Chapter 2

The next two days passed in harmonic bliss for Frodo who, along with Merry, tagged after Bilbo and listened eagerly to his many stories. When they weren’t in Bilbo’s company, they hid themselves away where no one could find them, which rose more than a few eyebrows. Frodo could always be counted on to be right by Bilbo’s side from the moment he arrived to the time of his departure. This was the first time anyone could remember when the lad couldn’t constantly be found in Bilbo’s company, and no one was able to figure what it might mean.

Bilbo just shrugged at it all and hid the sadness from his voice when he said, “He’s a tween now and he’s growing up. I can’t expect him to stay the same little lad hanging off the apron strings that he used to be.”

Instead, Bilbo spent his free time speaking with Sara and Esme, and finally Rory. He was pleased to hear firsthand that Frodo has been doing well since his last encounter with Maggot, though he was no more pleased to hear Rory’s ultimatum than Sara and Esme had been.

Rory had told the lad that he must either begin to conduct himself accordingly, or Rory would have no other choice but to remove Frodo from the Hall. Rory was hoping he would not have to make good on his threat, for he loved Frodo dearly and did not wish to put him out, but he had to think of the peace of the Hall first. Frodo’s antics, while they usually did not harm anyone else, still raised a lot of ire and condemnation among the other residents, who have only just forgotten about Merry’s broken arm from the previous year.

“Well, you’re not just sending him off to anyone, I hope,” Bilbo said hotly. “With whom were you planning to place the lad if it came to that?”

Rory shook his head sadly. “I don’t know, Bilbo. Milo would be happy to take him, though I doubt very much Frodo would want to go there; Milo’s living in Prima and Drogo’s old house as you know. Do not worry, Bilbo. Sara assures me all is well, and with hope, it will not come to that.”

Then, the night after Bilbo’s arrival, Frodo was caught sneaking out the apartment door in the middle of the night by a sleepless Saradoc. When asked what he was doing, Frodo claimed to be going to the kitchen for a bit of milk. Sara returned to his bedchamber without any further questions, but he couldn’t help but notice that nearly an hour passed before Frodo returned.

‘He must have been chatting with the kitchen attendant who is on call tonight,’ Sara thought, for despite the staff’s best efforts, food was still going missing.

In the meanwhile, Esme had her hands full with her mother-in-law’s request. She realized right away that she would not only have to question all the tweens and teens in the Hall, but also some of the youngest children who were known for their quick fingers. This left no less than forty-three children to investigate. Most of them looked at her with blank expressions and gave even less informative replies, but a few had very interesting stories to tell her once she got them going.

The first such child was ten-year old Gordibrand Burrows, who had a penchant for sweets, especially biscuits.

“Good morning, Gordi,” Esme said sweetly when she found the child in one of the sitting rooms, playing by himself. She knelt down so she was eye-level with the lad.

“Morning, Aunt Esme,” Gordi said without looking up from his stacking blocks.

“I’m your cousin, dear,” Esme corrected.

“You’re too old to be my cousin,” Gordi said thoughtlessly and didn’t notice Esme’s sour expression.

“Older than you I may be, but I am still your cousin,” she finally said, letting a laugh show in her voice to hide the ire.

Now Gordi looked up at her, his head tilted to one side. He considered her for a moment, then said, “You’re my second cousin, twice removed.”

“Correct,” Esme said. “I was wondering if you could tell me about those mint chocolate biscuits the kitchen staff made a day or two back. I was thinking of asking the staff to make some for me as well. Did you enjoy them?”

“I tried to, but Uncle Marmadas caught me sneaking in his apartment and made me leave,” Gordi said, a sour expression on his face. Then his eyes widened excitedly and he smiled toothily. “I did get a handful of butterscotch drops though. Those were mighty good, but then they started melting all over, and I couldn’t eat them fast enough. I didn’t want them to drip all over the floor, because I know that’s not good, so I got rid of them.”

“Got rid of them?”

