Chapter 54. All the King's Horses

Next morning, Elessar looked in on Pippin early. He smiled to see Diamond curled on one side of the hobbit, Farry on the other, all three peacefully sleeping, even Pippin, who’d protested that he never could sleep sitting up... but there he was.

Pungent herbs were simmering over a brazier, and had been renewed at regular intervals during the night by the healers’ assistants who watched over the hobbit. The King had left orders that he was to be called at the slightest change for the worse, but no call came. He nodded to the watcher and stepped away from the door, on his way to check the other patients.

Samwise was awake. He was by nature an early riser, and the pain of his injuries had made his sleep restless in any event, sleeping draught or no. He turned a piercing look on the King. ‘How’s Mr. Pippin?’ he demanded.

 ‘Asleep,’ Elessar said, entering. He lifted the sheet and peeped under the dressing that covered Sam’s side, nodding in satisfaction at the signs of healing. He checked the leg next, asking a few questions, ordering applications of ice for the swelling. He sent Rose to have breakfast with the Gamgee children—they’d spent the night in the care of Merry and Estella, that Samwise might have quiet and peace to sleep—and settled next to the bed.

 ‘Pippin’s breathing is much better,’ the King added, ‘but worse, perhaps, than I’d expect. I find myself wondering why.’

 ‘Ah,’ Samwise said noncommittally, and added no more.

 ‘Why would you say he’s so much worse than he ought to be?’ Elessar said.

 ‘I’m no healer,’ Sam said diffidently.

The King laughed. ‘I can certainly see why they roped you in as chief conspirator!’

 ‘I beg your pardon,’ Sam said.

Elessar fixed him with a stern eye. ‘You know very well what I mean,’ he said. ‘And now I wish to know what has happened, in the meantime, since you all returned from Gondor.’

 ‘Which time?’ Sam wanted to know. ‘Pippin’s been to Gondor more than once.’

Elessar felt some hope that he might be unearthing some gem of truth.  Leaning forward, he said, ‘I know that something has happened. The first few times he returned to the Southlands he seemed no different than when he’d left, but after he married, when he brought his wife and little son...’

 ‘Ah, when little Farry was but a faunt,’ Sam said, nodding wisely. ‘I remember, Merry was quite insistent that they travel south that winter.’

Elessar pounced upon this. ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘He was thinner than I remembered. I recall thinking that married life was not all that good for him! ...until I saw how attentive Diamond was, how she anticipated his needs, how devoted she was to him, and how he doted on her. Yet he was thinner, and had less energy, less substance, less...’

 ‘Less...’ Sam said softly, his expression reminding the King of a time he’d happened upon Sam and Frodo in the gardens of Minas Tirith, after the coronation. Frodo had been asleep, and Sam sat beside him on guard, almost as if he feared his beloved master would slip away... as he did, eventually.

 ‘What happened to him?’ Elessar said in his most persuasive tones.

Sam smiled faintly. ‘Such a ruffian,’ he said. ‘You used that same tone, trying to persuade Mr Frodo to take you on, to let you guide him through the Wilderland. I was sure you meant to bash his head in, to steal It, you know.’

 ‘I know,’ Elessar said with a smile of his own, but then he sobered and said, ‘What happened to Pippin? If I knew I might be able to help him.’

 ‘There’s no help for what ails him,’ Samwise said. ‘They don’t know how he’s managed to last as long as he has, but I could tell them. He’s the same stubborn Took that followed his cousin into horror and War, and did his bit, and came back again.’

 ‘No help... for what?’ Elessar said, holding tight to his temper as his frustration grew.

Sam looked him right in the eye and shook his head. ‘It’s not my news to tell,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t want you to fret, to worry, to hover over him as if he’s about to die any day... even if he is. About to, I mean. Which he isn’t, at least in my estimation.’

When Elessar had sifted through this remarkable speech he was no nearer an answer, though he did not like the implication that was staring him in the face.

 ‘They’ve given him up,’ he said, echoing Elladan’s earlier summation.

Sam pursed his lips and nodded slowly. ‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘But then, he’s more stubborn than they give him credit for. A great deal like his cousin Mr Frodo, you might say, who went farther than any of the Wise expected, I think.’

There was not much to be said in answer to this, and so they talked on of inconsequential things until Rose returned from breakfast, bringing the children’s greetings.

Next Elessar went to see Hildibold.

