Chapter 2. Thain: Taking Prisoners

S.R. 1410 (T.A. 3010, about 1000 years after the time of Bucca of the Marish) 

The sweating hobbit pulled the plough ponies to a stop and wiped his face. He pulled a drinking bottle from his belt and gulped some of the lukewarm water it contained. It did little to satisfy his thirst, however. He felt as if his tongue might cleave to the roof of his mouth... He shook his head to dispel the fancy and clucked to the ponies. They leaned into their collars and he steadied the plough as it began to turn over the soil of Whittacres once more.

It was an unusually warm day in Spring, the time for ploughing and planting, for seeding and hoping, for preparing for the future. He thought about the future and scowled. Young Pip was due to turn twenty this year, and if he didn’t show any more sense than he had here-to-date the farmer didn’t like to think about what the future would hold.

He squinted at the Sun, her face in the sky hard and unfeeling, no loving caress but a burning wrath upon the land below. He heard a cry and looked up, seeing a welcome sight. His wife approached, riding a sway-backed retired plough pony that picked its way carefully across the furrows. ‘Paladin!’ she called again, waving.

He waved in reply and pulled the ponies to a stop once more. She came up to him, her face red under its floppy hat. ‘You’ll cook yourself to death, working in the heat this way,’ she scolded. ‘Why not let the hired hobbits do the ploughing? They’re younger!’

 ‘They’re at work in the other fields,’ Paladin said mildly, wiping his pocket-handkerchief across his dripping brow.

Eglantine gave a delicate snort. ‘Here,’ she said, pulling a clay jug from the sack she carried.

 He took it, marvelling at the chill, unstoppered it, and thirstily downed half the gingered water it contained, well-sweetened with honey. As he lowered the jug Eglantine smiled at him.

 ‘Cooled it well in the spring,’ she said. ‘If you’re going to half-bake yourself under the blistering Sun it’s the least I could do.’

 ‘And lets you escape from the kitchen,’ he answered with a wink.

The summer kitchen was barely more than a roof with open sides, set a little way from their dwelling. Baking could be done and meat roasted without heating the smial.

 ‘What’s Pip working at?’ Paladin said after another swig of cold, gingery sweetness.

 ‘He finished all his chores,’ Eglantine said with the confidence of an unsuspecting mother who’s been told an untruth by a trusted daughter. Truth be told, Pimpernel had finished Pip’s chores this day as she all too often did, to save her brother a hiding. ‘Nell said he went off fishing, to try to catch something for supper.’

 ‘Hope he has better luck than the last time,’ Paladin grunted. He emptied the jug and capped it again, handing it back with a nod of thanks. ‘At least fishing is better than doing mischief.’

Eglantine leaned over for a kiss, smiled and took the jug, and turned her pony back towards the smial. ‘Don’t be late for tea!’ she called over her shoulder.

 ‘I’m never late for tea!’ Paladin shouted back. He clucked to the ponies and they finished the furrow. On a whim he unhitched them from the plough and led them to the little stream that skirted the field, into the stream if the truth be told, and the three of them stood cooling their feet for a good long time in the running refreshment. Paladin let the ponies drink a bit—not too much, certainly not more than was good for them—and then they left the shade of the trees that skirted the stream, ready to tackle a few more furrows before teatime.

***

Pippin laid down his fishing gear and sighed. Neither of the neighbour lads to either side of Whittacres Farm was free to play this day. Honestly, he didn’t know why his parents wouldn’t give him leave to tramp across the fields to Hobbiton and the Hill, if not the longer tramp to Buckland. To be fishing in the River, feet dangling from a boat, cool breezes swirling over the surface of the water. Better yet, to be raiding with Merry, daringly sneaking up on an unsuspecting tray of pastries cooling in a window...

His middle gave a lurch, reminding him of the bread and cheese Nell had packed for him before shooing him out of the smial. Though she’d stuffed the bag with enough to feed three grown hobbits, it was barely enough to satisfy a tween’s appetite.

Worse, the fish weren’t biting. What was a tween to do?

The smell of baking wafted on the breeze and he lifted his nose and sniffed. Ginger biscuits, or he’d missed his guess, but he never missed his guess, now did he? He knew that they were to have seedcake for tea, so this must be a neighbour’s baking.

Laying the pole in the crook of a tree, baited line still trailing in the stream, he went in search of his quarry.

...ah, yes, Auntie Hellebore was baking up ginger biscuits, he could see from his hiding place near his aunt’s open-air kitchen, not long after. The short hike had given him new appetite, and he greedily eyed the neat files of biscuits lined up like soldiers in a picture book as they cooled on their racks. If he just took one or two from each rack, now... No one seemed to be about. No doubt Auntie Hellie was churning, or directing her daughters in their tasks. At some distance he saw linens flapping on the lines, and who knew what other work his cousins might be busy about?

In his effort to nab the largest from the first rack, he upset the entire kit-and-caboodle into the grass. He looked around, but had not yet been discovered. He wiped the rack hastily with his shirt, making it look clean and unused, and set it carefully into its holders. Perhaps they wouldn't notice and would not remember that there ought to be five racks full instead of four. He scooped up the fallen soldiers as quickly as he could, then ran back to his hiding place, chortling to himself.

 ‘Don’t you worry,’ he said to his prisoners. ‘I know just how best to take care of you!’

***

 ‘I know there were five racks full,’ Poppina said in frustration, hands on her hips. ‘It was that hot a business, baking them!’

 ‘Well,’ Hellebore Banks said, ‘it’s clear enough to me that someone’s taken them.’

 ‘Who would do such a thing?’ the indignant daughter asked, raising a hand to wipe at her flushed face. She felt like bursting into tears after all the work she’d put in.

 ‘Someone as has never heard of the king, I warrant,’ the mother said grimly.

***

Pippin caught no fish that day, and he ate less supper than he might have (though he still ate enough to make his mother exclaim in despair about the difficulties of feeding tweens), and he was gloriously dirty—dirty enough to require a bath though it was only the middle of the week.

It had been a profitable day, all around.