Gordi studied her for a moment, then shrugged. Seeing as she was a cousin and not an aunt, he could tell her. He leaned in and whispered loudly, “I tucked them under one of the chair cushions in the East Parlor. But if anyone asks, it wasn’t me, it was my sister.” Gordi finished his admission with a conspiratorial nod of his head.

Esme sighed, and rubbed at the headache starting at her temples. “Of course, Gordi. Go back to your play.”

Esme left the lad to his blocks and sought out a cleaning maid.  

Ginger glared at her assistant, who trembled before her and stifled a yawn.

“What happened?” Ginger exclaimed. “A whole plate of caramel wafers just up and left on their own?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I tried to stay awake, I truly did,” her assistant pleaded. “But I- I fell asleep. When I woke up, they were gone.”

“Anything else missing that I should know about?”

“No ma’am, just a bottle of milk.”

Ginger tapped her foot, fit to be tied for sure. “Go and get some rest, lass. Everyone else, those of you not assigned to first breakfast will be remaking those wafers. Get to it!”

The cooks nodded and got to work, and Ginger left to seek out the Mistress again. This was really getting out of hand.  

Frodo and Merry left Bilbo with a wave and walked away at a leisurely pace. They waited until they were around the corner and out of sight to run. “Come on,” Frodo said, grabbing Merry’s tiny hand and pulling him along, “before he tries to catch up with us!”

Merry pealed with laughter and followed his older cousin at a close step. They ran into the barn and down one of the many rows of stables to the last stall. There were no animals currently being housed there, and the stall was swept clean and empty. They would be undisturbed, so long as they could keep their voices down.

Frodo pulled out their hidden treasure from the shadow of the corner and opened the box. They were running low on supplies, even though Frodo had been careful to retrieve more the previous night. He had risked it after Saradoc caught him sneaking out the door, but thankfully, his guardian had been asleep again by the time he snuck back in.

Merry considered the contents of the box, his tiny mouth pursed in concentration. “I think I’ll take this one. And this one and this one,” he said at last and picked his choices from the box.

“Easy now Merry,” Frodo chided gently.

“Yes, it is very easy,” Merry agreed, missing the reprimand. He lay on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, his feet bent behind him and waving in the air. “Does anyone guess anything?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Frodo said. “They’re all much too busy catching up on all the gossip to pay much mind. We’ll have to be more careful though, especially now that your Mum’s asking questions.”

“I know, but you said it’ll all be done. Look at all we have already,” Merry said with a grin. “This was your best idea yet.”

“So you approve then? That eases my mind. I shall rest easy tonight,” Frodo said, selecting his own choice. He set the box aside and reached into the inner pocket of his waistcoat and placed several of its contents upon the floor. “Here, what shall we do next?”

They put their heads together and snickered over their plans.  

Twenty minutes after fetching a cleaning maid, Esme was back on the case, seeking out children where they were most likely to spend their time on a cold and misty autumn day. She encountered many in the sitting parlors, but she avoided questioning them when they were all together. Instead, she sought out the ones who were by themselves or in pairs. Near teatime, she ran into Fendimbras Goldworthy and Morton Goodbody, twenty-eight years-old the both of them. Ah, now there was a pair of troublemakers if she ever saw one.

She smiled at them slyly and approached them with a knowing air. The best way to deal with these two tweens was to pretend you already knew what they had done. In this case, she did already know what was done, she just needed to get them to admit to doing it. She stopped before them and crossed her arms. “Well?” she said tersely.

“Well what?” Fendi asked, baffled. Morti just cocked an eyebrow.

These two were good, but not good enough. “You know perfectly well, well what. Don’t give me that lip. Now, are you going to explain yourselves, or am I going to have to take this to your parents?”

Fendi and Morti considered each other, a panicked glance passing amongst them. Ah-ha! Esme could almost feel her achievement, but she kept herself from appearing too smug. If they suspected even for a moment that she was bluffing, they would play it to their advantage and she would never get an admission out of them.

“You don’t know anything,” Morti finally said, narrowing his eyes at her, his fatal error for attempting to call her bluff so soon.

