Epilogue

S.R. 1434, The Great Smials, Tookland

It would be the talk of the Tooks for years to come. Pippin had returned to Tookland upon the death of his father, to take up the position of Thain. Ferdibrand, released from the Ban, had not left the Great Smials, as many predicted, but rather had become the head of Pippin’s escort. Ferdi had not chosen the post but had been ordered to it by the Steward, or so the talk went, but he was a loyal Took and would do his duty, no matter how distasteful. In one sense it was fitting. Ferdi had been restored to the position he’d held the day Pippin left Tookland, just as Pippin had been restored to his place amongst the Tooks.

Now the new Thain reclined on the hearthrug, small son in his lap, and the two were passing a tale back and forth while Diamond sat to one side, mending a tear in the knee of Farry’s breeches, and Eglantine sat at the other side of the hearth, working at a piece of intricate embroidery.

 ‘And the hobbit pulled aside the bushes, and he saw...’ Pippin said with a grin.

 ‘An Elf, sleeping!’ Farry shouted.

 ‘An Elf? Sleeping?’ Pippin said. ‘Do they sleep, truly?’

 ‘This one was,’ Farry said with a decided nod. ‘He was sleeping, and there was a feast on a blanket beside him. And the hobbit...’ He stopped and looked expectantly at his father.

 ‘And the hobbit said, “Excuse me, Sir, but I was wandering, lost, and I haven’t had anything to eat in so very long. Might I...?’

 ‘But the Elf didn’t waken,’ Farry said. ‘He was very tired, you see, for he’d stayed awake past his bedtime the night before. So the hobbit...’

 ‘...walked all around the blanket, his mouth watering at what he saw there.’

 ‘How polite he was,’ Eglantine said. ‘He didn’t think of helping himself, did he?’

Pippin smiled, leaning back against his mother’s chair. ‘He thought about it, of course,’ Pippin said, ‘but he knew that it wouldn’t be right. Why, it would be stealing, wouldn’t it, Farry?’

 ‘Speaking of staying awake past someone’s bedtime...’ Diamond said with meaning, tucking her mending neatly away in the basket.

 ‘Aw, Mum! We were just...’

 ‘We were just getting to the good part,’ Pippin agreed. ‘But it’ll be even better on the morrow, lad, you see if it’s not! Why, I’ll spend half the night thinking up what sort of food was in the feast...’

Diamond rose and held out her hand. Farry jumped up from his father’s knee and swarmed over his grandmother’s lap, laying a hasty kiss upon her cheek. ‘G’night, Gran!’ he said.

 ‘G’night, lovie,’ Eglantine answered, her eyes bright. Pippin started to say something, but waited until Diamond had borne their son out of the room.

 ‘What is it, Mum?’ he said gently as Eglantine dabbed at the corner of one eye.

 ‘It’s naught,’ she said, ‘just that...’ She swallowed down tears and gave a sigh. ‘Your da dreamed of this moment, years before your return.’

 ‘Dreamed?’ Pippin said, puzzled. ‘He knew I’d never come back, to live under him as Thain.’

 ‘So it might have been,’ Eglantine agreed slowly, ‘and yet he saw you there, by the hearth, Farry on your knee. He even knew the lad’s name, though he thought it was shortened from Ferumbrin or some such. How ever did he know?’

The fire popped, and Pippin picked up the poker and jabbed at the logs, stirring up the flames to fresh brightness. ‘We sent word back when Farry was born,’ he said.

 ‘No, this was before he was born,’ Eglantine said.

 ‘Before we’d even named him?’ Pippin said, astonished. He thought back to Frodo, and one of the dreams his cousin had related, a dream of Gandalf, walking atop a tall Tower...

 ‘Such things are not unheard of, amongst the Tooks,’ Eglantine said, her eyes strictly on her stitchery. Her mother had warned her against marrying into the Took family, after all, and it was difficult to talk about such strange and unhobbity things. But then a smile tugged at the side of her mouth, remembering Paladin’s joy, before she said thoughtfully, ‘Farry. Faramir. How ever did you come up with such a name?’

 ‘Faramir is a great Prince in the Southlands,’ Pippin said. ‘I’ve told you about him, I’m sure.’

 ‘The Captain,’ Eglantine said slowly. ‘I remember, just a bit. And Frodo spoke of him as well, that he’d taken him prisoner and let him go again.’

