Chapter 4. Tea and Conversation

Eglantine kept talking—it was something she’d never had any trouble with at all, in her long life. Her cheerful talk was one of the things that had attracted Paladin’s attention in years past, the contrast between her bustling, noisy family and his own taciturn father. She’d learned over the years that her tongue was a weapon she could use for good or ill, and now she brought all her forces to bear on Tolly.

She was in the midst of an anecdote about chasing Pippin all about the farmyard when the escort interrupted. ‘Don’t let them.’

  ‘Don’t let them what?’ she said, sitting back in surprise.

 ‘Take my legs,’ he said. ‘Don’t let them take my legs.’

 ‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?’ she huffed in exasperation.

The muddy head moved restlessly before the eyes turned to her once more. ‘Don’t let them,’ he repeated. ‘Please. I’d rather not go on, if I don’t have the legs to go on.’

The play on words was Tolly all over, Eglantine thought, even as she grasped his meaning.

 ‘What sort of nonsense...?’ she began.

 ‘I saw... I saw them take the legs off a hobbit, stuck under a tree,’ he said. He gulped and made a face at the taste in his mouth. ‘Is there any water?’

 ‘I’m sorry, lad, there’s all the water in the world,’ Eglantine said, looking at the spreading floodwaters below them, ‘and none fit for the drinking.’ She stroked the mud-caked hair back from Tolly’s forehead. ‘Who took the legs off a hobbit?’

 ‘Da, and Mardi,’ Tolly said, and Eglantine nodded. Tolly was the son of a healer, and his oldest brother had followed in their father’s footsteps. The escort closed his eyes. ‘I helped,’ he said in a bitter whisper. ‘We couldn’t get the tree off, and Elber’s legs were crushed anyways... I helped to hold down his shoulders whilst they sawed away...’

Dumb with horror, Eglantine merely nodded.

Tolly gave her an earnest look and closed his eyes again, turning his face away. ‘Don’t let them,’ he repeated.

Eglantine found her tongue. ‘Or what?’ she snapped. ‘Or Meadowsweet must go through life with no husband to help her raise those hobbits you helped her to make?’

Tolly opened his eyes and turned to her again, helplessness and defeat in his expression. ‘She’d be better off,’ he whispered.

 ‘We’re feeling O-so-sorry for ourselves!’ Eglantine hissed. ‘Half a hobbit isn’t better than none, I take it? And when my husband took to his bed, do you think I should have turned away from him, for the fact that he could no longer make half his body answer to his will?’

Tolly stared at her, wordless.

 ‘If Sweetie were the one lying here, would you not do all in your power to save her, to keep her with you, even if it meant a long life of being her servant forever more?’

 ‘I am her servant,’ Tolly said, stung. ‘Her least wish is my...’ He’d moved injudiciously and the words ended in a wince.

 ‘And would you stop loving her, serving her, showering her with blessing should she lose her legs, or her tongue, or those long, lovely curls that you love to run your fingers through?’

For all he was a hobbit grown, Tolly blushed. ‘How did you...?’ he asked.

 ‘Don’t change the subject,’ Eglantine snapped. ‘Would you stop loving her?’

 ‘No,’ Tolly whispered, closing his eyes again.

 ‘Then pay her the same courtesy that she’d pay you,’ Eglantine said more gently. ‘Now where was I...? O yes, little Pippin had the cat in such a tight grip that she was scratching him something awful, and he was screaming and trying to run away, and I was chasing him shouting at him to let the cat go...’

***

Pimpernel had not been all that disturbed when her mother did not arrive in time for tea; Pippin and Ferdibrand saw to that. They diverted her with tales that made her laugh until she protested, holding her side, and then Ferdi put an arm around her and glared at Pippin.

 ‘Shameful, the way you carry on,’ he mock-scolded the Thain. ‘Why, the poor lass is breathless and still you must continue the tale...’

 ‘No I mustn’t!’ Pippin countered, even as his beaming gaze moved from his wife’s flushed and laughing face to his sister’s. ‘For it’s you who usually tells from this point on, as I—ahem!—was stuck in the well and did not see the panic that ensued in the farmyard!’

 ‘I never thought I’d laugh at that memory,’ Pimpernel wheezed. ‘Why, we thought you dead and drowned, and Mother was weeping and Vinca was screaming and Da bellowing and...’

 ‘...and they were looking in the wrong well,’ Ferdi said, sitting back and sipping at his cup. ‘You cannot blame Folco that he said a grey door rather than a green on the abandoned smial; he doesn’t see all colours, you know!’

 ‘Who’d have a grey door?’ Diamond asked in astonishment.

 ‘Ah, the paint had all weathered away and the wood turned grey from age,’ Pippin explained, taking a sip of his own tea.

 ‘And so they were looking in the wrong well?’ Diamond said.

 ‘Aye,’ Pimpernel gasped. ‘And it really was not funny at the time!’ Pippin easily evaded the ladylike kick she aimed at his ankle.

 ‘Of course it wasn’t, my dear,’ Ferdi said, in perfect satisfaction at this evidence of the raising of his wife’s spirits.

There was no raising of Pimpernel’s spirits at the eventide meal, however. She was fighting tears, and ate nothing, barely sipping at her tea. ‘It’ll be dark in an hour,’ she said, resisting Ferdi’s blandishments and attempts to tempt her with her favourite sweet. ‘Truly, with the clouds lowering it seems dark already.’

 ‘I’d wager they took the long way round, what with all the rain we’ve had this past week,’ Ferdi said.

Pimpernel gave him a sharp glance. ‘And another storm on the way, I think.’

 ‘Eh? What’s that?’ Ferdi asked.

 ‘You have that look about your eyes... your head is giving you pain. Don’t look at me that way! I know you hide it from Pippin, and perhaps even Regi doesn’t know, for all his attention to detail, but I know you too well, Ferdi-love. Whenever the weather changes your head hurts you.’

 ‘At least we’ll never be surprised by a change in the weather,’ Ferdibrand said, capitulating suddenly as was his wont with Nell, if no one else. He could never keep anything from her... but he could try to keep her from her worry. ‘But I’m sure they took the long way round, by way of the roads, instead of across the Green Hills. Tolly is far too canny a hobbit to ride a dangerous trail, not even at the insistence of the Thain or his mother!’

 ‘Are you sure of that?’ Pimpernel said, raising an eyebrow. ‘I can remember a time or two Pippin persuaded him...’

 ‘They were much younger, then,’ Ferdi said dismissively. ‘In any event, I’m sure they took tea at the Cockerel this very day and are, even as we speak, riding to the Great Smials, into the darkness if need be, just so that your mother may be here for your birthday breakfast.’

 ‘I hate to put her to such trouble,’ Pimpernel said perversely.

Ferdi shook a finger at her. ‘You put her through a deal more trouble at the start of all this birthday business,’ he said sternly. He sealed her surprised laughter with a kiss.

Best of all, she began to eat the food he’d set before her.