweetening in the cup he’d quaffed?

No reprimand for his nonsense came from the Mistress or the Thain or even the head of escort, strengthening Tolly’s suspicion that he’d drunk some sort of healer’s potion, all unwitting, in the guise of a mug of tea.

‘Indeed,’ Eglantine said with a smile of her own. Under her borrowed cloak, she was covered head-to-toe in drying mud. Only her face and hands shone forth, testament to Mardi’s gentle ministrations with a cloth and the limited water the rescuers had carried with them. Though water a-plenty sparkled below them in the morning sun, getting down to the banks of the new-formed lake would have been no easy task. ‘My lake looks quite lovely in the morning light, not at all frightening as it looked only a few hours ago, lying in wait for us, as the lightning flashed and the hail pounded down in the night.’

‘I think the farmers of the Greentuck Vale would have some objection to this new lake continuing to occupy their smials and fields,’ Pippin said mildly. ‘I’m sorry, Mother, but yours and Tolly’s lake must vanish again, and sooner would be better than later.’

‘Just send a messenger back when the rescue party reaches the Stone Bridge,’ Aldi confirmed, ‘and we’ll see to it that Bilbo Lake vanishes as thoroughly as the hobbit Ferdi named it for last night, once the old fellow decided to stay vanished, that is.’

‘Down to the River, and on to the Sea,’ Tolly heard the Thain mutter under his breath, quoting a sad old song, reminding him that young Pip, still only a tween at the time and years away from becoming Thain, had accompanied old Bilbo to the Grey Havens of the Elves on the Baggins’s final disappearance from Middle Earth. But when the bedraggled escort looked over at him, the Thain smiled and nodded in response, not at all melancholy as he sat with one arm encompassing his mother, cloak, blankets, and all, holding her close as if he might never let her go again.

‘We’ll send a messenger forthwith,’ Ferdi said to the Tookish engineer. ‘Far be it from me to keep you – much less, the Thain – waiting a moment more than necessary.’

‘Would you care to accompany the rescue party, Sir?’ Aldi turned to the Thain to ask.

‘No,’ Pippin said, his eyes alight with curiosity. ‘I’ll stay and watch the engineers at their work. I’m sure Merry will be fascinated to hear how we “disappeared” an entire lake without bringing down a flood on Tuckborough!’ His arm tightened in a brief hug, and he tenderly kissed Eglantine’s cheek, and then he released his hold and stood lightly to his feet, ready – even unTookishly eager, considering the subject of discussion was a treacherous body of water – to take in this novel experience.

And why not? Tolly thought to himself. Pippin’s mother, whom the rescuers had thought lost in the cataclysm, was found, and safe! ...no thanks to Tolly, her escort. The warm, relaxed feeling that had surrounded him seemed to fade now as the weight of his failure pressed down upon him once more.

He scarcely noticed the activity that swirled around him as he was lifted and eased into a saddle, nor did he hear Ferdi order Adelard (one of the more recent additions to the Thain’s escort) to remain with the Thain and his engineers, nor did he even mark when the pony under him began moving. He was only slightly aware of Hilly and Mardi, walking to either side of him, steadying him in the saddle as they made their way on a gradual diagonal down the hillside, until they reached the valley floor on the dry side of the dam.

Not far behind them, Tolly heard Eglantine conversing cheerfully with the hobbits walking on either side of the pony she rode, as well as calling occasional comments to the others walking before and after, and even to Tolly and his brothers, leading the rescue party. As for himself, he had nothing to say. In fact, it was taking all his remaining strength to concentrate on bracing himself with his uninjured leg while trying at the same time to relax his body, despite the firmly wound chest-bindings that held him upright, to move with the motion of the pony he sat upon and thus minimise the jarring that sent ripples of pain through his body.

Mardi evidently noticed Tolly’s abstraction, for more than once on their way down the great hill, he urged his younger brother to “stay with us, now, Tolly”.