 ‘Frodo told you that?’ Pippin said.

Eglantine smiled. ‘It was after one of your nightmares,’ she said softly. ‘You were sleeping in, after a restless night, and I asked Frodo what it all meant. He told me something of the Man you’d been dreaming of... I suppose I can understand your naming a son in his honour, though a more unhobbity name I’m sure I couldn’t imagine.’

 ‘We had joked about that,’ Pippin said, ‘when we were choosing names. If it had been a girl, Diamond wanted the name “Estella”, but we couldn’t agree on a lad’s name...’

 ‘And so how did you decide?’ Eglantine said.

 ‘It was something Uncle Badger said,’ Pippin said. ‘Oddly enough, he was the first to treat the name seriously, not as a jest. “A fine name, for a fine Man. A Prince among Men, as a matter of fact!” I thought he was having me on, but he was perfectly serious.’

 ‘When was that?’ Eglantine said. ‘I was given to understand he passed away some days before the babe was born.’ They hadn’t been able to attend the memorial, as it was during that Orc trouble, when travel was restricted for the duration of the emergency. It was a good month before Paladin was confident that the Shire was entirely clear. But it would be better not to mention Orcs to her son...

Pippin looked puzzled. ‘You know, I don’t quite remember,’ he admitted. ‘It would have had to have been...’ He thought back, and shook his head. ‘Probably over tea,’ he said, ‘or when I visited him at the diggings. I don’t remember, exactly, only that he seemed to find nothing amiss in such a name.’

 ‘Ah,’ Eglantine said. She had come to the end of her thread and now laid down her needle. ‘I believe I’ll take myself off to bed as well.’

Pippin scrambled to his feet, leaning to kiss her cheek. ‘Rest well, Mother,’ he said. ‘Pleasant dreams, and I hope to see you bright and early!’

He never said “I’ll see you,” but always “I hope,” or so Eglantine had noticed. Her son had grown in sorrow as well as wisdom over the years, though he still turned a countenance of cheerful whimsy to the world. He never took a new day for granted. Each day was a new gift.

***

After checking in on Faramir, now washed and tucked up, Pippin told Diamond, ‘I’ll just take a walk about the Smials, see that everything is in order.’

 ‘Don’t be late for late supper,’ Diamond said with a smile.

 ‘Why do they call it “late supper”, then?’ Pippin asked in a reasonable tone.

 ‘Go on with you!’ Diamond said, and laughed.

 ‘I’ll meet you in the great room,’ Pippin said, taking her hand to kiss her fingertips; and releasing her he was off.

Pippin walked down one tunnel after another, acknowledging the greetings of the hobbits he met. No one was astonished to see him as they had been in the beginning; by now the Tooks and servants were growing used to his evening wanderings.

He found himself near the infirmary, and on an impulse turned in there. A few elderly Tooks sat at the tables in the sitting room, playing at draughts or other quiet games, reading or knitting or talking or just sitting and enjoying the fire on the hearth.

 ‘Yes, Sir, were you wanting anything?’ an assistant said, standing up quickly and crossing the sitting room to meet him.

 ‘Just checking in,’ Pippin said. ‘How’s Uncle Ferdinand this evening?’

 ‘Just as he ever was,’ the assistant said. ‘I’ll tell him you asked after him...’

 ‘No need,’ Pippin said. ‘I’ll tell him myself.’ He smiled and walked past, dismissing the assistant with a nod. No need for escort; he knew the way. He’d been there only a night or two earlier, after all, on the evening of the day his family had arrived from Buckland.

He’d wanted to talk to old Ferdinand about Ferdi, but Ferdi had been present at the time. Pippin had since learned that Ferdi always spent late supper with his father. This would be a good time to talk to the old hobbit, an hour or two before Ferdi was due to arrive.

He settled into the chair by the little hearth in old Ferdinand’s room, accepted the mug of tea the minder brought him, and dismissed her politely. ‘We’ll call if we need anything,’ he said. ‘Close the door as you leave.’

After the door closed, Ferdinand snorted. ‘They’re sure to listen at the door, now,’ he said.

 ‘Then let us give “them” an earful, shall we?’ Pippin said, and the old hobbit chuckled.

 ‘What did you want?’ Ferdinand said. ‘Am I to expect a visit every other evening? Are you making up for long neglect, having stayed in Buckland so long?’