Hilly was in more misery than the previous day, for the muscles had stiffened overnight. As the King entered, a healer’s assistant was arguing with the escort.

 ‘None of your brews,’ Hilly was saying.

 ‘It’s only willow-bark tea,’ Posey soothed. ‘You ought to drink it, do!’

Hilly glared at his wife. ‘You’re taking their part?’ he demanded.

Posey laughed. ‘I don’t think you have any ground to stand on,’ she said. ‘You, who got Nell to give Ferdi a sleeping draught that kept him sleeping for days! At least this is just willow-bark tea!’

 ‘It won’t put me to sleep,’ Hilly said suspiciously.

 ‘It won’t,’ the healer’s assistant said. ‘It’ll ease you somewhat, but it won’t make you sleepy.’

 ‘Contusions and abrasions,’ Hilly grumbled, hearkening back to the previous day’s conversations. ‘Why don’t you just say “bruises and scrapes”? And what, exactly, do you mean when you say “ease”?’

 ‘Ease,’ the healer’s assistant said firmly.

Posey held out her hands. ‘Give the cup to me,’ she said. ‘You said you hadn’t had your breakfast yet, and my husband is holding you up.’

Elessar nodded dismissal, and the assistant bowed and took her leave.

 ‘Ease,’ Posey said. ‘It’ll give you ease. You know you’re so stiff you can scarcely move, and you were groaning in your sleep.’

Hilly looked horrified at this news, whether it was his wife’s speaking so before the King, or that he’d kept Posey wakeful, but in any event, he grabbed the cup from her, wincing, and downed the mixture.

 ‘That wasn’t so difficult,’ Posey said briskly. ‘Now, I’ll just go and see about second breakfast.’ She made a graceful courtesy to the King. ‘If you wouldn’t mind sitting on him for a moment, my Lord? I doubt he’d stir from the bed, but you never know, stubborn Took that he is.’

 ‘I have some experience with stubborn Tooks,’ Elessar replied with a bow, and Posey dimpled at him and then withdrew.

 ‘Well then, Hilly,’ the King said, settling himself.

 ‘She knew I wanted a word,’ Hilly said unexpectedly.

 ‘A word?’ the King said.

 ‘Aye,’ Hilly said, and hesitated. At last he said, ‘And how is the little princess this morning?’

 ‘Bright and cheerful and into mischief as if it were any other day,’ Elessar said. ‘Thanks to you.’

Hilly made a face and seemed to push the words away. His mouth worked, but the words that emerged came as a surprise to the King.

 ‘Can you not give the stuff to Pippin?’

Taken aback, Elessar stared at the hobbit.

 ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said carefully.

 ‘Don’t waste it on me,’ Hilly said firmly. ‘I’ve already had my share, and I can heal from my ills just fine without any fancy elvish elixir.’

On an impulse the King gently placed the back of his hand against Hilly’s forehead. ‘You’re feverish,’ he said, frowning in concern.

 ‘Well the willow-bark ought to “ease” that just fine,’ Hilly said, with a twist of his mouth on the word the healer’s assistant had used. ‘But can you not use it on Pippin? Will you not give him the same healing as Ferdi got?’

 ‘I don’t understand,’ Elessar said.

Hilly gave an explosive sigh of exasperation. ‘The draught—the elixir!’ he said. ‘Ferdi had the Old Gaffer’s— the lung fever, and they’d given him up for lost. He was dying, I could see it in his face, had seen it often enough when my da treated hobbits drowning of it... Nell got him to drink the draught and it brought him back from the edge of the grave. Why won’t you give some to Pippin? Put it in his goblet at supper if he won’t take it on his own bent.’

 ‘When, exactly, did Pippin have the Old Gaffer’s Friend?’ Elessar said, sitting back and striving for a casual tone, though he was tense with expectation.

 ‘Why, ‘twas a year or two before he married Diamond,’ Hilly said. ‘They were handfasted not long after he was out of danger, as I recall, and he slept through most of the celebration that followed. He’d been so ill, you know, they despaired of his life and his parents travelled to Buckland where he was visiting at the time, riding the daylong without stopping and on through the night to bid him farewell. But then he was too stubborn to die, as it turned out. They were married... two years after the handfasting?’ Elessar sat patiently as Hilly continued to remember aloud. Hilly had been part of the escort that had accompanied old Thain Paladin to the wedding at Long Cleeve, and he spoke at length about the affair, and the estrangement between Pippin and his father the Thain because of Pippin’s choice of wife, and Pippin’s return to Tookland to take up the office of Thain after Paladin’s death.

