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All That Glisters  by Lindelea

Chapter 68. Trial by Conscience

For the first time, Arwen spoke. ‘Peregrin?’

There was a long moment of silence, and then Pippin whispered, ‘ ‘Tis true.’

 ‘What is true?’ Elessar asked.

Pippin raised his head to stare into the King’s face, despair darkening his countenance. ‘All of it,’ he said. ‘I did not tell you all, when we returned.’

 The King nodded, and waited.

 ‘It is why I agreed to go to Gondor with you,’ Pippin said, and Diamond gasped, while Merry brightened momentarily, and as quickly fell sober.

 ‘You... agreed to go to Gondor?’ Merry said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘But you never said... you never told me.’ He nodded as if answering his own question. ‘Of course,’ he said, nodding. ‘You said you’d tell me at summer’s end, and you were always one to keep your word.’

 ‘Pippin?’ Diamond said, looking searchingly into her husband’s face. She took his hand, but he pulled away from her, clasping his hands together with a desperation that tore at her heart, and the look he flashed her mixed grief and despair.

 ‘No...’ he choked. ‘You cannot... I had planned to go alone.’

 ‘Alone!’ Diamond gasped, her hand at her heart. Surely she was being torn in two. Pippin would go off to a far country, never to return, and leave her?

Pippin looked steadily into the face of the King. ‘In my country,’ he said, ‘it is the penalty for what I’ve done. Banishment.’ Merry gave a jerk, but Pippin continued implacably. ‘Exile.’

 ‘For what you’ve done,’ the King echoed.

Pippin raised his chin, his expression filled with anguish. ‘I’m a murderer,’ he said. ‘I acted with malice.’

Merry protested. ‘He’d just thrown your son to his death...! So far as you knew,’ he amended, in defence of the truth.

 ‘I took the King’s justice into my own hands,’ Pippin said, and raised a shaking hand to wipe his brow. ‘Vengeance, not justice,’ he muttered. ‘And I ordered the death of an innocent Man.

 ‘You didn’t know he was innocent at the time,’ Hilly said. ‘And you stayed my hand when I was about to shoot, just as Frodo Baggins did after the Battle of Bywater, when he stopped us from shooting the ruffians who’d surrendered.’

 ‘I’m no Frodo Baggins,’ Pippin said bitterly. ‘It was mercy in him, mercy that I lacked.’

 ‘It was pity that stayed his hand,’ Merry murmured, thinking of Gollum.

 ‘Frodo showed mercy,’ Pippin said, ‘and so mercy was shown him in the end.’

 ‘And you told me not to shoot the old Man,’ Hilly said stubbornly.

 ‘But not out of mercy,’ Pippin countered. ‘Cold, hard calculation, rather. He had a rope, he could save my son, and once he’d carried Farry to safety you were free to shoot, as I told you.’

 ‘To shoot, if he turned to the opposite bank,’ Hilly said. ‘In order to keep him from carrying Farry off!’

Pippin only shook his head. ‘There was no mercy in me,’ he said. ‘I murdered him, in my heart, long minutes before he turned and brought my son to me.’ He laughed, a humourless sound. ‘ “At your service,” he said, “and your family’s service.” ’ Pippin laughed harshly again, and wiped impatiently at his eyes. ‘And for that I’d have murdered him.’

 ‘But...’ Merry said, and Pippin turned to him for the first time.

 ‘Intent to do harm,’ he said sternly. ‘That is all it takes, Merry, as you well know. Malice, with intent to do harm. That’s banishment, and for a very good reason.’

 ‘To protect the Shire-folk,’ Merry said. ‘Yes, I know, it’s been drilled into me from my father’s knee. Just as Frodo said: No hobbit has ever killed another on purpose in the Shire; and you and I are bound by oath to maintain that spirit.’

 ‘But they were Men!’ Hilly said in consternation. ‘Would you banish every Took that ever shot a Man?’

 ‘The Tooks were at war,’ Pippin said, ‘defending their land from the ruffians. I know, Hilly, that Ferdi never took a life lightly. Nell told me he still dreams of the ruffians whose lives he cut short, that their deaths haunt him still.’

Hilly dropped his eyes. ‘Aye,’ he said softly. He had his own memories and dreams to contend with.

 ‘I threw a stone, when the damage was done,’ Pippin said. ‘Farry and Pip-lad were already in the stream. The ruffian was running away, no menace any longer. The King’s Men were coming, and I doubt he’d’ve got far. They’d’ve hunted him down and brought him to face the King’s justice.’

 ‘Pippin,’ Merry protested.

 ‘It was not my life to take!’ Pippin said bitterly. ‘And worse...’
 
 ‘Worse?’ Elessar said quietly. Arwen stood mute, but a single tear glistened upon one cheek.

Pippin looked back to the King. ‘I had thought to exile myself,’ he said, ‘to protect the Shire-folk from the black stain on my heart.’

Diamond was weeping, shuddering, silent sobs, and Merry put an arm around her.

 ‘Yes,’ Elessar said, and waited.

 ‘But then I realised,’ Pippin said, ‘that my crime took place not in my own land, but in the land of Men, where penalties are different.’ He swallowed hard. ‘For what I have done, for slaying an unarmed Man, indeed, a Man running away... what would the penalty be, Strider?’

 ‘Of old, death was the penalty for such a crime,’ Elessar said.

 ‘And so I ought to hang on that fine new gallows before the Gate,’ Pippin said. ‘Out of my own mouth you have it, my King.’

 ‘But...’ Hilly said desperately.

 ‘Justice is the King’s,’ Pippin said, ‘and the King’s alone. Even lesser Men who mete out justice do so in the name of the King.’

 ‘What sort of justice is that?’ Hilly demanded in outrage.

 ‘It is the justice of Law, stark, demanding, unyielding,’ Elessar said, rising from the throne and descending the steps, step by slow step.

Diamond caught her breath in fear, but Merry’s arm tightened around her.

 ‘But that is why there is a King to administer the Law,’ Elessar continued.

Pippin bowed his head at the King’s approach, and Elessar stood a long moment gazing down at the hobbit before he put out his hand, gentle fingers under Pippin’s chin raising his face to meet the King’s eyes.

 ‘The heart of a grieving father, in the heat of the moment, as his loss overwhelmed him,’ Elessar said. ‘That is what I see before me. It is not the heart of a murderer, for such a one would not have so bitterly mourned the death he wrought, nor regretted the death he ordered, even though it never came to pass.’

 ‘I...’ Pippin whispered. Elessar removed his hand, and the hobbit bowed again, burying his face in his hands, and burst into bitter weeping.

Suddenly Arwen was there, at her husband’s side, her eyes filled with knowing sorrow. ‘Not all tears are evil,’ she murmured as she took her husband’s hand.

Diamond and Merry surrounded Pippin with their arms, supporting him as he sagged in their embrace. The walls had been breached at last.





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