Each time, Tolly blinked and sat a little straighter, but he did not have the heart nor the courage to answer in words, sunk deep as he was in feelings of shame and disgrace. 

Ferdi had assigned him to escort Eglantine safely back from Whittacres Farm, to guard her and keep her safe from any danger... yet she’d been the one watching over him through the long, weary hours after the landslip had left him pinned under the bole of a fallen tree. She’d safeguarded him, and ignored his pleas to make her way off the unstable dirt slope, at least as far as where the broken-off trail beckoned and the grass began, signalling more stable ground than that where Tolly lay, all unwilling, but unable to free himself.

When they reached the valley floor, Tolly was vaguely aware that they stopped briefly, at which point the walkers mounted ponies for the ride back to Tuckborough. Mardi coaxed some water into him, and he drank. Some minutes later, his pony began to move under him once more, picking its way with some care over the rocky streambed, occasionally splashing through the shallow puddles left behind by the dammed stream. He fell into a dream, then, consisting mainly of the pony’s motion and his brothers’ hands on his arms, steadying him as they rode onward, a journey that seemed to have no beginning that he could remember, in the moment, and no ending that he could discern. 

Though he scarcely noted Mardi’s occasional question or encouragement, after they had been travelling for some time, the cheerful tones of the Mistress of the Tooks pierced the dark fog surrounding him.

When the near-tragedy had struck the previous afternoon, Eglantine had been riding back from Whittacres Farm where the Mistress of the Tooks had been visiting Pearl, her eldest, to the Smials, where she ought to have breakfasted this morning as a part of her second-born daughter’s birthday observance.

Even now she was saying to Haldi, another hobbit of the Thain’s escort, who was riding beside her, ‘I don’t know how I’ll ever make it up to the lass, to have missed her birthday breakfast!’

‘Now-now, Mistress,’ Haldi rumbled in reply. Somehow that hobbit, amongst very few of those who lived and worked in Tuckborough and its surroundings, seemed always at ease in Eglantine’s presence, as if he were one of her grands rather than a mere archer assigned to her protection by order of the Thain. Even now, he was bold enough to contradict the old hobbit, for all she was the Head of the Took clan. ‘ ‘Twas the happiest birthday breakfast of her life, I deem, for the arrival of the messenger before second breakfast, if I’m not mistaken, with the news of your surviving – and the most memorable celebration of her experience, for the same reason.’

And Eglantine tolerated this contradiction, aye, even seemed to welcome Haldi’s observation, laughing heartily at his response and commending him, of a wonder. ‘Bless you, lad! I find myself quite heartened! You have me feeling much better...’

As for himself, Tolly was feeling worse by the moment. 

*** 

Chapter 3. The Agony of Defeat

Part-way back to the Great Smials, Tolly slumped in the saddle – or would have, if not for the tight bindings that supported his cracked ribs, not to mention his brothers Mardi and Hilly, riding to either side of him and steadying him on his pony.

He would have been chagrined at the knowledge that his collapse halted the entire rescue party, had he not been blessedly unconscious. Mardi slid from his own pony whilst Hilly held Tolly in the saddle, then together the brothers carefully eased the injured hobbit to the ground, where Mardi took his younger brother’s hand between his palms and squeezed it firmly, calling Tolly’s name. On getting no response, he lifted one of his hands to Tolly’s cheek, striking it not quite hard enough to be called slapping but still patting it vigorously as he repeated urgently, ‘Tolly! Tolly...’

From ponyback, Hilly also called Tolly’s name, for all the good it did, and Eglantine craned from where she had halted her own pony, crying, ‘Is he all right? What’s happening?’

Mardi looked up. ‘We’ll have to carry him from this point on a litter, Mistress,’ he said. ‘I cannot rouse him.’ Though his worry was plain on his face, he added, ‘Would you like to go on ahead, Mistress? We’ll follow behind.’

