Chapter 2. Stay There By Your Fireside Bright

The journey to Pincup was as difficult as Ferdi had anticipated, but the slow, sure-footed ponies brought them safely through. It was rather like riding a plough-pony, from Ferdi’s memory of visits to Paladin’s farm in his young days, plodding along, tempted to doze in the saddle until the slip of a hoof in the mud brought the rider to full alertness.

A slip of the hoof didn’t seem to bother the pony, however. As the pony's head bobbed gently, the slow and steady rhythm would resume, soothing the rider once more into somnolence. There wasn’t even the stimulation of talk, for much of the journey. The track was so narrow they must ride one-at-a-time, for the most part, over hill and dale, sometimes along a rushing stream full of Spring rains, into the woods at last, fording smaller streams and crossing wider streams on sturdy bridges of wood or stone. The swollen waters were nearly up to the footings but the ponies didn’t seem to mind, their hoofbeats ringing hollow, yet maintaining their slow and steady beat.

A warm welcome was waiting for them in Pincup, for the word had got round that the Thain was coming to sit with Hildibald Took, that some sort of treasure was involved, and everyone knew that the Thain held a hoard of gold under the great Hill that held the Smials. There was a feast, and much talk and laughter, and if Ferdi hadn’t excused the travellers early, pleading weariness—that part was true, at least for Pippin’s sake—they’d have been up into the wee hours before arising early to join Hildibald’s family at second breakfast.

Pippin had been pushing himself hard, these past few weeks, what with the planting (interrupted by last week’s heavy rains) and the trip to Michel Delving following a previous journey to the South Farthing; Ferdi was glad to think that after this visit to Pincup the Thain would take a week or two of leisure at Brandy Hall, where the Brandybucks would wait on him hand and foot and his fussy cousin Merry would see to it that he ate properly and rested. Though Pippin put on a good face through the banquet, Ferdi could see that it was only a face. The Thain was pushing the food around the plate more than he was eating it, for one. With the Thain’s precarious grip on health, due to his damaged lungs, this state of affairs would not do at all.

Ferdi had given orders for a bath to be ready, and he badgered Pippin into it, bringing him a mug of beer to soften the sting of his insistence, sitting down next to the tub and talking quietly while the steaming water and smooth brew relaxed muscles tight from a long day of riding.

Though Pippin’s eyes were drooping as he reached the bottom of his mug of beer, he was awake enough to ask, ‘But what about your own bath?’

 ‘It’ll be waiting,’ Ferdi said quietly. ‘I’ll bathe when Haldi’s done. I’m sure he’ll warm up the water with a bucket or two fresh and steaming.’

 ‘He ought to be finished soon, then, if he started the same time I did,’ Pippin said, and yawned.

Ferdi drained the beer from his own mug, rose and took Pippin’s, setting the mugs aside, and lifted one of the towels that had been warming by the fire. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Towel off and slip into bed and sleep like a very babe.’

 ‘You treat me like a very babe,’ the Thain grumbled, arising from the water and wrapping the first towel around himself, then taking up the second towel Ferdi handed him, to rub briskly at his head and limbs. ‘I ought to discharge Sandy—you can do his duty as well as your own.’

 ‘Never!’ Ferdi said briskly. ‘That hobbitservant is worth any ten other hobbits.’

 ‘Then why isn’t he here instead of you?’ Pippin said with another yawn, dropping both towels, slipping the nightshirt over his head and crawling into the warmed and waiting bed.

 ‘Because for all he knows, he doesn’t know how to ride a pony,’ Ferdi said. ‘Otherwise I’d have stayed by hearth and home and let him come with you instead.’

 ‘A likely,’ —yawn— ‘story,’ Pippin said, pulling up the coverlet and turning over. ‘Don’t let me sleep in.’

 ‘I’ll waken you in time for breakfast,’ Ferdi said softly, though he doubted his cousin heard. Soft snores were already rising as he blew out the lamps and let himself out, to seek his own bath and bed.

***

He awakened early and threw a pillow at still-snoring Haldegrim. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead!’ he said. ‘No worms for late birds!’

 ‘You can have all my worms,’ Haldi said, throwing the pillow back. ‘I’ll take the birds, roasted, if you please.’

 ‘Perhaps you can go out and bag a few fat ducks for second breakfast,’ Ferdi said. ‘Whilst I’m filling my ears with tales of times past.’

 ‘Perhaps pigeon pie for elevenses,’ Haldi said, spitting the words for emphasis.

 ‘And a morsel of roasted rabbit for the noontide meal,’ Ferdi said, grandly rolling his r’s.

 ‘Yes, well now that we’ve settled the menu,’ Haldi said, ‘I’m ready for bacon and eggs to get started.’

They ate together very companionably in the common room, two of the first to appear, and then Ferdi went to fetch the Thain while Haldi sat back and gossiped with a few local hobbits. He’d be gathering news while Ferdi gathered history, the next few days.

