Author's Note: Chapter 3 has been adjusted slightly since its original posting to reflect that Merry was due to arrive at teatime the *following* day, but rode through the night to arrive when he did.

Chapter 4. Truth and Consequences

Tea in the Thain’s private parlour was a relaxed affair. Ferdi’s first weeks as head of escort to the newly confirmed Thain Peregrin had been uncomfortable at best, but since their rocky beginning two years previous he’d grown used to moving in the high circles of Tookish society, and now as Pippin’s special assistant (not to mention, his brother-in-love), Ferdi could sit back and relax as Diamond poured out and Pippin handed round the cups.

The servants had been dismissed, allowing for unconstrained conversation, though Ferdi suspected that Pippin’s personal hobbitservant, Sandy, and the healer on duty stayed within hailing distance.

Pippin unobtrusively touched Merry’s right hand as he laid down Merry’s tea convenient to his cousin’s able left hand.

 ‘Cold,’ he said frowning. ‘You really oughtn’t to have ridden so soon after...’ He broke off as Merry cleared his throat, took up the cup from the saucer, and murmured thanks.

 ‘Would you prefer seedcake or dried-apple tart, Ferdi?’ Diamond said brightly.

Ferdi elected apple tart as calmly as if a close-held family secret had not nearly been brought out in the open. It was rumoured that the Master of Buckland celebrated the anniversary of some battle down in the Southlands each year by drinking himself into a stupor. Ferdi didn't find it too hard to credit. “Drunk as a Brandybuck” was a byword amongst the Tooks, after all. It was some years later that he learned the truth of Merry’s annual bout with Shadow.

 ‘It’s always cold,’ Merry said conversationally, looking down at his all-but-useless arm in its sling. ‘It never healed properly after that ruffian’s arrow, you know.’ The previous year, a small party of hobbits riding to Bree had been taken by surprise; Merry and Estella had been the only survivors, rescued barely in time by Rangers. The arrow had been removed with great care from his shoulder, the wound had healed over time, but Merry never regained use of his arm.

Merry had learned to do much with his left hand over the past months, even taken up his pen once more, though he had long and patient work to learn to write in a fair hand. Now he said, too casually, ‘The healers are telling me to have it off altogether.’

 ‘Off!’ Pippin exclaimed in horror.

 ‘It’s of no use, and it’s rather a nuisance, really, always getting in my way,’ Merry said.

 ‘You cannot be serious!’ Pippin said, but Merry shook his head.

 ‘I must admit they have a point,’ he said. ‘If it slips out of the sling it does flop around most inconveniently.’

Pippin sputtered, and Ferdi offered a vehement protest of his own, while Pimpernel sat in silent dismay. Healers!

Diamond leaned forward. ‘But...’ she said softly.

Merry turned to her with a raised eyebrow. ‘But...?’ he prompted.

 ‘But there’s something else,’ Diamond said, setting her teacup aside. ‘Something you haven’t said. Some reason you’re not listening to the healers...’

 ‘Other than having too much Tookish sense on your mother’s side, to listen to such nonsense!’ Pippin said angrily.

Merry smiled and looked into his teacup. ‘There is one hope yet,’ he said. ‘Something hobbit healers wouldn’t know to take into consideration.’

Pippin, of course, followed the thought at once. ‘Strider!’ he said.

At the others’ confused looks, Merry nodded and smiled. ‘I put great store in the healing hands of the King, you know,’ he said.

 ‘I’d heard something to that effect,’ Diamond said, but Pimpernel continued to look mystified. Ferdi, however, was working things out.

 ‘Something that happened in the Southlands, I suppose,’ Ferdi said slowly, looking from Pippin to Merry and back again. He sucked in a breath, thinking of his cousin’s ruined ribs, the obvious scars of terrible injury that very few had seen; and yet his cousin breathed, walked, even laughed and sang. ‘Healing hands,’ he whispered.

 ‘Aye, cousin,’ Pippin said softly, taking the hand Diamond held out to him and giving it a reassuring squeeze. Indeed, Elessar had brought him back from the brink of death. ‘The hands of the King are healing hands. That was the prophecy, and Elessar proved himself thereby.’ He picked up his cup with his free hand and sipped at the strong, black tea. It was not quite as scalding hot as he preferred, and he set the cup down again nearly full. ‘And I was not the only one to benefit from the King’s healing powers.’