‘No I would not like to go on ahead,’ Eglantine returned stoutly. ‘Poor Tolibold is in these straits because of me, after all! I was the one who insisted on continuing along the path we’d begun, in the face of his protests, instead of sensibly taking the longer way around because I did not want to miss Pimpernel’s birthday breakfast. And look at how things have turned out because I insisted on having my own way! He’s been injured, and I’ve missed the celebration anyhow!’

Mardi knew better than to argue or even draw attention to his concern for the mother of the Thain by ordering more blankets wrapped around her as she waited, which he strongly suspected would raise her ire. No, but he simply made the necessary arrangements as quickly as hobbitly possible, ordering four of the rescuers from their saddles to become stretcher-bearers and others to take the reins of their ponies to lead the riderless beasts, then unrolling one of the stretchers they’d brought with them and directing the newly designated bearers to ease Tolly onto it.

After checking his brother’s heartbeat and breathing and tucking blankets more securely around Tolly, Mardi looked up again, meeting Eglantine’s piercing regard. ‘We have another stretcher here,’ he said to her. ‘Is it well with you, Mistress? Are you finding riding a strain after your ordeal in the night?’

Eglantine snorted at his mention of her ordeal but refrained from reprimanding the healer. ‘I am well,’ she replied austerely. ‘Better than I deserve, as a matter of fact.’ She fixed Mardi with a stern gaze and added, ‘If you’ve arranged all things to your healerly satisfaction, then let us be off again! The sooner we have my unfortunate escort to the Smials and surrounded with comfort and warmth, the better.’

Perhaps only Haldi, waiting on his pony beside hers, might have heard the words she added under her breath. ‘And seeing me borne into the courtyard on a stretcher would be the finishing touch on ruining my Pimpernel’s birthday, no doubt!’

‘Yes, Mistress,’ Mardi said, but of course he was agreeing with her concern for Tolly more than anything else.

Carrying an injured hobbit on a stretcher is much slower than riding, even at a walk, on ponyback, and so it took them nearly two more hours to reach the Stone Bridge just outside of Tuckborough, whereupon Mardi nodded to one of the hobbits with the rescue party, a messenger bearing a horn. ‘Blow the alarm in the town,’ he said. ‘Be sure the hobbits there know that a flood may come down some time in the next few hours.’ Mardi himself would see to starting the word spreading in the Great Smials proper.

‘Aye,’ the messenger said, and kneed his beast ahead of the group to fulfil his mission.

Mardi signalled to the other messenger who’d been sent out with the group. ‘You know what you’re to do, Asher.’

‘That I do, Mardi,’ the hobbit said cheerfully. He reined his pony around and set off at a brisk pace back along the way they had come, to where Aldi had more than likely already buried his stick of black powder (Fancy that! A single stick filled with black powder, and it would be enough to take down that enormous dam formed by the landslip! Rivers were tricksy bodies, indeed...) in a carefully selected location in the face of the dam and was just waiting for Asher’s assurance that the warning had gone out to Tuckborough before lighting the fuse.

Despite their slow progress, the distance from the Stone Bridge to the Great Smials was not far and did not take long, even at a walking pace for hobbits burdened with a stretcher, and so it was not long before the rescue party were treading the stones of the courtyard, where stable workers were ready to take charge of the ponies. On seeing Eglantine in the saddle, wrapped in blankets but otherwise apparently whole and hale, they raised a cheer that continued and grew as ever more hobbits spilled from the stables and other outbuildings and the entrances to the Smials at the hopeful sound, adding their voices to the celebratory hubbub on seeing for themselves that the beloved Mistress of the Tooks was alive and well.

Amidst the bustle, Mardi managed to convey to the bearers that Tolly should be borne to the infirmary (a part of the Great Smials that Tooks made a point of avoiding, as a rule) rather than his quarters. Though Tolly’s injuries did not seem at first glance serious, his brother wanted a closer look at them all the same than he’d been able to manage heretofore. Moreover, they could remove or cut away the hobbit’s filthy clothing more easily on a table there than to do so in his bed, and they might as well wash away the mud that covered him while they were there. If nothing more than Mardi’d already seen was amiss, they could then bear Tolly to his own bed to recover. He’d be more comfortable there, and comfortable convalescents healed faster, to the healers’ way of thinking.

