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A Healer's Tale  by Lindelea

Chapter 24. Interlude

Samwise excuses himself, for Rosie is waiting for him, and their children are due to arrive at any moment. He grips my hand in leaving, his eyes stare into mine, and I nod, understanding the wordless message of thanks, and hope--thanks for keeping Pippin going, over the year he was gone in the South, seeking a remedy, and hope that he tries to stir in me, for I've never met these Tree-folk that he seems to trust.

Merry grasps the sides of the tub and hauls himself from the water, but grabbing at the towel he wobbles and as I catch him, he nearly topples both of us, tall hobbit that he is. Regi jumps to his feet, and he and Ferdi support Merry between them while I take the towel and wrap it around the Master.

The temporary alertness, the spurt of energy that brought him fully awake, the renewed worry for Pippin that seized him at my appearance, these have evaporated as the exhaustion of the long watch claims him once more. Merry, who has just come worrisomely close to fainting, is scarcely aware of my presence; a far cry from the first time he required my professional attention as a tween, no longer a biddable little lad, but feeling the accumulation of years and looking forward to reaching his majority, and quite shy, all of a sudden, when faced with disrobing before me... how his protests ring in my memory, one of my more voluble patients, to be certain (despite being only half-Took)! Though understandable, under the circumstances. I cannot help a smile, which is just as well. The three hobbits seem to find my serenity reassuring.

Regi and Ferdi dress Merry in his nightshirt and move to escort him firmly to his bed, and now he rouses himself to protest.

 ‘I’m not as far gone as all that,’ he says, trying to shake off their helping hands.

 ‘Not quite,’ Ferdi agrees, nodding towards the door, as he puts a comradely arm about Merry's shoulders to push him in that direction. ‘But you’re off to your bed, regardless.’

 Merry protests, but he is dealing with Tooks, and when Tooks get to talking it is difficult to lever a word in edgewise.

 ‘Pippin’s sleeping,’ Regi says firmly, looking to me for confirmation.

 ‘He is,’ I agree, but manage to get in no more than that, for Ferdi, tired as he is, reaches full boil quicker than an unwatched pot, even as he pulls Merry to the door and jerks at the knob.

 ‘The first real sleep the hobbit has managed in days,’ Ferdi says airily, as if observing the chances of a certain pony to triumph in the upcoming races. Regi comes up on Merry's other side as Ferdi pushes the Master into the hallway. Even if Merry wishes to turn back to the bathing room to reclaim his clothes, dress himself and return to Pippin's side, he will find it difficult to regain any of the ground he's already lost in the face of the two determined Tooks. He casts a scathing glance back over his shoulder at me, as I hasten to follow, and I smile sweetly.

Ferdi is still babbling on. ‘And his wife is snuggled up with him, tucked up in the bed together like two peas in a pod, and not likely to welcome any intrusion at all, I should think...’

 ‘Intru—’ Merry manages, but Regi runs right over him, in a manner of speaking, as he forcibly turns them all to the left, the better to propel Merry down the short length of hall, past the sitting room on the right, proceeding to the Master's bedroom, next door to the left-hand side.

 ‘Indeed, they’ve had scarcely a moment to themselves the past few days: people running in and out, healers on watch, messengers coming and going, and all the business of planning... ’

 ‘Pip—’ Merry says, to no avail. He stops, and I have a vision of him escaping into the sitting room and the corridor beyond, clad only in a nightshirt, but Ferdi renews his grip and Regi blocks the escape.

 ‘...and you were supposed to tender a report on the south-western fields yesterday, did you forget, Ferdi?’ Regi continues. ‘Pippin asked most especially, last week, and...’

 ‘It’s on your desk,’ Ferdi says, managing to get the stubborn pony of a hobbit moving forward again, ‘and if you ever bothered to look at the papers I leave there on regular occasions...’

 ‘So it’s you who leaves all those stacks of papers; I’d wondered who the culprit was!’ Regi says in mock astonishment. ‘How many trees have given their lives, I wonder; and considering all the work you cause me...’

 ‘Tell it to the Thain,’ Ferdi says, pushing open the bedroom door. ‘He’s the one, asking for the reports. Perhaps he’s wanting more paper to crumple, to kindle fires with. The Thain’s study has been rather chilly of late...’

As the merciless talk continues, Merry rolls his eyes. I catch his gaze and roll my own, and of a wonder, he smiles. It is a victory of sorts. He has eaten, if Regi has followed my instructions (and of course he has; he hasn’t the imagination not to), and he has bathed, and now he’ll sleep...