The escort stopped suddenly in the middle of his reminiscing. ‘Regi said,’ he reported, and stopped, then started again. ‘Regi said that it wouldn’t take much to carry him off. A good lungful of dust, or smoke, or even a cold, if it went to his chest...’ He forced himself to meet Elessar’s eyes. ‘Will you not give him of that wondrous draught? If you were thinking of giving me some, after that soak in the river, well, let me get over my ills the usual way, and save my portion for Pippin?’

 ‘You say he suffered the illness two years before he married Diamond?’ Elessar said quietly. He contrasted the Pippin he’d known before that time, with the Pippin who’d travelled to Gondor with Diamond and their young son. ‘It must have been a serious bout.’

 ‘Near to ripped the lungs out o’ him,’ Hilly confirmed. ‘Regi says, he doesn’t know what Pippin uses for breathing, really.’

 ‘Ah,’ Elessar said, falling back on Sam’s favourite noncommittal expression.

 ‘I’ll help Master Meriadoc to talk him round,’ Hilly said. ‘Do you have some of the stuff ready, or do you have to send to that Homely House for it?’ His expression took on a trace of alarm. ‘Don’t tell me that Bucklander’s been given the last of it!’

 ‘Hilly,’ Elessar said gently, holding up a restraining hand.

 ‘But...’ Hilly insisted. ‘If it helped Ferdi, as if he’d been made new...?’

 ‘Ferdi received the draught before lasting damage had been done,’ Elessar said.

 ‘But...’ Hilly said again.

 ‘Pippin would not let me examine him before this, and I only got a brief “listen” to his breathing, and that only because he was in desperate straits,’ the King said, ‘but I heard enough. The Old Gaffer’s Friend “near to ripped the lungs out of him”, you said, and you had the right of it.’

 ‘But the draught...’ Hilly persisted.

 ‘Hilly,’ Elessar said, placing a restraining hand on the hobbit’s arm. ‘You’re a healer’s son. What did your father teach you about wounds, and scars?’

 ‘He taught me that a wound must be treated just so, that when you sew someone up you have to trim away any flesh that would scar and stiffen, and that you must massage balm into the skin to keep it soft,’ Hilly said, as if reciting a long-ago lesson. ‘I learnt that much, afore I told him I’d rather go for a hunter than a healer.’

Elessar nodded. ‘What can be done about a scar, after the fact?’ he asked.

 ‘Not much,’ Hilly said. ‘Not that I know, anyhow.’

Elessar nodded again. ‘Pippin’s lungs were damaged when a troll fell on him in battle,’ he said. ‘His ribs were broken, his... insides were torn. There was damage, and scarring in the healing, though we did what we could.’

 ‘Aye,’ Hilly said. ‘He told us of the troll. Made a great joke of it, but I’ve seen his ribs, and they surely don’t look as they ought.’

 ‘Still, he healed, and healed well,’ Elessar said. ‘A man so crushed would most likely have died, or been bedridden ever after. But Pippin was on his feet long before I'd have credited it, and soon was much himself again.’

 ‘Aye,’ Hilly said, wondering at the King’s meaning.

 ‘But he still had times when he was short of breath,’ Elessar said. ‘And colds were a danger to him, even then, for he had less to breathe with than he’d had before.’ His eyes bored into Hilly’s. ‘And the Old Gaffer’s Friend left yet more damage, more scars...’

 ‘But the draught...’ Hilly said stubbornly.

 ‘What can be done to heal a scar?’ Elessar asked again, and the hobbit closed his mouth, tears welling in his eyes. ‘Hilly...’ the King said softly.

 ‘But you’ve got to help him,’ Hilly said desperately. ‘You’ve got to! He’ll die!’ He'd come to terms with losing his beloved Posey; truly he envisioned his own end when hers came, and the Shire would go on as ever without them; but Pippin... the Shire needed him!

 ‘I’m sorry, Hilly,’ Elessar said. ‘You’ve earned anything that is in my power to give you, but this thing you ask... it is not in my power. I cannot heal him.’

 ‘Please,’ Hilly whispered, and then he covered his face with his hands. The King sat a long time, an understanding hand on the hobbit’s shoulder, and he said nothing, for there was nothing more to be said.