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Just Desserts  by Lindelea

Thanks to Dreamflower for suggesting names for OCs; her help expedited the posting of this chapter and future chapters. I lost the link I had to a lovely huge list of Gondorian names, and have little time for research at the moment, and she kindly loaned me a few of hers to go on.

Chapter 2. Rude Awakening

Seledrith thrust herself through the curtain from the alcove into the shop, hearing a crash from the kitchen, as of a plate shattering, seeing a guardsman push past the youth in the doorway. His name was Haleth, some part of her recognised, a sergeant in the King's guard. At that moment Gwillam appeared, shouting, 'No! Let him be! I'm the one you want!'

'Gwillam!' Seledrith choked, and the baby began to wail.

Robin was clinging to Haleth, hampering him, still shouting to Gwillam to flee, but more guardsmen were spilling through the doorway, and Haleth twisted in the youth's grasp making Robin the prisoner.

'Hold!' came a shout from the kitchen, and some quality to the voice made everyone freeze in place for a breath. Even the baby hiccoughed and whimpered instead of wailing.

Gwillam's father stalked into the room, his hair tousled from sleep, dignity in every line despite the fact that he was dressed in nightshirt, nightcap still on his head. He was the very picture of an upright, law-abiding patriarch disturbed from his rest. 'What is the meaning of this?'

'We have come with a warrant for Jack, son of Robin,' Haleth said.

The old man drew himself up, blinking. 'I beg your pardon?' he said politely.

'You are Jack, son of Robin,' the sergeant said.

'No...' young Robin sobbed.

'There must be some error,' the old man said. 'I am Gwill o' Dale, as you well know, Haleth, and these are my sons, Gwillam and Robin.' He smiled faintly, adding, 'And Robin is much too young to have a son.' Seledrith took a gasping breath, and realised she'd been holding her breath since Gwillam's father had entered the room. He sounded so sure, so reasonable. This must all be some terrible mistake.

'Jack,' Haleth said, nodding at the old man, 'Will,' he said to Gwillam, now held between two of his fellow guardsmen, 'and Rob,' to the youth he restrained.

And... 'Jack,' came a voice from the doorway. 'Jack, son of Robin... or is it Robin, son of Jack?'

All colour drained from the old man's face, seeing the hobbits standing there.

Seledrith thought of the many times she'd argued with Gwillam over his father's fear of Halflings. Now she saw the old man deflate, his shoulders slumping in defeat as he held out shaking hands. 'Have pity,' he whispered.

'Mercy,' Gwillam said from his captors' firm grip. 'He's an old man. Let him be. And Rob... he was but a child at the time. I'm the one you want. Take me.' He looked from the sergeant's grim face to Seledrith's shocked countenance and swallowed hard. I'm sorry, my love.

The old man drew himself up once more, resignation in every line. 'Have pity,' he repeated. 'They were lads at the time, following the fool who'd taken them under his wing. It was not their doing.' He looked from Gwillam to Seledrith with the tiny babe, to Robin, slumped in the sergeant's grasp. 'I am the man you are seeking.'

'What is it?' Seledrith whispered, lifting the babe to her shoulder and absently rubbing the little one's back. The soft whimpers stilled and the heavy head drooped against her. 'Why...?'

'I broke an edict of the King,' the old man said, squarely meeting her gaze. He lifted his chin still higher, regret in his eyes. 'I entered the Shire, knowing full well the penalty.' He turned to the guardsman. 'Let these others go. I am ready to pay.'

'Penalty?' Seledrith said faintly. She'd heard of the edict, of course, that Elessar had decreed that no Man should enter the Shire, but she wasn't sure of the import. Certainly, she'd had her own share of curiosity about the little folk, but she had no desire to travel into their land, to see the half-sized houses and farmsteads, where she'd have to crouch to enter through a doorway and eat with doll-sized utensils and curl up unnaturally to sleep in one of the beds, with a coverlet much too short! No, she was too old to be playing at dolls.

Her grip tightened on her precious baby, Gwillam's son, only a few weeks old, as her sense of unreality increased. She thought of the little cash box with savings from the shop, slowly accumulated over the last ten years. How much would they forfeit? She gasped. Would they lose the shop itself? But this would never do; her father had trained her that no matter what happened in the course of business, she must always wear a pleasant countenance. She forced a smile, forced herself to relax, kept rubbing at the sleeping babe's back, the only thing that seemed to her in that moment solid and steady.

From the reactions of Gwill and his sons, she ought to have suspected the true penalty they faced. With a trace of pity in his face, the guardsman holding Robin said, 'Death by hanging is the penalty.'

Seledrith's smile faded. 'I don't understand,' she said.

'You could claim that you entered the Shire on accident--crossed the Bounds without knowing you had,' the hobbit in the doorway said, keenly eying the old man.

Gwill shook his head. 'Found as deep in the Shire as I was?' he said honestly. 'Taking the wife of the Thain and her son and their escort captive, forcing them to travel with me as I sought to make my escape? Not to mention...'

'Not to mention you confessed to being after the Thain's gold,' the hobbit said with a wry expression. 'So my wife told me.'

'She also told Will that we had her full pardon, and yours,' the old man said. 'I suppose it was too much to hope, to think she might have the power to speak for the Thain of the Shire.'

'Not at all,' said the hobbit, whom Seledrith recognised now. She had only seen him at a distance, previously. It was his wife who came into the shop on a regular basis during the Halflings' visits to the Northland, to finger the lace, to exclaim over Seledrith's stitches, fine enough to have been set by hobbit fingers.

'You're Thain Peregrin,' she said stupidly.

The hobbit bowed. 'At your service,' he said, but then turned back to Gwillam's father. 'Diamond rightly extended her pardon to you, for your actions; as for myself, I informed the Watchers to let you pass unmolested out of the Shire. The report reached me, later, that they had seen you and the lads in your passing...'

'They saw us?' Gwillam whispered, breathing shallowly. 'They might have taken us then, and hanged us up from a tree on the Bounds?'

'Rob was too young to be charged with responsibility for his actions,' Pippin said. 'They'd have found him a good home, rather like a stray pup...'

The youth swore under his breath, and the old man absently corrected him. 'Robin!'

'They're going to hang you,' Robin said. 'They may even hang me, for that matter. I was but a small boy at the time, but what's to stop them now?' And looking from the old man to the hobbit, he said bitterly, 'So much for pity, and pardon...'

'You have my pardon,' Pippin said. 'As to the King's pardon, that is another matter. We are in the land of Men...'

'Will you speak for us, then, just as you spoke for that wretch they hanged after the ruffians took your son?' Robin said, still standing defiantly in the sergeant's grip, his tone too harsh to fit the jolly youth Seledrith had known up until this point in time.

'I will speak for you,' Pippin said gravely.

Somehow Seledrith did not find this at all reassuring. Her world was crumbling around her... no, it was whirling, her head was spinning, she was dizzy with the knowledge that nothing was as it had seemed, the past ten years. Gwillam was not Gwillam, nor was his father "Gwill", nor his brother "Robin", but all were strangers, law-breakers, pretending to be something that they were not.

She ought to sit down, she thought disjointedly, she ought, at least, to put the baby down before she dropped him... she ought... she thought, even as the roaring grew in her ears and the world spun into darkness.





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