Without further struggle Merry is brought to his bed. Ferdi falls abruptly silent, fussing with plumping the pillow until Regi jerks it from his hands and plonks it down. 'Well, cousin,' Ferdi says. 'Sleep yourself out. I'll save you some breakfast.' Light words to cover a full heart; he and Merry were inseparable in their younger days, during their families' summers at Whittacres, and when Pippin came along they naturally brought him into their conspiracy of fun and frolic. Merry and Ferdi were born only a year apart, and balanced each other so well. I grieved to see their estrangement, in later years, when tragedy shattered Ferdi's family and stole his wits for a number of years. He kept his distance from Merry, ever after, but now I see an echo of their old friendship as he rests his hand on the Master's shoulder and the two share a look of relief, and something deeper.

'I'll walk you out,' Regi says at last, worried about the both of them, but characteristically not about himself, though none of them has rested much, these past days. 'I wanted to ask you about...' and he draws Ferdi away, talking of ploughing and seeding.

I sit down by the bed as Merry pulls the covers up. He frowns at me. ‘You don’t have to tuck me in. I’m not a little lad any more,’ he says.

 ‘O really,’ I say softly. ‘Where have the years gone? Seems as if it was just a week or so ago, I was talking to a little lad with his baby cousin in his lap...’

His eyelids are drooping already; how weary he is! I pull the coverlet up to his chin and settle beside him, humming a soothing tune. He resists long enough to pull his hands out from under the coverlet, clasping them firmly together atop the bedcovers. ‘Don’t shroud me,’ he murmurs as his eyes close. ‘Cannot bear...’

Impulsively I rest my hand on his. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean...’ I frown. His left hand is warm, living flesh, but his right hand is as cold as death.

Some years ago, a ruffian’s arrow lost him the use of his right arm for a time, but when the King came to the North the Man restored the arm somehow. What I would have given to be a fly on the wall when that happened! In any event, I wonder if the chilly hand is a remainder of that injury... sometimes I’ve seen him fumble a glass or pen, or use his left hand more than his right, especially when he is tired or troubled. He's always turned aside my questions, as has Estella, and though I've made discreet inquiries, the healers at Brandy Hall have never quite answered my questions. If he were a Took, I'd have it out of him, make a thorough examination, find some reason, determine the cause, and some way of strengthening the hand. But my own hands are tied in the matter...

Regi speaks from the doorway, in a whisper. ‘Asleep?’ he says.

I look, and nod. ‘At last,’ I answer. ‘As you ought to be.’

 ‘Speak for yourself,’ he says, entering the room, to stand over the bed looking down, his face troubled.

I chuckle. ‘I have learned to take my rest in snatches,’ I say. ‘Much as a cat would.’

 ‘A cat can sleep the day away, or so it seems to me,’ Regi answers. He continues to stare down upon Merry.

 ‘What is it?’ I ask, looking from his face to the Master’s.

 ‘I thought...’ he says hesitantly. I wait. Regi is not one to stumble over his words, but he’s weary. So am I. At last he continues. ‘I thought we’d lose the both of them, this day.’

 I nod. I’d had the same thought. No need to say as much.

 ‘You ought to have seen them,’ he continues, and at first I am lost, for I was there, I did see, that heart-wrenching final look, that smile that ought to have been the last... but Regi talks on, as if to himself. ‘You ought to have seen them,’ he repeats. ‘Pippin, riding like a ghost across the fields. Why, we might have shot him out of hand, for we were expecting an army of ruffians. The Talk was, that Sharkey had no more patience with Tookland’s resistance, that he was gathering a body of Men to march upon Tuckborough, to dig the Thain from his den, determined that the fox should not escape the hunt this time, capture him alive if at all possible, and his family with him, and make an example of them all...’ He shudders.

I don’t know what he saw, during the days of the Troubles. Thain Paladin would not let me outside the bounds of Tuckborough, but arranged to have ill or injured hobbits brought to the Great Smials. He even brought my family to Tuckborough, when the ruffians began to menace the hobbits of Whitwell; and after they burned the byre and barn at Whittacres, turned Paladin’s tenants out of the smial, and made the dwelling a storehole for refuse, the Thain offered shelter to any of Whitwell or the other communities on the borders of the Tookland who chose to retreat into the Green Hills rather than live by the ever-increasing Rules imposed by the ruffians in the name of order as they sought to dismantle the well-ordered Shire.