They received a warm welcome from Hildibald Took’s family, along with a second breakfast fit for a Thain. Ferdi was glad to see Pippin tuck in with a will. Then it was time to greet the old hobbit, propped up in his bed, though he greeted them as jovially as if he’d met them at the door with a hearty handshake.

The Thain sat down in the chair next to the bed, while Ferdi took up his post by the hearth, ostensibly to mend the fire whenever it needed mending.

There was some preliminary gossip to get through, and then Pippin began drawing the old hobbit out. Pippin excelled at asking questions. Ferdi sat quietly, listening to all that transpired, poking the fire or adding a new log, refreshing the teapot from the little kettle that hung at the hearth, accepting with a smile and a nod the plates of food that Hildibald’s wife or one of his daughters brought him at intervals.

Gertie Took fussed at all hobbits cheerily and impartially, and Pippin blossomed in this homey environment. He ate heartily of the food they brought him, laughed often, and relaxed enough to sit back and put his feet up on the bed during the afternoon, just as if he were visiting an old uncle and swapping gossip.

A tempting suppery smell filled the air when the old Took had just finished talking of the discovery of gold along the banks of the Tuckbourn in the days of Isengrim II, which led to the delving of the Great Smials.

 ‘It started as a gold mine!’ Pippin said. ‘I’d heard it as rumour, but never as fact!’

 ‘Where d’you think all that Thain’s gold come from in the first place?’ the old hobbit said irascibly. ‘What’re you young hobbits using for brains these days, I’d like to know?’

 ‘Now Hildy!’ old Gertie said, bustling into the room. ‘You’ve no account to be abusing your visitor that way! Why my brains’d be addled too, if’n I’d had to listen to you rattle on the daylong! The lad’s been all polite and genteel from second breakfast right through teatime, and now it’s supper and I mean for him to have a proper sit-down meal, I do!’

 ‘But,’ Pippin said, and the old wife raised a commanding hand.

 ‘No “buts” will I allow at present!’ she said grandly, reminding the Thain of a wizard he’d once known. ‘We’ve laid you a place at table, sir, and the food’s nearly ready!’

 ‘And what about my food?’ old Hildi demanded. ‘Ye’ll let me starve in my bed, more than like!’

Gertie put hands on ample hips. ‘If it would get ye out of t’bed all the sooner, I would, ye auld hog-swaggle!’

 ‘Wee-wee-wee!’ the old hobbit squealed, in perfect imitation of a hungry pig awaiting slops, and then he slapped his knee and chortled. ‘Just like young Bandobras, when they pulled him from the diggin’s!’

 ‘Bandobras?’ Pippin said, leaning forward at this mention of his wife’s illustrious ancestor.

 ‘O aye,’ Hildi said. ‘Well, y’know how his grandfather found gold, as I told you, and begun to dig into the side of that great Hill to find more... a regular mine it was, and he had sons digging right alongside him. Well, Bandobras, he got hisself buried when the ground shifted and they dug him out barely in time. He never could stand dark, closed-in places after that. Took hisself off to the North-lands, the wide open spaces with nary a high hill to be falling in on him...’

With old Gertie pulling at his arm, the Thain reluctantly took himself off to the supper table. Old Hildi turned to Ferdi to finish the tale, and Ferdi was happy to listen as he had all the long day through, as he polished off the contents of the plate Gertie had brought for him when she came to haul Pippin away from the bedside.

So it went for a week, until Ferdi thought his head might possibly burst with all the history it held. Old Hildi never showed any signs of flagging; as a matter of fact, the more he talked, the brighter were his eyes and the more vigorous his gestures.

On the last day of the visit, Gertie told Pippin at the supper table, ‘Well, this has been good for the auld hobbit! I wouldn’t be surprised but that he stood up out of his bed on the morrow!’

 ‘He was feeling rather poorly,’ Hildi’s oldest son said, ‘said like as not he weren’t of any use to anyone anymore.’

 ‘Aye,’ Gertie said, wiping at one eye with a corner of her apron, ‘but our Thain, he come and listen for a full week, he did! With all the other tasks set before him, he come!’

 ‘And was fascinated,’ Pippin said. ‘I don’t think he ever repeated himself, or told the same story twice!’

 ‘Plenty more where that come from,’ the oldest son said. ‘Ye’ll have to come back!’

 ‘I will!’ Pippin said, rising from the table and shaking hands all round. ‘Just as soon as I can!’ He went back to the bedroom to thank the old hobbit profusely, promising to return to hear more stories; and collecting Ferdibrand from the fireside, he took his leave.

Early to bed it would be this night, and early to rise in the morning for the long, slow ride back to Tuckborough. There had been several more days of rain while Ferdi had tended the cheerful fire and listened to the history of the Shire, and he was not looking forward to the trip. O for certain he’d welcome the reunion with Nell and the little ones, but if not for that, he’d be as happy to sit and tend the fire and listen to old Hildibald spin his tales for more days on end.