Chapter 32. Of Secrets and Sleepyheads

In the marketplace the gossip and speculation were spreading like puff-penny seeds on a windy day.

Workmen had come to take down the boards nailed over the doors and windows of the little linen shop, just as if they were preparing for an auction, though the Crown had never been known to move quite so quickly before to dispose of seized and forfeited property. Yes, and the holes left by the nails had been filled with putty, and the trim shone with a fresh and shiny coat, and...

'I thought you said they pardoned them,' the bookbinder said to the tailor, nodding at the face of shops where staring merchants and shoppers stood in clusters, watching furnishings being carried out--some carried away altogether, and others left in the street, covered by tarpaulins, while interior work was done--workmen were traipsing in and out with buckets and brushes, tools and other implements. It was all just as if the premises were being refurbished, made to look "like new" before the auction was announced.

'That is what the King said,' the tailor replied, his brow furrowed in puzzlement and concern.

'So...' the bookbinder said, guessing, 'they came away with their lives, but lost their property?'

'Or so it looks,' the tailor said, and the cobbler joined the conversation.

' "Lives" is something,' he said with a firm nod. 'What with all of Turambor's family to help, they'll soon be on their feet again, even if for a time they have to make do at the greengrocer's stand. That Gwillam is a hard worker, and his Seledrith sets the neatest stitches of anyone I know.'

The tailor snorted but he had to nod in agreement.

Another bedstead came out in pieces and was laid to rest, and the mattress was loaded on a wain to be taken away with a few other items, trunks, chests and wardrobes, probably containing most of the worldly possessions of the little family.

'P'rhaps the King doesn't know,' a farmer said, but quailed at the stony looks his remark elicited.

'He knows, all right,' the purveyor of sugar-crusted roasted nuts said darkly. 'Fancy him not knowing... he has one of those Seeing Stones, after all, and...'

There was a wise nodding of heads at this, though the Stones were more fabled than fact, and none there had actually seen one. (The bookbinder remembered the light flickering from the high tower where the Lord Denethor had waited the coming of the assault on Minas Tirith, but said nothing.)

'There's nothing to be done for it,' the tailor said, glancing guiltily at the greengrocer's stand, where Airin and Turamir were doing a brisk business.

'We could eschew the auction,' the cobbler said.

'Nay, someone would be buying, farmers from outside the City, maybe, or strangers...' the tailor said, with an apologetic half-bow to the listening farmers in the group. 'I say, save what we can for the family, not that we'd bid against one another, but... if an outsider is bidding, then we chime in, but if one of us is buying, the others stay silent...'

He glanced about at the shocked faces around him, for the idea sounded vaguely treasonous, even in his own ears. Doggedly he went on. 'I have a little put by for a rainy day...' The others were not convinced, he saw, but even as the conversation turned to another topic, he privately resolved that old Gwill's rocking chair, and the old man's pipe, and perhaps the cradle, if the "little" might be stretched so far, would greet the family on their return to the marketplace.

***

Gwillam traced the seal of the King with a trembling fingertip.

'Signed by both Steward and King,' Turambor said in awe. 'Your pardon, lad, or perhaps we ought to call it a life warrant...'

'And the death warrant was burned up,' Hilly said with a definite nod. 'I saw it with my own eyes; the Steward laid it upon the fire at the whipping ground, with his own hand, and it is burned to ashes.'

'So you see, all is well, my love,' Seledrith said, spooning another chip of melting ice to her husband's lips. 'You need to "drink" plenty this afternoon; the King has ordered it.'

Far be it from me to defy the King's orders, Gwillam thought with a smile as he obediently accepted the ice from the spoon. It was cold and refreshing on his tongue, and trickled gently down his ravaged throat.

'Far be it from our Gwillam to defy the King!' Denny said nearby, his arm around Merileth, who had come from the marketplace as soon as the children were put down for naps. She had wanted to see for herself that Gwill and Gwillam were alive, if not completely well. At the moment she was holding baby Robin, looking forward to the fruit of her own coming confinement, when the babe hidden away would no longer be a heavy weight, holding her down and robbing her of sleep, but would be in her arms, like this sleepy little one, and able to be laid in a cradle to give rest to his mother.

'No, he's of an age where he no longer needs to listen to a foolish old man,' Gwill said.

'No, he can make his own foolish mistakes,' Denny said, and Gwillam relaxed and smiled, for that was what he'd opened his own mouth to rasp, and Denny had saved him the trouble and the scolding of his wife as well.

'Denethor!' Seledrith said. Ah, well, it seemed that scolding would go forward, but directed at Denny instead of Gwillam. 'I'll have you know my husband is a very wise man indeed! Why, Gwill said he had to argue long and hard to get Gwillam to agree to enter the Shire in the first place...'

'He did!' Robin said. 'I was there; I heard the whole argument!'

'You were asleep!' Gwill said in surprise, and Gwillam couldn't help laughing, even though it came out as a husking wheeze, and made him cough and nearly strangle upon the last of the melting ice chip.

When the cough had been soothed and Gwillam had been settled again with a fresh spoonful of ice, Merry said to no one in particular, 'So they always want you to think. Tricksy, those little ones...'

'Tricksy?' said Estella from one side, and 'Little ones?' said Diamond on his other side. Pippin had gone away in response to a summons from Ferdibrand, and she pulled Farry closer to drop a kiss upon his curls before letting him go to join the game of chances that the young hobbits were playing on the rug, for she had a goodly idea of what Pippin was discussing at that very moment.

'I cannot tell you the number of "secrets" Pippin hinted at,' Merry said with a roll of his eyes. 'Secrets spoken betwixt myself and Frodo in the deepest dark of the night, when we were sure that young Pippin was sleeping...'

'Breathe evenly,' Robin said to the wide-eyed young hobbits, 'do not screw your eyes too tightly closed, and put in an occasional snore.'

'Not to mention if you murmur in your "sleep",' one of the young Gamgees said with a grin, and his brother gave him a punch on the shoulder for revealing such a secret.

'And so they will let us out of here on the morrow?' Gwill said, his eyes once more going to Gwillam's bruised face. 'We may go home?'

'On the morrow,' Eliniel said firmly, though her last glimpse of Gwill's home had been the boarded-up door and windows. She resolved that the dear old man would be made comfortable wherever "home" might be for him, next day, even if it had to be in back of the greengrocer's stand, at least until the legalities were sorted out.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog, sang Merileth softly to the babe in her arms, and the little eyes closed at last.