His only regret was that he could not keep the entire Shire free of vermin, but by the time Whittacres was burned the ruffians were too well established, with large groups of them brought in by Lotho, dug in like badgers and twice as nasty. Though he tried to rouse hobbits in other parts of the Shire, they were not yet ready to listen, and by the time they believed his warning, they were too beaten down and made afraid on account of those who'd been made "examples" by the ruffians. It was all he could do to close off the Tookland and keep the Tooks free... May all his dreams be peaceful ones.

But I had heard the rumour of what the ruffians did, when they made examples of hobbits... ‘You might have shot him out of hand,’ I echo. ‘But you didn’t.’

 ‘Ferdi kept a cool head,’ Regi says, ‘as he always did, against the ruffians. I don’t know what we’d’ve done without him, honestly, and the other Tooks who kept the borderland. He ordered our hobbits to stay hidden while he went out, alone, to meet the riders we heard approaching. And to hear Pippin’s laugh ring out, over the field, out of the darkness, his voice... to see him, dressed as if he’d stepped out of a book of old tales, mail coat, sword and shield, straight and tall, one moment laughing in delight at our surprise to see him, and the next, grim and full of purpose...’

I nod. I had seen the same, in the courtyard before the Great Smials, before he led an hundred archers away to the Battle at Bywater.

 ‘And as he rode at the head of the Tooks, I knew...’ Regi says low.

I wait.

 ‘I  knew, right then, that he would be a Thain worth following. He had my heart, that day, my spirit, my strength and my loyalty, to the end of my days, and beyond.’

Merry stirs, turns over, sighs in his sleep.

 ‘And Merry,’ Regi says. ‘You ought to have seen him, when we got to Bywater. He seemed to be everywhere, giving orders, arranging the hobbits, setting up the defences, explaining his plan. Captain Merry freed the Shire, that day, with Pippin at his side. We lost too many hobbits, that day, but we would have lost more, without Merry’s cool head.’

I nod. I’d heard the ballads that sprang up afterwards, and are still sung today. You’d think that Merry and Pippin and a handful of Tooks threw the ruffians out of the Shire. Of course, I know better. There were the stout-hearted folk of Bywater, armed with little more than pitchforks and shovels, and Samwise with his sword, and there was Frodo Baggins, who kept the victory from turning into a shameful slaughter. Sometimes the songs do not tell the full tale.

 ‘The Shire cannot afford to lose two such hobbits,’ Regi says, his voice suddenly intense. He turns to take my arm in a fierce grip. ‘You have to save them, Woodruff! You must!’

 ‘Regi,’ I say gently, laying my free hand upon his. ‘It is not in my power.’ His grip tightens, and I take a deep breath and force a smile. ‘I am more hopeful than I’ve been in a long time,’ I say reassuringly, as my hand tightens on his.

He takes a shuddering breath and gives a start, dropping his hand from my arm and muttering an apology.

 ‘No harm done,’ I say, and though I am sure there will be bruises, at least my sleeve will cover them until they’re gone in a day or two.

 ‘This wondrous draught,’ he says, a question in his voice.

 ‘Wondrous indeed,’ I agree. ‘It has bought him time, Regi, rest and strength. It is as I’ve said all along, if only he could rest and heal from the broken rib, he’d be able to take up the fight once more. The draught has bought him time, Reginard, and with him, it has bought Merry time as well.’

I cannot explain it, how the cords of two lives have become so entwined, that it seems one cannot exist without the other. It is so amongst those in whom the Fallohide strain runs strong. Marcho, hale and hearty, died within a day of the terrible plague claiming Blanco. They were brothers, Peregrin and Meriadoc are not, yet Peregrin and Meriadoc share such a bond and always have. I do not know what experiences knit them even closer together in the Outlands. I cannot even imagine.

All I can say is, ‘It has bought them both time, Regi, and in the morning, if we can get some food into Pippin, we have a good chance of returning to the way things were before he broke the rib.’

Regi looks stricken. ‘And that is all?’ he says. ‘Straitened lungs, crippled leg, what sort of life...?’

 ‘It is the life he has lived, the past few years, and lived to the fullest,’ I say sternly.

Merry stirs at my tone, and I pull the coverlet up again, over his shoulder, and whisper, ‘But now it is time to sleep.’






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