Merry looked down into his own cup. ‘There were many who profited,’ he said. ‘Many who would have been lost without Elessar’s skills, without his gift.’ He looked up again with a smile. ‘In any event, he’ll meet us at the Bridge in less than a fortnight! I intend to ask for his opinion.’

 ‘I certainly hope he gives you more than mere opinion, cousin!’ Ferdi said, and Pippin nodded vigorous agreement.

Merry turned the conversation from himself. ‘You’re looking well, Pippin,’ he said. ‘I do believe life amongst the Tooks is agreeing with you.’

 ‘Hard to credit, what with the disagreeable nature of the Tooks,’ Ferdi said dryly.

 ‘Now, Ferdi!’ Pimpernel remonstrated, but her husband only laughed.

 ‘Indeed, they take great care of me,’ Pippin said. ‘My least wish is their greatest desire! Why, should I express the slightest longing, say, for honey-cured bacon from the North Farthing, it’ll appear on my breakfast table within a day or two, allowing time for a swift messenger to ride northwards and back again with a sackful of the stuff.’

 ‘I thought you were looking well-fed,’ Merry said with satisfaction. ‘D’you suppose it would work, in my case?’

 ‘I do not know,’ Pippin said thoughtfully. He turned to Diamond. ‘What is your opinion on the matter, my dear?’

 ‘I think that Merry would have to express his wish to the Thain, and the Thain would have to repeat that wish in the hearing of the steward, as if it were his own in origin, for such an event to have any promise whatsoever,’ Diamond answered.

 ‘Ah, that clears things up marvellously,’ Pippin said. ‘Offer me any wish, with a sufficient bribe, of course, cousin, and I will repeat it in the hearing of the most excellent steward of Tookland as if it sprang whole and in its entirety from my thought.’

 ‘A sufficient bribe?’ Merry echoed, bemused.

Pippin harrumphed like an old uncle and fixed Merry with a gimlet eye. ‘Do you think Northfarthing honey-cured bacon grows upon trees?’ he demanded. ‘It comes dear, very dear indeed, especially when one takes into account the cost of swift pony and rider!’

 ‘Unless of course the swift rider is the Thain’s special assistant,’ Ferdi said, leaning back with a grin. ‘In which case his salary covers all such expense. It helps, of a certainty, that said assistant owns the fastest pony in the Shire.’

 ‘Ferdi!’ Pippin said severely. ‘How ever am I to chisel gold out of my Brandybuck cousin’s hide if you insist upon being so dashedly truthful?’

Pimpernel and Diamond were laughing out loud by this juncture, and tea ended very merrily indeed.

***

That evening, after telling the little ones their nightly story and tucking them up in their beds, Pimpernel and Ferdi sought their own bed, snuggling together as drowsiness stole over them.

Pimpernel sighed.

 ‘What is it, Nell my own?’ Ferdi murmured into her curls, adding a kiss for good measure.

 ‘I do hope that king-fellow can help Merry,’ she said softly. ‘I hate to think of him...’

 ‘I lived with a useless arm for quite some time, after the Battle of Bywater,’ Ferdi said. ‘I agree, it can be quite a nuisance.’

 ‘But your arm got better,’ Pimpernel said. ‘The healers never tried to tell you to have it off!’

 ‘I wouldn’t have listened to them if they had,’ Ferdi said. ‘And it did get better, at last,’ he added. ‘We’ll hope for the best for our cousin’s sake.’

He held Nell close, stroking her back gently until he felt her relaxing into sleep. When her breaths came deep and even, he closed his own eyes.

The face of the doomed boy stared reproachfully from the darkness.

He opened his eyes hastily, and gazed long at the familiar, comforting, rounded ceiling above. A dream, he said to himself. A memory only.

He was weary, and in no time his eyes were closing of their own accord.

The boy waited.

Ferdi jerked half-upright. Nell murmured a sleepy protest, and he soothed her back to sleep. When her breaths came once more deep and even, he eased himself from the bed. He’d go for a ride, or a walk under the stars, if the night were clear. Surely a little fresh air would clear his head.

But when he returned to his bed a few hours before dawn, the memory of the boy was still waiting for Ferdibrand to close his eyes.