Note to the Reader: We now enter the territory of true horror, and sad to say, this chapter split itself in half. The next chapter is, if anything, worse. If you are sensitive, please skip this chapter, and chapter 26. Firmly PG-13.

Chapter 25. In which a Took is outraged by happenings

‘Nearly done now, Nell,’ Regi whispered. ‘Hold up.’

And in seeming echo, a breathless voice was heard calling. ‘Hold up! Hold up!’

There was a ripple in the slow-marching line of departing hobbits; the line itself hesitated, stopped, seemed to be swelling back on itself, as if those who’d already taken their leave were returning for second helpings. There was reason for their curiosity, as it turned out.

‘What in the name of...?’ Rosamunda gasped, from behind Regi and Pimpernel. ‘Mistress...’ For the head healer was forcing her way through the crowd, swimming against the current, if one could use such an unhobbity turn of phrase, and she was a sight to see. Hair wild, face flushed, eyes popping, clothes dishevelled as if she’d slept in them (as a matter of fact she had, for three nights now), she pushed and pinched and shoved, all the while calling desperately.

Regi nodded to the two retired hobbits of the Thain’s escort, and they moved quickly to intercept Woodruff, to bring her to the graveside, where the line of mourners had stopped, uncertain, the nearest still clutching their handful of earth.

‘If only I’m not too late,’ Woodruff panted, brought to a swaying stop before the steward. ‘If only...’

‘What is the meaning of this, Healer Woodruff,’ Regi asked, nay, demanded. Certainly the hobbit had been head healer at the Great Smials since Paladin’s time, but that did not give her licence to disrupt a solemn leave-taking!

‘I must know,’ the healer said, ignoring Regi’s pending anger, paying no heed to the shock and dismay surrounding them. ‘I must know, I must be certain...’

‘Certain of what?’ Regi said coldly. ‘Really, Woodruff, I think...’

But what he thought was evidently of no import, at least not to Woodruff. She turned to the two gravediggers, standing aghast in the background, and summoned them with the imperious gesture of a healer who is used to being obeyed, however reluctantly.

These stepped forward, and while Regi was still spluttering, and Nell was staring, wide-eyed, along with the children and the rest, she took a hand of each and directed them to lower her into the grave!

Regi fell silent at this, stunned to silence, actually, and before he could think of anything to say, the healer was crouching over the body, sweeping away the accumulating earth, tearing at the shroud such that the stitches gave way.

Nell gave a gasp and swayed as Ferdi’s face was revealed, peaceful, smiling even, looking as if he slept.

Regi opened his mouth to snap orders to the retired hobbits of escort, to the gravediggers, to anyone with wit and muscle enough, to haul Woodruff—who’d evidently taken leave of her senses—out again, when he felt Pimpernel sway against him. He was just in time to stop her toppling into the grave, atop Woodruff (and Ferdibrand). He eased her gently to the ground, and Rosamunda took over, chafing the stricken hobbit’s wrists, calling Nell’s name softly, turning her head to call someone to bring a litter, and at once!

Meanwhile, in the grave, Woodruff was muttering to herself, loosening Ferdi’s collar, sliding her fingers down his neck. He was so very cold, she thought with a shudder, cold and clammy to her touch. He was dead, and Ted’s dream had betrayed them all: Woodruff, who would surely be stripped of her position, and Nell and the children, who would never forget this horror, and Ferdi himself, whose rest was thus disturbed, dishonoured by this disruption.

‘I must be sure,’ she muttered, and steeling herself, she opened his jacket, and then undid the waistcoat buttons, and then his shirt, while murmurs of outrage and distress sounded from the crowd above and all around the grave. She took a shuddering breath, and laid her head down upon Ferdi’s chest... and was still.

Regi had watched this extraordinary performance with amazement and dread. Had Ferdi somehow been living, when they’d lowered him into the grave? But... a competent healer had pronounced him dead. His own wife had washed the body and dressed it for burial. An assistant healer had stitched up Ferdi’s head wounds. Surely she would have detected signs of life, had there been any to be found. No, he decided. Woodruffs’ long and anxious vigil at her husband’s side, on top of a string of emergencies that had left the healer dangerously short of sleep, had taken a terrible toll on the head healer. It was understandable, he supposed, especially as she hadn’t seen Ferdi herself.