Esme gaped at them and shook her head. “It was you!” she exclaimed and shook her finger at them. “Only the guilty ones would say such a thing. I will be speaking to your parents now.” She turned and started walking away, and just as she had hoped, the lads caught up with her, desperation in their faces.

“Please, you don’t understand…”

“It wasn’t like that at all, really…”

“He said he didn’t mind it,” Morti exclaimed now. “I can’t believe he ratted us out,” he hissed to Fendi.

“Did you really expect any less?”

Esme paused, not sure exactly what kind of an admission she had just received from them. Playing along, she said, “I see this is more complicated than he made it seem. Why don’t you tell me your side of the story?”

“Well, Sed Brockhouse was telling us about his collection of salamanders and said that we could take a couple, so long as we were careful with them,” Fendi began.

“And we were,” Morti jumped in. “We took real good care of them.”

“Yes, even he said so.”

“I’m listening,” Esme said when the tweens paused.

“Well, we had them outside on the summit, so as they could get some air. Then Posy came up and started making a nuisance of herself like she always does, so we, um, well, we sort of put them in her hair,” Fendi ended in a mutter.

“She started screaming and carrying on, and we tried to get them out, but then she tripped and they fell out of her hair over the summit down below into one of the gardener’s flower pots and…”

“The gardener said something about salamanders being good for nothing and a nuisance besides, and he killed them.”

“With one fell swoop of his trowel. We felt real bad about it,” Morti continued. “We even buried them under the beech tree where Sed first found them. Sed said it was all right because he has plenty more, but I guess he changed his mind.”

Esmeralda just stared at them, unable to believe her ears. Salamanders? “I suppose this is something that can be dealt with between the three of you,” she finally said, defeated. “If I hear of you sticking any more pests into a lass’s hair again…”

“Oh, of course. We won’t do that ever again,” Fendi promised.

“Absolutely not,” Morti agreed, and somehow they both managed to keep their faces straight and repentant.

Esme turned and walked away, and the friends looked at each other with impish grins. “See?” Fendi whispered once she was gone. “I told you she didn’t know anything.”

“Salamanders!” Morti snorted and tugged on his cousin’s sleeve, pulling him down the tunnel in the opposite direction of Esmeralda, snickering uncontrollably. “Good one! That was pure genius!”

“Yes, but let’s tell Posy in case anyone goes asking her, and we can remind her brother to keep his mouth shut while we’re at it,” Fendi said, and the friends went to seek the siblings out.  

Gilda sat at her vanity, setting her trusses after a long day of supervising duties. She had spent most of the day in the kitchens, seeing to the staff and making suggestions for how to better guard the food without hindering the help more than was necessary. Ginger either approved or disapproved her suggestions, and in the end, all that was decided was that someone else guard the kitchen at nights, someone who could sleep during the day and would therefore not nod off while on duty.

Gilda had gone off in search of just such a worker, finding none. In the end, she had to order one of the cleaning maids to switch positions and shifts for a week or so until her daughter-in-law could get this mystery solved. She had then passed Esme in the tunnels and attempted to ask how the investigation was going. “Salamanders and butterscotch!” was the hasty response she got as Esme brushed past her without slowing. Gilda didn’t want to imagine what that must mean.

“I don’t know, Rory,” she said now, sitting in front of the vanity in her bedchamber. “Maybe it’s the full moon, or the early frost, or both.”

Rory sighed and sat down at the edge of the bed behind her. “Everything’s going missing but at least one mystery has been solved,” Rory stated. “I got another letter from Maggot this morning. He caught the culprit red-handed, some tween from the Marish, and he gave him an even worse thrashing that he did Frodo.”

“You need to apologize to our son,” Gilda said firmly and dabbed perfume on her wrists.

“I know, but he’s off with Bilbo fishing on the river,” Rory said. “No news from Esme?”

“I’m afraid to ask,” Gilda said. “Let’s just throw in the towel and move to Oatbarton. Sara can handle everything, surely.”

Rory laughed and came to stand behind his wife. He placed warm hands lightly onto her shoulders and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I’d love to run away with you, love, but it doesn’t matter where we go. They will find us.”

