Chapter 10. Where Are Ye Goin' on this Merry Day?

A fine mist cast haloes around the torches in the yard before the Great Smials as a merry party prepared to mount their ponies.

 ‘Are you sure you wish to come, Mother?’ Pippin asked Eglantine. ‘You ought to stay by the hearth on a day like this day.’

 ‘Though I’m old as a wizard and fat as Lalia, riding a pony through a little mist won’t put me in my grave,’ she replied. ‘And if it did, why, I shouldn’t want to live anyhow.’

 ‘Bite your tongue!’ Pippin said, but his mother only laughed.

 ‘Perhaps you ought to be the one staying warm and dry by the fireside,’ she said meaningfully.

 ‘Yes, well then,’ Pippin said, his lips tightening. He seized on Faramir. ‘Come lad,’ he cried, forcing cheer into his tone. ‘I will set you before me on Socks, just as Gandalf set me before him on Shadowfax as we rode to Minas Tirith.’

 ‘Hurrah!’ cried the tot, holding his arms up. His father, smile more genuine now, lifted him to the pony’s back.

 ‘Steady, lad,’ he said to the pony as Socks turned his head to see whose slight weight he bore. The pony gave a soft whicker and rubbed his cheek against Pippin’s arm. The Thain absently fished a piece of carrot from his pocket and murmured a word or two as the pony whiffled it from his palm.

Diamond was already mounted, Hilly standing by her pony’s head. Tolly and Ferdi helped Eglantine onto her pony and mounted their own ponies, and at a word from Pippin Hilly leapt lightly into his saddle.

 ‘We’re ready, Sir,’ Ferdi said. By the light of the torches he could see Pippin roll his eyes.

 ‘You’re not going to “Sir” me all the day, are you cousin?’ Pippin said. ‘I’m just a wedding guest, after all, and not attending this affair as “Thain”.’

 ‘I’ll do my best,’ Ferdi replied. ‘I’m that much older than you are, cousin; you must make allowances should I dodder.’

Pippin snorted and mounted behind his little son. ‘Come along,’ he said. Diamond nudged her pony to move to his side, Ferdi rode beside Mistress Eglantine, Hilly led the way with a lantern and Tolly brought up the rear.

Tolly had not spoken a word to anyone, and they let him be. It wasn’t every day a hobbit got married, after all.

A winding track meandered through the wild Green Hills towards Tookbank, suitable perhaps for farm waggons but not for fancy coaches. No matter, Diamond had said as they were discussing travel arrangements. She was a farmer’s daughter, when it came right down to it, and riding pony-back was no novelty for her. Unexpectedly Eglantine had chimed in, saying she would come with them, for she’d been a farmer’s wife, herself, before the farmer had become Thain. On a dry, sunny day it was perhaps an hour to Sunnybanks Farm; in the foggy darkness of pre-dawn it was all of two or even three hours, but singing made the time pass quickly and before the Sun rose from her bed to lighten the mist the little party was riding into the farmyard.

 ‘Welcome! Well come!’ the farmer’s eldest son hailed them cheerily. ‘You’re in good time!’

The smells of roasting meat and baking bread filled the air, and a fiddler was tuning his instrument somewhere in the mist. They dismounted and Pippin, Diamond and Eglantine took the reins of the escorts’ ponies. Ferdi tried to protest.

 ‘Go on with you,’ Pippin said pleasantly, the Tookish lilt stronger in his voice than it had been since he’d gone away to Buckland and come back again. ‘You’ve other work to be doing.’ Ferdi shot him an astonished glance and he grinned. He was farmer’s son, not Thain, this day. He nodded as Ferdi turned away to clap Tolly on the shoulder.

 ‘Don’t stand here until you take root, cousin,’ Ferdi said to the bridegroom. ‘We’ve got to settle you at table and fetch your bride.’

Tolly smiled suddenly, his first smile since Meadowsweet had left the Smials to join in the wedding preparations. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘That we do!’ Pippin watched them walk off into the dark and fog, arm in arm.

 ‘Well now, where do we put up our ponies?’ he said to the farmer’s eldest.

 ‘Right over here,’ came the answer, and they followed his lantern to the designated pony pens, and then to the pavilion, brightly lit with lamps and lanterns and already half-filled with laughing, talking hobbits. ‘Will this do?’ their guide said, stopping at a table not far from the head table. He didn’t know quite who these hobbits were, but they’d arrived with Tolly, so they must be relatives or friends from the Great Smials.

 ‘O no, it won’t do at all!’ Pippin protested. ‘I’m sure you’ve nearer relatives to be seating here! We’ll go lower.’ He gestured to the tables on the periphery, and the farmer’s son nodded agreeably.

 ‘Take any of those seats,’ he said, ‘for no one’s claimed them yet.’