But a niggling doubt remained, as he stared down into the grave, at Woodruff, listening at Ferdi’s breast. ‘Healer Woodruff...’ he called uncertainly.

The healer did not move.

‘Woodruff?’ Regi called again, a little louder. The murmuring of the crowd increased.

Rosamunda had seen to Nell’s removal by litter, with several other wives of the escort herding the children away from this unseemly sight, and now she joined her husband, staring down. ‘Something’s wrong,’ she said, and then, leaning over so that Regi caught at her, held her, fearful she might fall in, she called, ‘Mistress?’

Woodruff did not move. ‘Something’s wrong,’ Rosamunda said, louder, and one of the gravediggers took her meaning, nudging the other, who lowered him into the grave, which was getting somewhat crowded now, with three hobbits in a space meant for one.

He bent over the healer, calling her name, reaching out a tentative hand, and then he looked up. ‘Fainted!’ he said, ‘and what’s more, she’s burning up with fever!’

Regi rolled his eyes and suppressed a sigh. What else could happen? And yet, it all made a terrible sense; Ferdi had the luck of the Tooks, after all, and while it could be a very good thing, it could also be monstrously bad, when it turned.

They lowered one of the ropes into the grave, and the digger tied it around Woodruff, under her arms, and they hauled her up as gently as they could, and laid her on a litter (the crowd falling back, in case the fever might be catching), and she was borne gently away, Rosamunda at her side, holding her hand.

And then the gravedigger gently folded the shroud about Ferdi again, though he didn’t restore the dead hobbit’s clothing—not for him to touch a corpse, he was only a digger of graves, and that was all they paid him for, and he didn’t feel like volunteering to do anything more, not at this moment, at least. His companion hauled him out of the grave again, and he wiped at his face with his handkerchief. He’d put in his night’s work, and then some! He looked forward to the burial feast, and then he’d fall into his bed with a thankful heart.

Regi nodded to the next hobbit, still waiting with a fistful of dirt, and the interrupted ceremony resumed.

***

Jay stifled a whoop of triumph when they picked up the ruffian’s back trail. He might have died, the wretch, the light might have left his eyes as he stared greedily at the gold that had cost his life, but there was still a story to be read from his body, from the hobnailed boots he wore, that had left their mark in a soft patch of dirt. He hadn’t bothered to disguise his trail, perhaps because he hadn’t meant to go back that way again. In any event, it was a trail, and they could follow it, and follow it they did, silent, grim, and intent.

The ruffian had not cleaned his club, and there was still dried blood, fairly fresh, and hair stuck to the gory end, from Ferdi’s head, Sam thought upon examination. Too dark to be Farry’s, and that might be a mercy, or it might not.

***

Farry didn’t rouse when the fat man lifted him from the pile of cloaks. His parents found it difficult to waken him when he was deeply asleep, and they often were heard to say, with some pride, that their young son could sleep through a dragon’s roar, when he was in the middle of “growing sleep”. And so the fat man bore him to the mouth of the cave, where the greatest light was to be found, and sat himself down against one side of the entrance, with the hobbit child, limp and trusting as a sleeping kitten, cradled in his lap.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘as you’ve been taught, all things must be done in decent order.’

The young ruffian nodded, as did Red. There was a reason for everything they did, as he’d learned, and Red would tolerate the tiresome bits for the sake of the compensation. How his heart quickened, how it thrilled him, when they “got down to business”. It was worth the waiting, and powerful as a drug to a man enslaved; he craved the feeling and revelled in the swelling anticipation that filled him now.

‘We grant our guests a final meal, and the opportunity to rest, if they’ll take it,’ the fat man said, ‘for it’s the decent thing to do. Why, they’re no better off in the dungeons of the King—every condemned man has a right to a hearty last meal, and a last night to sleep, almost all the way through, before the guards come before the dawning to take him away.’

‘But we don’t do our work in the dawning,’ the young ruffian said. He reflected, privately, that they ought to do their work in the dark—darkness seemed appropriate for dark deeds.

‘Bless you, lad, I like my sleep too much for that!’ the fat man cried. The hobbit child stirred slightly, smiling in his sleep at the jovial tone, sighed and settled again to softly snoring. ‘No,’ the fat man went on. ‘One of the beauties of working for ourselves is we can set our own hours. No man is master over us; we are our own masters.’

