Chapter 5. Bedtime Stories

Eglantine had just finished singing a many-versed song in her high, reedy voice when Tolly pulled his hand free from her grasp. ‘Dark,’ he said.

 ‘Yes, it is getting dark,’ Eglantine agreed, recapturing the hand and giving it a firm squeeze. ‘I’m here, Tolly. I won’t leave you.’ Her cheerful tone belied the chill in her heart, more than the chill of the autumn evening descending on her, damp and muddy as she was. She’d heard such before, from dying hobbits as the light left their eyes. She hoped Tolly wasn’t injured badly enough to be dying now—but how could she tell, with him pinned beneath the branching bole of a heavy tree as he was?

He shook his head and tried to pull his hand away once more. ‘No,’ he said fretfully. ‘Go now, while you can still see the ground. Go to safer ground. Leave me; the birds are gone.’

 ‘I am staying right here,’ Eglantine said with a decisive nod. ‘You may order me about all you like, but it won’t do any good. I’ve slipped the escort.’ So many times her son had evaded the hobbits assigned to ride with him, a part of their duty to the son of the Thain. Tolly himself had been on water rations more than once for such “neglect” of his duty: Though it was Pippin’s fault, the hobbits of the escort were assigned the blame. There was something wrong with this state of affairs, Eglantine pondered. She ought to take it up with Pippin before Farry grew old enough to seek mischief.

Tolly’s eyes widened, and suddenly he was choking. Eglantine soothed and fussed until she realised that, rather than dying, he was fighting laughter.

 ‘Go on with you,’ she said with a gentle push to his shoulder.

 ‘Mistress,’ he gasped, closing his eyes and breathing as deeply as he could against the pressing weight, until he mastered himself once more. Opening his eyes he was sober again.  ‘Go,’ he said, raising his head slightly to emphasise his words. ‘I’m responsible for your safety...’

 ‘Seems as if I ought to take a little more responsibility, myself,’ Eglantine countered. ‘If aught happens to me, Tolly, it’s not your lookout. You did your duty.’

 ‘My duty,’ he said bleakly, all laughter gone. ‘I’ve failed, and miserably. Look at us, stranded here on a landfall, and if the land slips again we’ll be drowned, more than likely.’ He moved his head, frustration twisting his features. ‘Please Mistress, take yourself to safety at least.’

 ‘And who says it would be safety?’ Eglantine demanded. ‘I’m as safe here as anywhere. More so, for what if I were to slip, trying to make my way across the fall, and end up in the water? At least here you can keep half an eye on me!’

In the gathering gloom she could just see that Tolly had closed his eyes once more. ‘Duty,’ he whispered, and was still.

Eglantine fumbled for his throat, holding her breath until she found the life-pulse beating there. She let her breath out in a sigh and shuddered more deeply into her cloak, taking the escort’s hand in both of hers once more. ‘Duty,’ she said softly. ‘You were ever one to do your duty, lad. From the day you could walk you were watching over your younger brother, and when you grew up you became escort to the Thain and his family. Bless you, lad, for your lifetime of loyal service, and may it not end here in the mud! But now even though you’re trapped, and helpless, your duty is not ended—it is to be obedient as ever, and listen to what I tell you, and hold on with all you have until our rescue comes. For once let someone else watch over you...’

He didn't answer, but Eglantine squeezed his hand and launched into young Pippin's favourite bedtime tale.

***

Pippin and Diamond sat together on the hearthrug with Faramir sharing both their laps as the Thain told his young son a bedtime story.

 ‘Attercop! Attercop!’ the lad shouted with delight. ‘Tomnoddy!’

 ‘Pippin,’ Diamond remonstrated, though she was laughing at the tangled-up legs of the furious spiders as her husband embroidered upon Bilbo’s tale. ‘Do you think he ought to learn such words, at his tender age?’

 ‘It’s all part of the tale,’ Pippin said with a wink. ‘D’you think he’s going to forget his manners and go about insulting the spiders of the Smials?’

There was a flurry at the door to the sitting room, and then an apologetic servant was bowing before them. ‘Beg pardon, Sir, but something’s come up...’

 ‘Thain’s business is never done,’ Diamond sighed.

Pippin distributed kisses between wife and son and rose. ‘What is it, Sandy?’ he said. ‘It’s well after eventides...’

 ‘Come, Farry, it’s past your bedtime,’ Diamond said, lifting the little hobbit.

 ‘But I want my story!’ Faramir protested. 'Bilbo hadn't got away from the spiders, not yet! I want to hear the rest!'

 ‘Do you now, young master?’ Sandy said, having finished a quick low-voiced exchange with the Thain. ‘Well, it seems I know that story of Bilbo-and-the-spiders just as well as any Took, and maybe better, since I heard the old gentlehobbit himself telling the tale in my youth! Got it straight from the pony’s mouth, so to speak! You come along with me, now, and I’ll give it to you word-for-word as he told it...’ He took the lad from his mother and, still talking, walked out of the sitting room.

Diamond joined Pippin, who’d taken his cloak from the peg by the door and was ready to help her into her own heavy cloak. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

 ‘A messenger from the Greentuck Valley,’ Pippin said. ‘Floodwaters are rising fast; many have come away with their lives alone. Their smials, their storeholes, their byres and barns...’

 ‘How could a flood come up so fast?’ Diamond said. Surely if a flood had come down the Greenvale stream there’d have been disaster closer at hand in Tuckborough, for the Greenvale emptied into the Tuckbourn not long before that stream passed through the outskirts of the town.

 ‘Evidently the stream’s been dammed,’ Pippin said. ‘The waters are rising in the Greenvale towards Vale and the Tuckbourn towards Tookbank, so they figure the blockage is not far from Tuckborough.’ He gave her a squeeze through her cloak. ‘In any event, I must be off with the engineers to find the source of the trouble, and you, my dear, have a number of mouths to feed!’

 ‘We’ll have to air out the blankets in storage,’ Diamond said, already thinking of the flood of refugees that soon would inundate the Great Smials. ‘They’re sure to be soaked to the skin...’

Reaching the Thain’s study, they found Regi pouring a second cup of tea for the dripping farmer who shivered before the fire that roared upon the hearth. At the Thain’s entrance, the farmer turned and bowed. ‘Beretrand Took, at your service, Sir,’ he said with automatic courtesy, though he'd met the Thain on a previous occasion. He was a far cry from the cheerful “Bert” who’d entertained the mother of the Thain and her escort earlier that day.