Chapter 10. In which a Took hears rather more than he wished

Though it was half-past nine when they arrived back at the Great Smials, half-way through the serving of late supper, they found the courtyard brightly lit with many torches, and a great bustle of hobbits and ponies, with the steward directing. Messengers were still going out in every direction, raising the alarm: There were murderous ruffians in the Shire!

Pippin had ridden a little ahead of the group, right up to the steward and jumping down from the saddle as a stable lad stepped up to seize the reins of his pony. Regi steadied him, and he nodded thanks, then asked, ‘Are they...?’

‘As you ordered,’ the steward said soberly. ‘The little parlour, just inside the North Door.’

‘Thank you, Reg,’ Pippin said, and was gone, long strides taking him to where his wife... and Ferdi’s... waited.

He found Pimpernel and Diamond seated together, Diamond with an arm about her husband’s sister, both of them clutching their handkerchiefs, though if Regi had done “as ordered” only Diamond knew the full truth of the matter. At Pippin’s entrance, Pimpernel jumped up. ‘Bad news, they said, Pip,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘Bad news... but they wouldn’t tell us more. And then Regi... and he’s organising a muster...’

‘Ruffians?’ Diamond said. ‘Is it true? There are ruffians in the Green Hills? And Farry, and Ferdi...?’

‘Farry’s still safe in Whitwell,’ Pippin said, and Diamond nodded, her fist clenching and unclenching on her handkerchief.

‘But Ferdi,’ Pimpernel half-sobbed, her dread visibly growing.

Pippin moved to embrace her, but she stepped back. Still, he took her by the arms and held firm, looking down into her upraised face, his own countenance etched with sorrow.

‘He’s—he’s not...’ Pimpernel said, shaking her head.

Pippin gazed steadily into her eyes, and she read there her doom. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No.’

‘Come, Nell,’ Pippin said. ‘There is much to be done.’ He drew her to himself, embracing her gently, and then, putting an arm about her shoulders, he began to guide her from the room. She walked with him as one in a dream, nay, a nightmare, from which she could not awaken.

Diamond started up from her seat, hurried to catch them, moved to Pimpernel’s other side and slipped her arm about the grieving wife’s waist, so that between them, Pippin and Diamond were supporting her as she walked the short way to the door leading to the courtyard.

...and out into the bitter night, where the moon had slipped from his zenith and was beginning the gentle glide down the sky to his rest. The torches shone bright, but gave no warmth to the scene, even as they dimmed the cold starlight above.

The bustle in the courtyard stilled, even the nervous ponies quieting, as a group rode slowly into the yard, led by Master Merry and Mayor Sam. Tolly followed next, leading the burdened pony, and then a few archers, bows at the ready. The rest of the archers remained at the rock-fall, guarding the engineers in their work; for on the morrow, the job of clearing the blocked track must begin, ruffians or no.

Pimpernel gave a sob, but stood quietly enough between Pippin and Diamond as the sorrowing riders came to a stop. Tolly slid wearily from his pony and moved to undo the bindings that fastened the blanketed figure to the following pony. Several hobbits stepped forward, then, to help slide the burden off, turning him over to lay him briefly on the stones, to be able to get a good hold before taking him up once more.

At this point, Pimpernel broke from Pippin and Diamond, stumbling forward, throwing herself on the still figure.

‘Nell!’ Pippin said, and Regi was there as well, trying to drag her back, but she pushed them away; clinging to the blanket, she pulled the folds away from Ferdi’s face, and taking his face in her hands she kissed him desperately, calling his name over and over in between kisses.

‘Nell!’ Pippin said, and his voice broke in his grief, and he bowed himself down, and Sam and Merry moved to stand to either side.

‘Come away, Nell,’ Regi said quietly, with a gentle tug at her arm. ‘Come away.’

‘I won’t leave him!’ she cried, defiant.

‘Come away,’ Regi repeated. ‘There’s much to be done.’

‘You cannot keep me from him!’ Pimpernel raged, turning a tear-ravaged face to the steward, but seeing Regi’s grief so clear in his own face, she faltered.

‘I would not even try,’ he said softly. ‘Come along, Nell, and honour your husband.’

She allowed him to raise her, then, with a hand under her elbow, and sober-faced hobbits, Tolly among them, bent to lift the quiet figure, and Regi escorted Pimpernel after them, into the Great Smials, to their apartment, for the washing and the shrouding and the watching to follow.

‘The burial in the dawning?’ Diamond whispered, and Pippin nodded.