Gilda laughed now also, and reached up to pat her husband’s cheek. “There is no escape, then? What a dreadful notion.”

“Escape there may not be, but certainly we don’t have to be showing ourselves anytime soon,” Rory said.

“Certainly not,” Gilda agreed and turned to kiss her husband.  

Bilbo and Saradoc sat in the rowboat, their lines cast into the water, waiting for a catch to take home. They spoke of pleasant things at first, but Bilbo slowly but surely steered the conversation toward Frodo, for more than anything, he wanted to speak about Rory’s ultimatum. Rory must have been hard pressed and desperate to make such a declaration, and Bilbo wanted to know why and how it had come about. Rory had been short on the details of the matter, so Bilbo was hoping that Sara would be more forthcoming. He knew that if he went to Frodo about this, he would get nothing in return but cold silence or, worse, a nonchalant shrug and an empty joke.

“I don’t understand, Saradoc, how you could just let your father deliver Frodo such an ultimatum,” Bilbo said at last. This was a sad conversation to have in such a tranquil place, but this was the only way they could be assured that no one would overhear.

“I didn’t just let him,” Sara replied. He looked up from his line and up over the River, to where Buck Hill lay hidden beyond the trees and the land. There was regret in his voice but his expression was resolved. “I had never defied my father before that night, no matter how much we may have disagreed. I even refused for a week to speak with him. It is still a sore matter between us.”

“And yet,” Bilbo prompted, for he wanted to know everything, no matter how reluctant Sara might be to tell him.

Saradoc looked back to his line and frowned down at the softly rippling water. “It’s working. Frodo is behaving himself again and it’s been peaceful, for the most part. Frodo still disappears too often for comfort, but if we question him at every turn, this won’t work. We have to trust to hope that he’s keeping his nose clean.”

“Trust to hope?” Bilbo said and scoffed at this. “It seems to me you’d do better to place your trust in Frodo.” He sat up straight and looked hard at Sara, trying to understand.

“We’re starting to trust him again.”

Bilbo spluttered at this but could not think of anything to say against it. Finally, he said, “What exactly happened, Sara? I can’t believe that Frodo woke up one morning and decided to go stealing mushrooms.”

Saradoc shook his head, equally as lost for an explanation. The theft had taken them all by surprise, and its continuation after Merry’s close call had left them all speechless. Looking back, they could only grasp at the clues.

“It was little things at first. Frodo started staying out later than normal, sometimes staying out the whole night. He started shirking his duties and his lessons every so often, not enough to cause alarm. We just figured it was careless teen behavior, but it only got worse from there. Our first real warning was when Merry was found outside Milo’s house after he had tried to trail Frodo somewhere and lost him. I can’t believe even now that Frodo didn’t know he was being followed. We realized then that something was wrong, yet every time we tried to talk to him about it, he made it sound as though nothing was the matter. He wouldn’t even speak to Gil, so again we figured it was typical teen jitters.”

“Then Merry followed him again,” Bilbo supplied.

Sara nodded gravely. “Yes, to Maggot’s fields, and broke his arm there trying to follow Frodo down the cliff. Frodo seemed to shape up after that and things were more or less normal through the winter. But as soon as he came back from his spring visit with you, he was right back out at Maggot’s fields, though we didn’t know it. We just knew he was disappearing again. That’s when the fights started. And when Maggot caught him red-handed…” Saradoc was silent for many moments, the weight of the last year and-a-half heavy upon his shoulders. “Father did what he had to do.”

“I still don’t see how it came to this in the first place,” Bilbo insisted. The Frodo that Saradoc was telling him about was so far removed from the one Bilbo knew; how could they be speaking of the same person? “If you had written me when this all started…”

“You weren’t around Bilbo,” Sara said, resignation not anger in his voice. “You were off traipsing about the fields somewhere. Besides, as I said, he wouldn’t even talk to Gil about why he was behaving so, and he tells Gil more than he tells you.”

Bilbo’s line caught then and Bilbo broke eye contact only long enough to secure the line against the side of the boat. Let the fish tire itself out, he thought, and turned back to Sara. Sara seemed lost in his thoughts, but he continued without prompting.