Pippin waved Faramir to a chair and seated his mother and then his wife, and sat himself down beyond Diamond. ‘This is cosy!’ he proclaimed. ‘We have a good view of the proceedings, and all the fresh air we could want.’ The tables were filling rapidly now, to a merry fiddle tune, and a buxom matron bustled to their table, plonking down a basket of fresh-baked bread, a bowl of butter and several jars of preserves.

 ‘Tea’s coming!’ she said briskly, and hurried away as Pippin was still thanking her.

 ‘I ought to serve table,’ Diamond said, ‘rather than putting on airs here.’

 ‘And I!’ Eglantine contributed, her face bright. ‘This is going to be lovely!’ The two rose, leaving Pippin and Faramir with the reassurance that they’d return when the serving was done. Soon they were to be seen amongst the other hobbit mums bearing platters or baskets or cosied teapots, moving between cooking tent or kitchen and festive pavilion.

The fiddler played a flourish and Diamond and Eglantine hurried to their table with platters of food for their own family, which they set down before taking their seats.

 ‘Here comes the bride,’ Pippin said with a grin. Ferdi was escorting Meadowsweet to the head table. Even from their far vantage they could see her radiant face, and Tolly’s, as Ferdi seated her beside her true-love. A cheer went up and the guests rose as one to bow to Sweetie’s father, and then all set to the wedding breakfast with light hearts and hearty appetites.

 ‘Best ham I’ve tasted,’ Pippin said with his mouth full, and Diamond made a private resolution to buy hams from Sunnybanks Farm for the Thain’s table.

 ‘It is good,’ little Farry agreed in his best grown-up manner, and all the adults laughed in delight, their laughter mingling with that from other tables.

 ‘A toast! A toast!’ came the cry from the head table, and Hilly arose, lifting his mug.

 ‘To the finest brother it’s ever been my privilege to ride alongside,’ he shouted.

 ‘And what about your other brothers?’ his eldest brother Mardibold called, but he lifted his mug and drank the toast, before launching into a story of young Tolly and younger Hilly and a good bit of mischief. He ended with a toast of his own before resuming his seat. From then on story followed story, sprinkled with bits of sage advice, well wishes and ever more toasts.

Pippin ate heartily, drank every toast, sang and laughed with the rest, winking at Diamond when he caught her watching in satisfaction. ‘Most relaxing Highday I’ve enjoyed in months,’ he said in an undertone. ‘I’d begin to wonder if the Tooks knew how to do anything but grumble!’

 ‘They’re getting used to you,’ Eglantine said equably, helping herself to more fluffy scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and ham.

Pippin laughed and took his own second helpings of everything. ‘Uncommonly good food,’ he said through a mouthful as Diamond caught his eye.

 ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Breakfast always tastes better after a morning ride, and there’s something about eating out in the fresh air...’

Midmorning the hobbit mums jumped up from their seats to clear away the spent platters and renew the teapots, for those who wished tea, and bring out wine jugs for those who were ready to go on with the day. There were baskets of sweet breads and sausage rolls to sustain the celebrating hobbits through the clapping and singing that followed. The Sun was doing her best to burn off the lingering mists, and she promised to be at her best and brightest by noonday.

Partway through the third song, a long ballad in which a dying hobbit who’d gone off to fight for the King declared his love and longing for his faraway lass, Pippin saw a hobbit tween ride into the yard and jump down from his pony’s back. The lad was not dressed for a wedding, and from the set of his shoulders and grim expression he bore ill news.

 ‘Stay here,’ Pippin said to his family as he rose. ‘I just want to see about something.’ He intercepted the tween and listened to the words that spilled forth, his own expression sobering. ‘How many?’ he asked.

 ‘Half a dozen ewes dead, and then there’s the lambs, and we might well lose more,’ the tween said with a gulp. He looked to the pavilion, to the empty table in the midst of the celebration. ‘We were s’posed to be sitting there,’ he said. ‘That was our place.’

Pippin nodded. They were near neighbours, then, to have such a prominent place reserved for them. Likely Farmer Banks was wondering about his neighbour but too deep in his daughter’s wedding to send to the next farm to see what was amiss. ‘Let us not bother the family here,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ll ride with you, to see the damages.’

The lad looked at him in astonishment. ‘What good would you do?’ he said. ‘You’re not even from around here.’

Pippin smiled and showed the heavy ring he bore. ‘The Thain might be able to offer some assistance,’ he said.

 ‘Thain?’ the lad gasped, but Pippin took his elbow and steered him towards the pony pens. Socks was easy to find, tied beneath a chestnut tree in the field beyond the pens, dozing in the shade.

Pippin quickly had him saddled and bridled. He turned to give the neighbour lad a leg up onto his plough pony’s bare back, then mounted Socks. ‘Lead on,’ he said.

In the pavilion behind the soulful song ended and the fiddler swung into a lively Springle-ring tune.