‘Aye,’ he said bitterly. ‘I think the muster can wait until the dawn. No use going out in the dark of night. I’m sure they won’t be building fires nor carrying torches, to guide us to them.’ Diamond’s arm tightened around him, and he gave a shuddering sigh. ‘We’ll have the burial in the dawning,’ he echoed, ‘and the memorial when all this mess has been cleared away.’

‘I’m so very sorry, my love,’ Diamond said, her voice breaking.

Pippin only shook his head, and then with great courtesy, he offered his arm to Diamond, and escorted her to their quarters, where he tucked her up, comfortable in their big bed, and sat with her while she wept herself out, until at last she slept, and then he went to join Regi in the courtyard, to hear his report, and then to the Thain’s study, where he and Sam and Merry sat long into the night, looking at maps and laying their plans.

***

Farry wakened when a cruel hand seized his curls, jerking his head back, and a voice snarled in his ear, ‘Here, you, not a peep out of you, little chicken, not a sound, you understand? Or I’ll cut your tongue out here and now. Understand?’

Farry nodded, to show his understanding, and heard the ruffian give a grunt. And then the gag was loosened, and then it was pulled away and fingers pried the wad of cloth out of his mouth, and a hand seized his hair once more, forcing his head back, and he choked back a cry. A seeming deluge of water nearly drowned him, but he gulped eagerly. They were giving him water to drink! What could it mean?

‘There,’ the ruffian said, and now he recognised the fat man’s mutter as the wad of cloth was shoved back into his mouth and the gag replaced. ‘That’ll keep him going for a while, I’d venture. Got to have a live body when we cross the Bounds, anyhow, just in case... Now, hand me the blade...’

Farry tried to pull away as the cruel hand took hold of his curls yet a third time and he saw a flash out of the corner of his eye. ‘Be still!’ the ruffian hissed. ‘Or I’ll take your ear off, you ruddy little rat’s get!’

He cried out involuntarily, feeling a sharp edge slice against his ear, and then something warm and wet trickled down and he thought for a moment that the ruffian really had taken his ear off. But no, by the light of the moon, past zenith but still high in the sky, he saw in the ruffian’s hand a wad of curly hair. Farry’s hair, from the top of his head, and he wondered. Why would they shave his head? Healer Woodruff, he knew, might shave the hair off a hobbit to stitch a head wound, but he could think of no other reason...

And then there was a dull flash of gleaming steel as the fat man handed the blade to the youngest of the band. ‘You saw? That’s the first of it, the hair. Let me see you take a goodly chunk of hair, there from the other side.’

The young ruffian’s hand was shaking, and Farry truly feared for his other ear, but the ruffian managed to shear off a handful of Farry’s head-hair without drawing blood.

‘And now?’ he whispered, while Farry wondered the same.

In the darkness, he heard the sound of Penny grazing nearby, her teeth chomping the grass, the homey sound of chewing, incongruous with the deadly fear in his gut.

‘And now, we wrap up the hair in this nice little note you’ve written,’ the fat man said, ‘and you’ll go—oh, so quietly!—and put it just outside the door of the smial, and leave a big rock on top of it so that the stupidest hobbit in the Shire could see it and wonder. He’ll take our note to the Thain, and the Thain will know we have his son, and he’ll think we’re heading to the East, for we’ve told him to leave a bag of gold at the Three-Farthing Stone if he wants to have the rest of his son back, safe.’

‘But we won’t be,’ the youth said, a question in his voice.

‘Of course we won’t be, are you as stupid as a Shire-rat?’ the fat man snapped, though he kept his voice low, and Farry gathered the mentioned “smial” was not far away. If only he’d had the courage to shout when his mouth was clear! But it was too late now.

‘And then tomorrow even, we’ll leave another little token or two for the Thain, just to show him we’re serious about this business,’ the fat man said, his hand closing on the back of Farry’s neck. The young hobbit shivered at the warm, clammy touch.

‘As if we were,’ the whiner said with a soft and high-pitched giggle.

‘As if we were,’ the fat man agreed with a chuckle. ‘The Thain’ll be falling all over himself to ransom his son, leaving his bags of gold ever southwards, never guessing that we’re escaping to the north.’

‘Poor stupid hobbits,’ the club-wielder said. ‘One might almost pity them.’

‘One might,’ said the brawny man. ‘But it’s better all around if one simply remembers what Sharkey called them.’

‘More’s the pity,’ the whiner said, stifling another eerie giggle.