Confession

I killed him. Well . . . I suppose it was more an accident but I did nothing to save him.

I was so angry with him last night. It had been just one more time that all he did was take advantage of my short comings, and it seems I have a lot of them lately. The lovely lass that waited on us at the inn now, he didn’t need to make my embarrassment any worse than it was . . . but he just couldn’t resist.

She came to our table with our third helpings of beef stew. A lovely lass. I’d been taken with her from when she had first come to take our dinner orders. I was going to thank her and ask her name. I turned to her, opened my mouth . . .

. . . and belched.

No subtle thing, no. That would have been easy to cover over. No, this was a window rattler if ever I had heard, or produced, one.

"You must forgive him," he said in his smoothest voice, "the lad barely knows how to speak as it is. When he’s a few ales toward drunk he’s quite unintelligible."

Everyone laughed. She giggled. I wanted to die.

No.

I wanted to kill him first and then I could die.

Later, on my way back to our table after a visit to the privy, I lost my footing somehow. (That seems to be happening to me a lot lately.) I knocked her straight into Martin Bracegirdle’s lap. Not the nicest lad, Martin. He grabbed a few things he shouldn’t have, she jumped from his lap, slapped him then glared at me.

"You shouldn’t have done that!" my tormenter said sternly as he stepped up beside the lass. His face wore a scowl but his eyes were alight with taunting. "He really is horribly gullible, my poor cousin is," he said to the lass. "He should have known better than to take that money from Martin, knowing what sort old Martin is."

Again, I wanted to kill him.

We were on our way home. We were on the narrow bridge over Trout Creek when his pony spooked.

(I may have jabbed it a bit with my pocket knife. I don’t recall doing that but the open knife was in my hand later.)

His pony spooked and into the creek he went. He must have been too drunk, or had got tangled in weeds or some such thing as he was normally a good swimmer. He struggled. Gasped. Went under.

I didn’t move off my pony. I watched him struggle, I heard him beg for aid, till my cousin floated face down upon the surface of the creek.

*********************

"Pippin?"

"Yes, Merry."

"What on earth is this all about?" Merry held a piece of paper up under his cousin’s nose.

"Ah . . . ah . . . choo! What is that thing? It must be . . . ah - choo! . . . full of dust or something."

"It must have got damp at sometime, it’s musty. But Pippin, it’s in your writing. Well," Merry looked at it again, "in your writing as it was when you were younger. But it’s a dreadful thing, dreadful. According to this you let someone, some cousin of yours, drown in Trout Creek!"

"What! That? It . . . Let me see that, Merry." Pippin snatched the paper from Merry’s hand. "I . . . it . . . ah - choo! I thought I had burned this ages ago. The day after I had written it in fact."

"You didn’t apparently as it was in this crate."

The cousins were going through some crates and boxes that Eglantine had sent to Crickhollow from Great Smials.

"Wait a moment!" Merry snatched the shabby piece of paper back. "I remember these things. I remember that night in the Pony and Cart. This is me you’re talking about!"

Pippin looked down and blushed. "Well . . . yes. Yes, it was you."

"You’d best start explaining, Peregrin Took."

"I had just become a tween not long before, if you recall, Merry. And . . . well, it seemed to me as if I had got to where I couldn’t do anything right. You know, that point in life when a lad just seems all gangly and befuddled."

"Yes."

"Well, it seemed to me that you were having a grand time making everything I did seem worse. Moving in to say or do things that made you look wonderful and me look an arse. And well . . ." Pippin turned away. He walked over to a window and gazed out at the sunlit lawns of Crickhollow. "I didn’t really hate you, I just was getting very tired of you always coming off better. Then I started having this awful dream." He turned back from the window and waved his hand at the brown splotched paper. "That awful dream. The setting for you shaming me would change to whatever had happened most recently, but suddenly we would be upon the bridge and from there it was always the same." Pippin sighed loudly and turned back to the window. "I’d wake in a clammy sweat feeling absolutely hideous for even dreaming such a thing. I would sneak down the hall to your room, or next door to your room if we were at Great Smials, to make sure I hadn’t really . . ." He waved his hand once again in the direction of the paper. "I finally decided that maybe if I wrote it down it would . . . well, you had told me that if you had some design you kept doodling and couldn’t seem to quit, that if you turned it into a full sketch or painting or such, that you’d stop doodling it all the time. I hoped if I wrote this horrible dream down that it would go away."

Merry came up behind Pippin and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Did it?"

Pippin reached up to pat Merry’s hand. "Well, yes. But whether because I wrote it down or just because things started to change that very next night, I don’t know for sure."

"Things changed?"

"Yes, the next night was one of Vinca’s parties. It was the one where you were talking about going hunting. You were flinging your arms all about and caught the tray of drinks and food that Chrystal Took was carrying." Pippin smiled over at Merry, who smiled and chuckled back.

"Oh my, yes! She was buried under cider and apple pie. I made a complete mess of the poor lass."

"Aye. And I swept up beside her and said, ‘You need to excuse Merry, Chrystal. The poor lad has quite lost control over his arms since he fell off his pony. Let me help you clean up and I’ll see if Vinca has a frock she can loan you.’" Pippin clapped Merry on the back. "She spent the rest of the evening in my company and I had left you looking quite the clumsy oaf. I felt better than I had in months! From that time on I didn’t feel so badly if you got me on something stupid I would do because I was able to get my own back when you would mess up. We were even and the dream never came back."

"Well, cousin mine, I’m glad you didn’t actually try to kill me. Here." Merry handed the smelly paper to Pippin. "I’ll let you have the honor of actually burning it this time."

With a flash and a smelly flicker, it was gone.