Chapter 6. Settling Matters

Eglantine wasn’t sure how long she’d been talking and singing to an unresponsive Tolly. She never loosed her hold of his hand, and she listened to his breathing in the darkness when she paused to take a breath of her own. The latest pause lengthened as she listened anxiously: yes, there was a change. He was breathing faster, she thought, and they were shorter breaths. She squeezed his hand and was rewarded by an answering squeeze. He had wakened!

 ‘Tolly?’ she said softly.

 ‘Mistress,’ he whispered, pain in his voice.

 ‘What is it, lad? What’s happened?’

 ‘Tree,’ he grunted.

 Exasperated, she said, ‘I’m not daft, I know you’re under a tree... but what’s happened since then? Your breathing...’

 ‘Tree...’ he said again, forcing out the words though he could scarcely draw breath. ‘Settling... heavier...’

Eglantine closed her eyes and bowed her head, cursing herself for a senile old hobbit. She ought to have realised; on this soft, unsettled ground, the heavy tree would settle faster than the hobbit. Tolly was being slowly crushed, and there was nothing she could do! She was just an old hobbit, suited to knitting by the fireside and telling stories.

But if she was to die upon this hillside, she’d try, at least, to die well.

 ‘I could try to dig you out,’ she said with determination.

 ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘Please... Mis... tress...’

She groped along the line of his arm to his torso and began to pull the dirt out from under his shoulders, though she had no shovel and it really wasn’t the sort of work a grandmother is suited to. She couldn’t bear to hear the painful gasps; she would not sit by and listen to the lad expire, and do nothing!

***

Late supper was already being prepared in the kitchens and Diamond sent orders for the cooks to prepare kettles of soup, hot and hearty, in addition. Great Smials Tooks were doubling up in their apartments, leaving empty quarters for the expected refugees; great coppers of water were heating so that baths would be ready on a few moments’ notice; extra blankets were warming and holekeepers were going through the storeholes, bringing out clothing in a variety of sizes. The first of the refugees were expected at any time.

 ‘How are they coming?’ Pippin said. ‘Woodbridge or Stonebridge?’

Bert was better able to talk, now that he had some hot tea inside and the fire on the hearth had warmed him somewhat.

 ‘The path to the Stone Bridge runs along the Tuckbourn for some ways, you know,’ he said. ‘It’s all underwater, at least near the Greenvale it is. We turned towards the Wood Bridge and found the going better, even though we had to wade across that bridge; the water’s over your ankles at the top of the arch!’

 ‘The Tuckbourn’s over her banks,’ Everard agreed, holding a sheaf of reports from scouts on fast ponies who’d been sent to check river levels.

 ‘The flooding’s come up that far from the blockage?’ Pippin said. He was thinking furiously about his experiences with floods in Buckland. The Brandybucks regularly fought flooding of the great Brandywine. Tooklanders’ rivers were much more sensible. They ran in deep courses, for the most part, at the bottoms of valleys winding through the Green Hills, and even at flood stage seldom crept far past their banks. Smials were dug above the highest known flood stage in most communities, for Tooks were no fools. There hadn’t been a disastrous flood in Tookland since the time of Thain Fortinbras!

 ‘She was already to the top of her banks, near to spilling over, at teatime outside of Tuckborough,’ Everard said. ‘We were keeping a close eye, but with no rain today the waters were already receding. We didn’t even need the sandbags we had ready.’ He looked to Bert. ‘I can well imagine the Wood Bridge being underwater; I’m surprised it hasn’t been carried away.’

 ‘My grandfather Banks helped to build that bridge,’ Pippin said proudly, ‘with help from the Brandybucks, who’re canny about such things as rivers and bridges.’

 ‘It’s standing steady,’ Bert affirmed, ‘though the hobbits crossing it are tied together with ropes, just in case the stream decides to sweep the bridge away.’

Ferdi entered the Thain’s study, Pimpernel at his side. Fortuitously they had met as he was on his way from the stables and she was on her way from the linen storeholes. ‘The ponies are ready, and the chief engineer is waiting for you in the yard.’ he reported. ‘We can ride out at any time.’

 ‘The guest quarters are ready, and we’ve squeezed everyone together to make more,’ Pimpernel said. ‘Fresh linens are on all the beds and we’ve bedwarmers in place. The little ones can sup and be put straight to bed when they arrive.’

 ‘Thank you, Nell. Ferdi, how high is the water at the Stone Bridge?’ Pippin asked.

 ‘Hardly a trickle,’ Ferdi answered. ‘It’s as if the stream has dried up!’

Everard nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It’s as we thought; the blockage is on the Tuckbourn somewhere below the Greenvale.’

Ferdi shook his head. Streams were tricky and treacherous things.