“We feared we were losing him again,” he said. “Those first three years after his parents died were so hard for us all, especially Frodo, yet miraculously we made it through, and while the next four years weren’t exactly perfect I can only describe them as blissful. And now this, starting last summer. We don’t know why.”

“But he is doing better now,” Bilbo stated rather than asked.

Sara gave a small nod and smiled. “Yes he is. Now.”  

The contents of the box were nearly spent again. Frodo frowned down at it, more than a little bemused, and Merry watched him intently so he could shadow his cousin’s expression. He turned to the box and frowned down at it himself, his eyebrows drawn together, forehead creased and lips slightly pinched. He gazed about as Frodo did.

“We’re wasting an awful lot,” Frodo stated as he surveyed their handiwork. He’d had to do a lot of sneaking to get all that they had started with and he had hoped it would last them for the next couple of days. With Esme prowling the tunnels looking for trouble-makers, he didn’t want to risk drawing suspicion to himself. “We need to be more mindful.”

“I know,” Merry said, “but I keep changing my mind which one I want.”

“Then stop doing that,” Frodo said with a smile. He packed everything away and returned the box to the shadows. Then he stood and brushed off his breeches. Beside him, Merry did the same, right down to shaking the fabric of dust. Frodo smirked and couldn’t help playing a bit. He hopped on one foot and shook his breeches again; Merry did the same. Then Frodo hopped on the other foot and repeated the process. When he started hopping backwards in a circle, Merry finally caught on to the game and started laughing with delight.

“Shh!” Frodo warned, bringing the game to a quick stop. “You’ll get us caught again.” Merry tried to sober himself, holding both hands over his mouth to hide his giggles. Frodo laughed himself then and held his hand out for Merry. “Come along, Meadow. It’s nearly supper time and everyone will be waiting for us.”

They slipped out of their stall and strolled down the length of the stable. They passed only one ostler, but the lad only nodded at them without looking up from his shoveling, so there was nothing to worry about in him. They walked out of the stables into the crisp, cool air and were about to enter the West Door when they heard Saradoc and Bilbo behind them on the lane. They paused to wait for the elder hobbits’ arrival.

Their shapes emerged through the thin mist and they were nearly upon the door before they noticed Frodo and Merry waiting for them. “Hullo, my lads!” Bilbo exclaimed and ruffled their hair.

Frodo groaned at being treated so, but Merry laughed and bounced up and down to be held. Sara scooped him up and turned to him and then Frodo. “And what have the two of you been up to all afternoon?” he asked.

“I went looking for you earlier to see if you wanted to come fishing with us,” Bilbo stated. “There were water moccasins, you know. River monsters,” he whispered to Merry. Merry’s eyes widened in amazement. “They come up to the boat and hiss at you, trying to steal your fish, but we wrested them away, didn’t we Sara.”

Sara laughed and held up his line of fresh fish, four in all. “We certainly did. It was a good fight, but we kept our prize.”

“You fought water monsters,” Merry said to his father and stared at him with admiration as they entered the Hall and made their way through the tunnels to the kitchens. There, Sara handed the fish to one of the attendants to do with as she pleased, then they returned to their apartments to wash up for dinner.

“You never answered my question,” Bilbo said once he and Frodo were alone. He eyed his young cousin closely and was pleased to see him relaxed and happy.

“What question?” Frodo asked, a smile on his lips and a secret in his eyes.

“Don’t play games with me, you scamp,” Bilbo chuckled. “I might be old, but I’m no dotard. Where do you two keep wandering off to?”

Frodo only shrugged and hummed blissfully under his breath. Bilbo continued to watch him, until Frodo’s smile widened and he couldn’t contain the laugh anymore. Then he doubled over with mirth and gasped for air. Bilbo could only shake his head at the lad. “You’re certainly becoming a tween, acting so silly as all that,” Bilbo said with fondness.

“I love you too, Bilbo,” Frodo managed to say and pecked the old hobbit on his cheek. Then he stood up and escaped to his room to freshen up before Bilbo could ask him any further questions.

To be continued…