 ‘I tried to talk with you, the other evening,’ Pippin said, getting right to the point. Ferdinand had always been plain-spoken, much like Paladin. Perhaps that’s why the two had become such fast friends, in the old days.

 ‘Seemed to me you were talking just fine,’ Ferdinand said unexpectedly.

 ‘Nine years,’ Pippin said bluntly. ‘Nine years, Ferdi was under the Ban. The Tooks must think—’

 ‘When did you ever worry about what the Tooks think?’ Ferdinand said.

Pippin hesitated. ‘My da...’ he said.

 ‘Your da did a lot of things,’ Ferdinand said, ‘mostly good, as a matter of fact. He kept the Tookland free when the rest of the Shire was in chains to that Sharkey and his louts. He took over Tookland from Ferumbras, took it over shabby and dusty and overgrown and full of cobwebs, and it was no easy task for him to restore the pride of the Tooks, let me tell you! Why, they’d got so lazy and sloppy under Ferumbras, it was...’

 ‘But he put folk under the Ban as didn’t deserve it,’ Pippin argued, ‘and he...’

 ‘Ferdi's Ban was the worst injustice,’ Ferdinand said. ‘Not my son's fault, not all—you tricked him, and Paladin punished him for it. And then something happened to the hobbit, after you swore you’d never return. He changed, somehow. He wasn’t the hobbit I’d known...’

 ‘He changed after he became Thain,’ Pippin said, but the old hobbit shook his head.

 ‘He still came to see me,’ Ferdinand said. ‘He’d visit me, regular, every few days, talk over old times, offer comfort. But after you left, he was hard as stone and twice as cold, and I could probably count the number of times he came to see me on the fingers of one hand... had I a hand anymore, that is.’

 ‘So it’s all my doing,’ Pippin said with a frown.

 ‘Nay, lad,’ Ferdinand said, ‘though he blamed you. Something happened to him when you left. He had one of his rages, and fainted in the middle, and took to his bed for a few days, and when he got up...’ Though he still looked at Pippin, he was, rather, looking through the young Thain, looking into the past, perhaps, looking for a friend who’d been long lost to him. ‘It was as if a part of him were gone.’

 ‘A part of him...’ Pippin echoed, puzzled.

Ferdinand nodded. Still looking far-away, he murmured, ‘Sorry and Merry, Dinny and Dinny... what’s become of us? We swore naught would ever part us. Now I’m the only one left, I, who looked to be the first to leave.’

Pippin sat silently, until the old hobbit shook himself slightly, swallowed, and looked up. ‘How about another sip of that tea?’ Ferdinand said.

Pippin immediately lifted Ferdinand’s mug to his lips.

After a sip, Ferdinand said, ‘But then, I always knew you’d be back. I was that surprised when you didn’t return after Merry came to me, but then I heard Merry had passed on in his sleep...’

Pippin realised, after the first shock, that Ferdinand was referring to Merimac.

 ‘I figure that you never got my message, or your mother’s.’

 ‘My mother’s?’ Pippin said numbly.

 ‘To come home,’ Ferdinand said quietly. ‘To release my son from his... If you’d heard of Paladin’s doings, you’d have come home, you’d have taken the blame, you’d have seen Ferdi set free.’

 ‘You seem to have a lot of confidence in me,’ Pippin said wryly.

 ‘Not my confidence,’ Ferdinand said. ‘Merry’s.’

 ‘Merry’s?’ Pippin said.

 ‘Aye,’ the old hobbit said. ‘I can still hear him, as if he were here in the room with us, and had just spoken. “You ought to see the hobbit he's grown into: upright, honest, reliable and conscientious. He'll probably drag me back by my collar, before I've even changed into a fresh shirt for the return journey...”.' Ferdinand's voice sounded eerily like Merimac's as he spoke Merimac's words, and then he resumed his own voice. 'But of course, you didn’t drag him back...’

 ‘I didn’t know,’ Pippin whispered.

 ‘Of course you didn’t, lad,’ Ferdinand said. ‘Don’t you understand, I realised what had happened, as soon as Aggie brought me the news that Merry was dead.’

Again Pippin felt a shock, but he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Uncle Badger died in his sleep the same night he arrived in Buckland. We were to have breakfasted together.’