Mardi was also hoping that Meadowsweet would not see her beloved in his present state but that they’d keep the news from her until her husband had been washed and dressed in a clean nightshirt and bundled in blankets. Was that too much to hope for?

Yes, as it turned out, for before they reached one of the lower doors in the face of the Great Smials (it would have been foolishness to carry a burdened litter up the steps to the main door), Meadowsweet was there, gasping and weeping, throwing herself on her husband without regard for mud or injuries or any other consideration. Thankfully the bearers’ firm hold on the stretcher prevented Tolly’s being spilled to the hard stones of the courtyard. 

All the same, Mardi bodily lifted the distraught wife away, rather more roughly than he meant to, and gave her a shake, scolding, ‘Sweetie! Calm yourself! You do him no good in this state!’

Gulping back tears, she pulled free of Mardi’s grasp, caught her balance and stared at him. ‘They told me—’ she gasped. ‘They said—’

‘Minor injuries,’ Mardi returned in his heartiest voice, ‘minor injuries only, Sweetie. He’ll be fine.’

‘But he’s—’ she said, her anguished gaze returning to Tolly.

Mardi felt the need to take her arm, to prevent any further extreme measures on Meadowsweet’s part more than to offer comfort. ‘Exhaustion – that’s what you’re seeing, lass. He needs rest more than your tears, my dear.’ And then he thought better of the words, especially seeing the hobbits nearest them listening eagerly. Exhaustion implied weakness and, perhaps, some failing on his younger brother’s part, and the word could all too easily echo in the whispers of the Talk of the Tooks long after Tolly was back on his feet and fulfilling his duties once more. And so Mardi hastily amended his response to Meadowsweet, then, saying, ‘We’re just going to get him clean and comfortable, and then you can tuck him up in your bed with your own sweet hands...’

‘He’s well?’ she said, somehow calmer.

‘Well...’ Mardi replied, signalling to Tolly’s bearers to continue on to the infirmary. If she took his answer as confirmation rather than hesitation, it was all for the best.

Meanwhile, a mob of Tooks and servants were fussing over Eglantine, crowded so tightly around her that Pimpernel found it difficult to force her way through. When she reached her mother at last, she threw her arms around Eglantine, laughing and weeping in one.

Eglantine returned the hug and then reached up to wipe away the streaming tears, small clods of drying mud dropping from her arm. ‘My love,’ she said. ‘Put your tears away. All is well.’

‘O Mum!’ Pimpernel sobbed, but then she swallowed hard and did her best to comply. ‘We thought—’ she said brokenly.

‘What you thought doesn’t matter now,’ Eglantine said, raising her voice to be heard over the murmuring hobbits filling the courtyard. ‘I’m well! As old Bilbo was so fond of saying, the reports of my demise were slightly exaggerated.’ She waited out the resulting cheer from the hobbits around her, then added, looking around at the sea of faces, ‘Thanks to the dedicated efforts of my escort, I am safely among you again!’

There. She hoped it would be enough to direct the Talk of the Tooks away from any speculation on Tolibold’s supposed failings. The unfortunate hobbit would have a difficult enough time as it was, with her riding into the courtyard in triumph whilst he was borne on a stretcher.

Perhaps she ought to have allowed them to carry her home, as well, if only for Tolly’s sake. Ah well, no use borrowing more trouble than the previous day had already imposed. If Tolly’s good reputation should be threatened by the unfortunate recent turn of events, well, they’d have to deal with icing that cake when it came out of the oven and not beforetimes. Hopefully all this excitement would blow over, and people would be distracted with all the other details of the disaster, such as housing the homeless hobbits and rebuilding after the floodwaters receded, instead of indulging in the pleasurable pastime of second-guessing the actions of the head of the Thain’s escort.

***