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Chapter 12. Cream and Honeycomb

After the early-morning dip so common in fevers, Pippin’s temperature began to climb with the sun. Though he tried to affect his usual cheer, by second breakfast his head was growing heavy once more, and by the time elevenses were brought he thought he might perhaps do better without a head altogether.

His Aunt Esmeralda watched him with well-concealed concern that grew nearly to alarm as he meekly drank the bitter potion of willow-bark, meant to give him ease and reduce the fever. ‘Peregrin-lad,’ she said softly, lifting away the cup that she’d thought would take a fight to administer. ‘Why don’t you close your eyes? Sleep would be the best thing for you, now.’

He shook his head, attempting to smile, but she saw the effort it cost him. ‘I am well, Auntie,’ he said. ‘Don’t you trouble yourself on my account!’

He didn’t want to sleep, she saw, and so she looked down at her knitting and began to croon, as if absent-minded, an old tune to be heard in the Green Hills of a starry summer night, when the flocks are in the field enjoying the mild temperatures. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his eyelids drooping, and the jerk of his head as he fought slumber. She smiled, but a moment later the white of bandages flashed under her chin and Pippin’s hand stayed her knitting.

 ‘Really, Aunt,’ he said. ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’

 ‘It is no trouble, Nephew,’ she answered, and shaking off his hand she knitted to the end of the row and stopped. ‘Now, then,’ she said, setting the work safely in her lap and leaning forward. ‘Why is it you won’t sleep, this time?’ Her tone held an echo of long-ago times when little Pip-lad would not stay in the bed, would not give in to conquering sleep, until his elders despaired of sleep themselves. She locked gazes with this wayward nephew of hers, a second son, more like, and best-beloved of all her nephews though she’d never tell anyone so.

He held her gaze as he always had, from his earliest times, though his look was somewhat more serious now. ‘Tell me,’ she urged softly.

 ‘I am well, Auntie,’ he said, and she was reminded of a stubborn lad, recovering from illness, who wanted to go out to play by the River with his cousins. She tried to look stern, but the corners of her mouth twitched.

Pip-lad would have seen the signs of impending victory and laughed, setting Esmeralda laughing with him, but this grown hobbit who lay before her, bruised and battered by creatures she shuddered to imagine, this stalwart knight laughed not, nor even smiled. He continued to look grave, and she sobered.

 ‘What is it, lad?’ she said, taking his hand gently between hers. ‘Is it the dreams? You’re safe, now, and we know how to manage those phantoms that would haunt your sleep...’

 ‘It is that, in part,’ he admitted after a pause. ‘But more, Merry...’

 ‘What about Merry?’ that hobbit’s mother asked.

 ‘He is supposed to meet Merimac in the Woody End this evening,’ Pippin said, ‘yet he has made no sign of stirring. He ought to be in the thick of the preparations! He’s the most—the most—preparingest hobbit I ever knew!’

Esmeralda laughed at this most apt description of her son. ‘Aye, lad,’ she said when she’d mastered herself once more. ‘ ‘Tis the Brandybuck in him! But I don’t hold it against him, or his father for that matter.’

Pippin looked astonished before he realised the joke, and then he smiled, a grimace rather, and gave a little cough.

 ‘Now then, lad,’ Esmeralda pressed. ‘It’s that he’s not preparing to meet old Merry in the Woody End, that you find troubling?’

Pippin leaned forward, dropping his voice though they were alone in the room. ‘Is it that I’m dying, Auntie, and no one will tell me?’ he said low.

 ‘Dying!’ she said in surprise.

 ‘For Merry to shirk his duty,’ Pippin said, ‘Merry, mind!’

Esmeralda patted the hand she held. ‘And what makes you think he’s to meet Merimac in the Woody End this evening?’ she asked.

 ‘When Uncle was here to see how I was faring,’ Pippin said, ‘Old Merry stepped in for a word, on his way to the stables the day he left Buckland, and I heard the plans.’ He moved restlessly. ‘If I haven’t lost track of the count of days, with this dratted fever, it’s tonight the old hobbit is due back from the Tookland.’

 ‘You haven’t lost count,’ Esmeralda said, ‘though I wonder, seeing as you’ve been out of your head more than you’ve been in it, of late. And yes, a Merry meeting is planned for this evening. Meriadoc is trusting to his cousin Doderic to make the preparations for the troop.’

 ‘I thought he rode down to Hay’s End,’ Pippin said.

 ‘You have been paying heed,’ Esmeralda said in surprise. ‘Well, Doderic returned from Hay’s End early this morning, took a few hours’ rest, and is organising the troop to go to the Woody End even as we speak. There’s been no more trouble in Buckland, though Merimas is directing the scouring just to make sure. They are saying the Old Forest is quiet and watchful, but not menacing as it was when your Orcs were out and about.’

Pippin shuddered at “your Orcs” and his aunt patted his hand again. ‘The Orcs are gone from the Old Forest,’ she said. ‘Merimas met Old Bombadil in the Forest just yesterday; evidently word had come to him that things were amiss. He’d walked from the Barrow Downs nearly to the Gate, and somehow the Forest bore the news to him that the Brandybucks wanted a word. He was pleased, it seems, that Merimas had ordered all sign of the creatures cleared away: holes filled in, gear swept up, ashes from their fires scattered, splintered branches trimmed, shattered trees bound up, trash carted away...’

 ‘All sign,’ Pippin murmured, his eyes hooded.

 ‘All sign,’ Esmeralda said briskly, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Spring cleaning, and then some! In any event, Old Bombadil said that the horrid creatures were gone from the Forest, and that the trees, though watchful, were growing sleepy once more, which they wouldn’t, if any such filth remained.’

 ‘So Merry may go to join his Uncle Merry,’ Pippin said, opening his eyes again. ‘Or... does he stay out of fear for me?’

 ‘You are not dying,’ Esmeralda said. ‘And I’m sure my son will be in to see you this afternoon, before he rides off to the Woody End to join his uncle.’  She tilted her chin down, the better to regard him sternly from under her lowered eyebrows. ‘And so you, dearie, have no excuse but to go to sleep!’ Raising her chin slightly, she added, ‘Unless, of course, you were wanting some more of that lovely custard...’

 ‘I’ll be turning into a “lovely custard” if I eat any more of the stuff,’ Pippin declared.

 ‘Some porridge instead, then?’ Esmeralda persisted. ‘I can have them lace it with honey as well as cream...’

 ‘Honey!’ Pippin said with a shudder. He detested the stuff, as his aunt knew very well.

 ‘Aye,’ his aunt said implacably. ‘Wouldn’t that be a lovely treat! But of course, if you’re feeling sleepy...’

 ‘Indeed, Auntie, I do feel a nap coming on,’ Pippin said, relaxing back into his cushions and allowing his eyelids to close.

 ‘I thought you might,’ Esmeralda said softly. She watched as Pippin’s breathing grew more even, watched until he passed from feigned sleep to genuine slumber, gently laid his hand down and took up her knitting once more.

As it turned out, Merry did not lead the troop of Brandybucks across the Marish and into the Woody End to meet Merimac. By the time they departed, with Merimas at their head, he was again at Pippin’s side as his cousin’s fever rose precipitously and delirium claimed Pippin once more.