 ‘And so the message went amiss, by just a few hours,’ Ferdinand said. ‘It would ha' made four years’ difference, to Ferdi. But it cannot be helped.’

Pippin remained silent.

 ‘It cannot,’ Ferdinand said more strongly.

 ‘Can it not?’ Pippin said.

 ‘You won’t do yourself nor any other any bit of good, wallowing in blame,’ Ferdinand said pointedly.

 ‘How do I—’ Pippin said, but the old hobbit wasn’t finished.

 ‘You go on,’ Ferdinand said. ‘You cannot plough a straight furrow, looking behind you. You don’t put a saddle on a pony backwards, unless you’re a foolish tween, that is...’

Pippin smiled faintly at this reminder. ‘You heard about that,’ he said.

 ‘Tooks like to talk,’ Ferdinand said. ‘So I say, give them something to talk about! Give them a future to look forward to, and something to build on! Paladin gave them back their pride, and you...’

 ‘And I?’ Pippin said.

 ‘I’m sure you’ll work it out,’ Ferdinand said. ‘Now how about another sip of that tea before it cools so as to be undrinkable?’

***

Before Ferdibrand arrived to feed late supper to his father, Pippin said his good-nights and wandered the tunnels of the Smials awhile longer. He found his steps turning to the Thain’s study once more. The room was cold, the hearth cleaned and a fire laid fresh for the morning, one lamp left burning, turned down so that shadows loomed huge on the walls.

A large book with a finely-tooled cover of yellow leather lay in solitary splendour upon the Thain’s desk, and he nodded. Several births had occurred over the course of the week, and it would be the Thain’s task to record the names of the newest additions to the Took family.

He turned up the lamp and sat down at the desk, opening the Book, idly turning the pages, smiling at familiar names as they brought long-told stories to mind. He sobered, seeing a name crossed out of the Book, and pages later, another: Tooks who’d been exiled, cast out of the family for some serious reason and banished, much as Smeagol’s grandmother had banished him. In one case a name written in Ferumbras' hand had been crossed off, but then Paladin had written him back into the Book. An outcast, hired by Lotho, who'd saved Pippin's life in the Battle of Bywater, mortally wounded in the deed. He'd been welcomed back into the family of the Tooks shortly before he breathed his last. Pippin stopped a moment in remembering, tracing the name with a thoughtful finger. Perhaps his father had crossed him out... and written him in once again?

He came to the year and month of his own birth, the lines written in Ferumbras’ hand. Turning the last leaf over to find his own entry, his hand trembled. He fully expected to see a black line drawn through his name, as his father had threatened, the last time he had defied the old hobbit. He had never returned to Tookland, after all, and Paladin’s bitterness against his son had been spoken of as far as Buckland.

With the recent thaw... Certainly they’d reached an understanding of sorts, when Paladin had visited Buckland about two years ago, to beg his son to return, rather than ordering him—such a change!

But Pippin, grown into his confidence, had stayed in Buckland. No longer afraid of losing himself in his father’s demands, he’d stayed because he was valued, nay, needed. He filled an important position, he made a contribution, and he owed something to the Brandybucks for the time they’d invested in him, and their faith that he’d turn out well, all those years when the Tooks thought him a fool and wastrel.

He blinked to see his name, in Ferumbras' writing. Born to Eglantine Banks and Paladin Took, son, Peregrin. For all his father's threats and bluster, the name stood. His father had not blotted him out of the Book.

He’d embraced his father on Paladin’s departure from Buckland, that last time he’d seen his father, true. There had been healing, and love, and forgiveness between them. But he’d never planned to go back to Tookland. He still wasn’t sure what he was doing here, but he’d do the best he could for the hobbits of the Shire. If Frodo could go all the way to the fiery Mountain, surely Pippin could do this little bit.

At last he came to the pages filled four years previously. He noticed the spacing between lines, and thought to himself that there might be room, there, to squeeze Farry’s name in. He was a proper Took, after all, whether or not he bore a Tookish name. His name belonged in the Book.

Reaching the page he sought, he ran his finger lightly down the lines, noting the Tooks born in the same span of days as Farry, all written in his father’s familiar hand. His breath failed him as his finger stopped.

Faramir, he whispered. He swallowed hard, and tears stung his eyes as he read his father’s careful scribing.

1. April 1430, born to Diamond north-Took and Peregrin Took, son, Faramir.