Chapter 11. Sea Change

Isengrim rose, looking about as cheerful as his name, and stalked over from his place at the head table. 'Now perhaps you'll listen to me, Father,' he said in an undertone, and had the wizard been an ordinary Man he would not have heard much more than a sibilance.

Gerontius drew himself up, staring up at his relatively taller eldest son. 'We will discuss this in decent privacy,' he said, pointedly not looking in Gandalf's direction.

'You're not going to...' Isumbras, the father of Bilbo's cousin Fortinbras, rose to say, and Bungo Baggins rose as well, with a squeeze to his wife's shoulder in signal to remain seated, though he himself moved to join the hobbits gathering around the Thain.

'You cannot lock him away,' Isembard, Flambard's father, burst out, joining the fray. 'He's no madder than I am!'

'That's a matter of opinion,' Isengrim said, and it looked as if a fine row was under way, with the other sons of the Thain rising to join the battle, when the Thain spoke again, and at his tone all his sons fell silent.

'We will discuss this matter in decent privacy,' he repeated.

Lock him away, the wizard was thinking with a chill, his black eyes stony and unreadable. That was the phrase Isengar had used, shortly before breaking away from his father's firm hold and escaping the great room. It might have been better, after all, to allow the hobbit to die in peace in the Grey Havens, albeit far from his home and loved ones. He began to wonder how he might pry Isengar loose... he really did not have the time, at the moment, to encumber himself with another charge, but the way things stood he felt he ought to make the time. Some of the responsibility for the whole mess was his, after all, for filling the lad's head with stories of Elves and the Sea, on a long-ago visit.

'If you please, Sir,' Bungo dared to say into the silence, and the wizard's attention turned to the interloper, along with the rest of the Tooks.

'Well?' the Thain harrumphed, when the Baggins hesitated under the combined scrutiny. Though he was head of the Baggins family, a distinguished, influential and wealthy family in its own right, Bungo was still a bit daunted by the Tooks, when they surrounded him, in their stronghold that was the Great Smials.
 
Bilbo, himself, wished that he could sink down in his chair, under the table. His father's opinion was never offered when it came to Took family matters, nor would it have been wanted. His interference now could well cause a rift, to the detriment of his wife Belladonna--to be separated not only by the distance between Tuckborough and Hobbiton but by family matters on top of that. And not just Belladonna would be affected, but Bilbo as well... what if his father offended the Tooks so badly that Siggy couldn't come to Bilbo's birthday a few weeks hence?

'If you please,' Bungo said again, and he pulled at his collar with a nervous finger before standing straight again, "facing the dragon" as the saying was amongst the Tooks.

Belladonna rose from her chair and moved to stand beside her husband. She had no idea what he was thinking, but she trusted his kind and loving heart, and his tact even when dealing with Tooks. He glanced at her and took her hand as they stood side-by-side, facing the Thain and his sons.

'If you please,' Bungo said, his voice growing stronger with his wife's hand squeezing his. 'I'd like to take Isengar home with us, home to Bag End. He and Bella were close, in their youth, and some time away, in a quiet place, might be healing...' He stopped before he said too much. The Thain never acknowledged that anything was amiss with his youngest son, and it was not wise to bring the topic up in his presence.

Bilbo's heart thumped all the way down to the tough soles of his furry feet. Asking mad Uncle Isen to come home with them? For how long? He glanced at Sigismond, and saw that his cousin looked nearly as sickly as he felt at the prospect. For starters, there would be no birthday visit. Of that, Bilbo was sure.

'Take Isen home with you?' Gerontius said.

Unexpectedly Isengrim threw his support to the Baggins. 'What a capital idea!' he said. 'A nice, quiet place, very good for the nerves...' He was on thin ice, he knew, and in danger of slipping, but he plunged on. 'And it is true, he and Bella were very close as children...' Another precipice yawned before him, and he stopped himself just in time, before saying the un-sayable: that Belladonna had been the only one Isen had told, when he ran away to sea. That was why, in part, Gerontius had accepted Bungo Baggins' suit and allowed his daughter to wed and move out of the Tookland, which of course, paved the way for her younger sister to marry a Brandybuck and move to Buckland--which is another story altogether. But Bella's marriage had been a sort of banishment, at first, until an uneasy truce was established after the Old Took's anger wore down.

...to be rekindled ten years ago, when Isen returned, broken and, as they thought, dying. In a heart-wrenching moment of lucidity, in the midst of his ravings, he had expressed as his dying wish that Belladonna be forgiven and returned to the bosom of her family. And old Gerontius had broken down, weeping, and promised, and his wife had held him to it when it turned out that Isengar was not to die after all.

Isengar healed, so much as was possible, and though he haunted the corridors of the Great Smials, his father acted as if nothing were wrong with the hobbit. But Isen's state was a silent reproach to poor Bella, whenever Bungo brought his family to the Great Smials.

'A nice, quiet place,' Isembard said, and his brother Isembold put a hand on his shoulder and added his own agreement.

'It might do the hobbit some good to get out of the Smials, new sights, new air...'

Bungo kept his eyes fixed on the Thain, though he was aware of the nodding going on around him. Getting Isengar out of the Smials would certainly relieve the Tooks of an ongoing embarrassment, as well as the shame of locking Isengar away if consensus said the hobbit was irretrievably mad.

'Well, Bella?' Gerontius said, fixing his daughter with a fierce gaze, and his wife, Adamanta held her breath as she moved to her husband's side. Anything that might bring healing to her youngest...

'If... if you please, Father,' Belladonna said, taking Bungo's arm in a strangling grip. 'I would love to have my "baby" brother come for a good, long visit. And it would be good for young Bilbo to have a better acquaintance with the Tookish side of the family.'

Gandalf relaxed subtly. Gerontius appeared to be half-persuaded, and from what the wizard had seen of Bungo and Belladonna Baggins, this could be the best possible development for Isengar.

From the look on his face, Isengrim was rather sceptical as to whether this "better acquaintance" would be good for the lad, but it would certainly solve a thorny problem to have Isengar gone from the Great Smials. O there would be talk about shunting the hobbit off, out of sight, but nothing so bad as if they had to lock him up for his own good and the good of the Tooks. He'd been greatly disturbed when he'd heard how the hobbit had pounced on the young Baggins and forced him to read a book for the better part of an afternoon. Who knew what else might happen, the way old Gerontius allowed his mad son to wander about without supervision? No, this was by far the best solution: minimize the gossip, and give Isengar a keeper, and with the guilt Bella bore she'd likely be attentive and devoted to her duty.

And so he spoke again. 'I think it is a fine idea, Father,' he said. 'A nice visit, a few weeks, perhaps, or if things go well he might stay as long as Yule...' Or longer, he thought to himself. "For the rest of his days" might be nice. If only...