Chapter 43. Thorn: To See a Well-Beloved Face

The stew was venison, as Bucca had guessed, flavoured with wild onion and mushroom, resembling an old recipe he remembered from the Golden Perch. The Perch was the inn at Stock (was being the operative word), whose foundations were said to have been laid not long after the first settlers followed Marcho and Blanco from Bree to settle the Shire. At the Perch, and also the Tipsy Thrush in The Yale, venison and wild mushroom stew had been a delicacy in days of plenty, when beef or poultry or pork were common, and so the stew, made from game and forest-gathered ingredients, commanded a luxury price. Bucca had tasted it once in his life, as a matter of fact, when his father had been confirmed Thorn by the clan chieftains of the Fallohides. The sprawling inn’s common room was the one place in the Marish large enough to hold them all in solemn convocation. The proprietor had served Thorn and his family his finest in the celebration that followed, in deference and congratulation.

Bucca had never forgotten that meal. Though they had a field of mushrooms at the farm (had had, he reminded himself), he’d never tasted anything the like before, or since. The Perch was known for the quality of its table, as well as its beer, said to be the finest in the area. Had been known, anyhow. Crops must be sown and harvested, if there was ever to be beer found in the Shire again. The inn was undoubtedly no more, reduced to rubble and perhaps a few burnt timbers. But crops could be re-sown, and ruins could be rebuilt…

As he ate, Bucca kept waiting for his Comfrey to come, to throw her arms about him… He thought of any number of explanations for the delay. She had been ill, and was resting, and they wanted to lessen the shock of seeing him again after all this time. Or perhaps this was not the only hiding place in the Woody End, and someone had been sent to fetch her; or after his father had seen him fed, he’d be led to the refuge where his wife and child waited. Or…

But she did not come, and when he opened his mouth to talk, his father would gesture at the bowl and quietly insist, “Eat.”

Others came and went, gathering for brief moments near their table and then moving away again, as if the Thorn had ordered whatever privacy might be possible in such a public place. And yet curiosity and wonder drew them, before politeness took them away once more.

There were no second-helpings, it seemed, unlike that earlier occasion. Bucca scraped the last spoonful of his rather scanty portion and rubbed the carven bowl with the last bite of his bread, sopping up the last of the savoury juices to help disguise the bitter aftertaste of the acorn flour. His father sat opposite, watching him eat. I’d already eaten, had been the Thorn’s excuse, but you go ahead -- which had never been an excuse in the past… and meant, to Bucca’s understanding, that the hobbits sheltering here were on short commons. It stood to reason, if the Wood were as dangerous as he’d been led to believe, by Prim’s caution, the Watchers, the disguised entrance to the hidden tunnels. Hunting for food would be as difficult as cultivating farmland – moreso, perhaps, if those who menaced the hobbits, also had hunted the local game animals to scarcity.

Laying down his spoon, he faced his father squarely. ‘Now,’ he said.

The Thorn nodded, his expression unreadable. ‘Your son lives and thrives,’ he said. ‘He’s asleep, and I’ve given orders for him to be brought when he wakens, that you might hold him once more in your arms, and behold his face.’

‘Comfrey,’ Bucca pressed. And he waited, while the silence stretched out. His heart sank, and his eyes dimmed, and his chest was tight, though he wondered if he might ever draw breath again. ‘Comfrey,’ he gasped, one hand going to his heart.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Thorn said, his voice barely audible. ‘There’s no good way to tell this…’

Bucca drew a shuddering breath and lifted his hands to cover his face. ‘How?’ he whispered.

‘We were in hiding in the Wood,’ Thorn said, his words slow and full of pain. ‘While the ground was still frozen, it was all we could do to find shelter in hollow trees and logs, hidden thickets, dens of wild creatures we were able to drive out or slay. Oh, the soldiers of the Enemy passed through quickly enough, pursuing the Men of Fornost, and we were able to hide from them. Loud they were, crashing through the Wood as they did. We could hear them, and hide, but those caught out in the open…’

‘Caught in the open,’ Bucca echoed, and suddenly he knew. ‘Angmar…’ He looked to his father with pain-filled eyes. ‘I must know.’

‘Stragglers,’ the Thorn said. ‘The main body had passed, and the Wood had been quiet for nearly a week. The snow that had been our salvation, keeping the trees from catching fire as the armies fired the towns and dwellings in passing, the snow that covered our tracks as we fled our farms and towns… well, it was our undoing.’

‘Tracks,’ Bucca said faintly.

Thorn gazed down at his clasped hands on the table for long moments. At last he raised his eyes to Bucca once more. ‘You’d have been so proud of her,’ he said at last.

Bucca took a shaking breath that ended in a sob. ‘I was,’ he said brokenly. ‘I always was.’

Thorn nodded. ‘Another group of Men, for the stragglers came in smaller groups, following after the first flood of pursuers, happened upon the tracks of hobbits in the Wood.’

Bucca nodded, not wanting to know, yet having to know.

‘Prim was ill…’ Thorn said. ‘She’d… she lost the babe she was carrying, likely from the rigours of fleeing the invaders. She had lost too much blood, was nearly too weak to move. Comfrey had been helping her along, bringing Prim and her family to a warmer shelter, and then she intended to leave young Tuck on watch while she fetched me to tend to Primrose. Prim, and Tokka’s children, and Comfrey and the babe, they had crowded into the hollow of a tree at our sentries’ alarm, but the Men, they turned aside from their march to follow hobbit tracks in the snow.’

Bucca listened, numb.

‘They huddled in their shelter, hearing the Men coming closer, ever closer, and then your Comfrey…’ Thorn took a deep breath. ‘As a bird will run across the path of the hunter, dragging a wing, to draw danger away from the nest…’

Bucca closed his eyes, turned his face away, put up a shaking hand. He needed to hear no more.

At last the Thorn continued. ‘It was difficult to keep the People safe,’ he said. ‘We learnt, from bitter experience, how to conceal our movements despite the snow, and the mud that followed after the melting; and when the ground thawed, we began our excavations beneath the forest floor, with the roots of trees for roofs, and hidden entrances. For even after the passing of the armies, there was great danger. It was those who came after…’

‘Came after,’ Bucca repeated. He didn’t want to hear, he did not, and yet he must know.

‘Evil creatures,’ Thorn said low, and lower he added, ‘sent to infest the Wood, to hunt – to hunt not just the forest animals, but hobbits as well. Creatures as those out of the old tales of the Fallohides, as before they left the Darkening Wood to cross the great Mountains, in the Time Before.’

‘Gobble-uns…’ Bucca whispered, his insides congealing in horror. ‘The Men who came with me, and the Fair Folk…’

‘I doubt the foul creatures will attack a force that comes in such strength,’ Thorn said, drawing a deep breath. ‘The reports I’ve had…’

‘Reports,’ Bucca said hoarsely. ‘You knew we were coming?’

‘I knew someone was coming,’ Thorn said. ‘We were hopeful, seeing the Fair Folk among them, and Men whose description sounded more as the Men of Fornost than the Men of Angmar. And a hobbit, said to be riding with them… I could only hope it was one of those who marched to support the King, for when you did not return, I thought…’

‘And yet you set a Watcher by the Twins,’ Bucca said.

‘Hope is a difficult thing to leave hold of,’ Thorn said. The old hobbit swallowed hard. ‘Perhaps Tokka and Marroc and the rest will yet return as well…’

‘Perhaps,’ Bucca said.

But he would never hold his beloved Comfrey in his arms again.