 ‘We’ll find you a dry cloak, Bert, and you can ride with us to find the trouble,’ Pippin said, ‘unless you’d like to ride back to the Wood Bridge to look after your folk.’

 ‘Thankee, Sir, but my brothers have all well in hand,’ Bert said.

Pippin nodded. Beretrand was unofficial “chief” of the farmers in the Greentuck Valley, and the Thain had no doubts that his sons and his brothers and their sons had been instrumental in raising the alarm and getting the hobbits of the valley out before the rising floodwaters could claim lives in addition to property.

‘And I do hope the Mistress is well,’ the farmer added.

 ‘I am well indeed, Bert,’ Diamond said, taking his empty teacup from his hand.

 ‘No, I’m sorry, Mistress,’ Bert said with a bow, ‘I meant the Mistress, of course. She took tea with us this afternoon, and...’

 ‘The Mistress?’ Pippin echoed stupidly, looking from Bert to Diamond, and then his breath came short as his face lost all colour.

Reginard was as quick to catch the implication. ‘Mistress Eglantine took tea with you?’ he said tightly. ‘This afternoon?’

 ‘Aye,’ Bert said, ‘and glad I was that she passed through before all this flooding started! Why...’ He stared from face to face and lost his smile. ‘She did pass through,’ he insisted. ‘We sang her along just after teatime. It was only two more hours’ ride for her to reach the Stone Bridge, and...’

 ‘Nell!’ Ferdi said sharply, catching his wife just in time as she slumped, white-faced. He caught her up in his arms and laid her gently in a chair, fanning her face, while Diamond stepped forward to take one of Pimpernel’s hands in hers, slapping it gently with her other hand.

 ‘Nelly, we’ve no time for this,’ Pippin snapped, though he felt like swooning himself. To Regi, he said, ‘Call Woodruff!’ Regi jerked open the door to send a hovering servant for the head healer.

 ‘She’s coming round,’ Ferdi said. He’d forgotten the flood momentarily; all his attention was on his wife.

Pimpernel shook her head, sat up in the chair and pushed him away. ‘Of all the stupid things to do,’ she said tearfully. ‘Don’t mind me! There are homeless hobbits on the way, and floodwaters rising, and Mum...’ She took a deep breath and seized Ferdi’s arm. ‘You’ve got to find Mum!’

 ‘If she was travelling through the valley when the stream was blocked,’ Everard said slowly, ‘and that was some hours ago... and she has not yet arrived...’

Pippin closed his eyes and swallowed hard, while Pimpernel stared at the engineer wide-eyed. She began to shake her head in negation, even as Everard looked from Pippin to Pimpernel and said heavily, ‘I’m sorry.’

 ‘A landslip, you think?’ Pippin said, opening his eyes, controlling himself with great effort and speaking matter-of-factly, though his head was whirling and his heart had plummeted to his toes.

 ‘It’s the logical explanation,’ Everard said, forcing himself to speak as dispassionately as the Thain. ‘Aldebrand thought to find the blockage and relieve it somehow, not so that the water would come down on Tuckborough in a flood wave, mind, but a small hole in the dam, to let it out gradually if we can.’

 ‘We’ll have to find the blockage first,’ Pippin said, swallowing his grief and fastening his cloak. ‘Somewhere between the Greenvale and the Stone Bridge... We’ll ride that path, and...’ his eyes met his sister’s, and he tried to infuse his voice with hope though none was in his heart, ‘...look for signs of my mother and Tolly along the way.’

 ‘Yes, Sir,’ the other hobbits chorused.

 ‘Come along then,’ Pippin said. ‘Time’s wasting.’ He swept from the room without a backwards look, Regi, Everard and Bert following.

Diamond understood. She knew what a tight hold he had on himself. Her duty was to stay behind, to deal with the expected flood of refugees, and to keep Pimpernel from falling apart from grief and worry.

 ‘Go, Ferdi,’ she said as that hobbit hesitated. ‘Nell will be fine.’

 ‘I will be,’ Pimpernel said, standing to her feet and throwing her arms about her husband. ‘I know just how much hope there is... or isn’t... You go and do what you have to do, and when the emergency is over there’ll be time for grieving. I only hope my mother’s end was quick, and that she suffered neither fear nor pain.’

 ‘Meadowsweet,’ Diamond said suddenly, and Pimpernel turned to her.

 ‘O no,’ she said softly. ‘How will we ever tell her the news?’

 ‘We won’t,’ Woodruff said from the doorway. ‘She’s busy seeing about beds at the moment. Until we’re surer of what happened, we’ll keep this to ourselves.’

Ferdi gently kissed his Nell on the cheek and strode from the room.