The young ruffian nodded. It was such talk that had caught his fancy, lured him away from the tedious business of chimney-sweeping that he’d been apprenticed to, by an uncle with no room in his home for another mouth to feed.

‘Now to start,’ the fat man said, putting on his best lecturing tone, ‘we cut off the hair, as you’ve already seen.’

The young ruffian nodded again, settling himself to listen closely, for the fat man would set him a test when the lecture was done, and he didn’t fancy the punishment he’d have should he prove ill-prepared. Red enjoyed administering such.

‘There’s no proper and prescribed way to do it,’ the fat man said. ‘You have a lot of room for adding your own personal touch. All that you really need, of course, is a fistful—enough to fold inside a note, to prove the identity of the guest who is enjoying your hospitality. However, if you have an uncooperative guest, or if you should be offered insult...’

Red laughed wickedly. ‘Remember that old lord of Gondor?’ he said, slapping his knee. ‘How indignant he was, that we spoilt his looks!’ He slid a sly look at the young ruffian and added, ‘He didn’t have long to worry about that, however...’

‘Hair will grow back, and no permanent harm done,’ the fat man said placidly. ‘If the family cooperates, and the guest is pleasant and engaging, then perhaps that is all we might do.’

‘If...’ Red said, laying a finger aside his nose. The young ruffian took the impression that such cases were few and far between. If a family paid the demand too quickly and easily, the ruffians were as likely to double the amount demanded, sending a “token” to insure quick obedience.

‘And then,’ the fat man said, gesturing to the glistening ink, ‘and then of course, there is a certain order in which these things are done. Every “token” bears a message, you see...’

‘Although if our guest tries to leave before the formalities are concluded, we’ll cut his toes off first, before anything else,’ Red said. ‘Sort of persuades them to stay put, it does.’

The fat man made a face at such crude talk. ‘Decent order,’ he repeated with a quelling look. ‘First an ear,’ he said. He took a pen from his pocket and fished out a wide-tongued nib, fixing it in place, and then he dipped the pen into the ink. ‘Permanent ink,’ he said, ‘so you want to be sure you don’t mark yourself with it, or you won’t be able to show your face in a town until it wears away.’

‘Just tell them you’re a scribe,’ Red said practically. ‘That’s what I did that one time, and no one was the wiser.’

‘You took an awful chance, little brother,’ the fat man said, glowering at Red from under his brows, but Red only laughed. Still, the young ruffian understood the warning, and he nodded again.

‘First an ear,’ the fat man said, returning to the lesson, and he inked a wide black line on the young hobbit’s skin. ‘When you’ve had enough practice, you won’t need a guide line for any of your cutting,’ he said, ‘though we draw all the lines we’ll need early on, soon after we’ve reached our hidey-hole, as a matter of fact. It’s a reminder to our guests that they are dependent upon our good will for their continued... comfort.’

The young ruffian blinked a little at this, forced himself to take a deep breath, and restrained his imagination as best he could. The reality would be just as bad, he thought, but he’d take things one moment at a time. He did not want to displease his master, and be turned over to face Red’s tender mercies.

‘Good will,’ he echoed.

The fat man smiled, dipping the pen once more, and inking a line first on one of the small hands, and then the other. ‘You cannot just chop a thumb off,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Messy, it is, and inelegant. No, it’s rather like jointing a fowl—you must know the anatomical structure...’ He really ought to have been a tutor, teaching the rich young nobles, but really, in such a situation, comfortable as it might be, his hours would not be his own. He’d be dancing to another man’s tune, and young lords could be insufferable brats, he’d found. No, this was the much better way. He could live like one of the nobles themselves, and call his soul his own.

He went on to discuss the efficient removal of thumbs, and fingers for good measure, though these were not always called for, and then toes. He laid down his pen and borrowed Red’s finely-honed knife to shave away the tiny curls on the hobbit child’s feet, before laying the knife aside—ready, the young ruffian thought, swallowing down his sick feeling, ready to be taken up, and put to use. The little toes curled a bit, at the tickle of the pen laying down its doom-laden stroke, and Farry moved in his sleep and murmured, chuckling a little, as the fat man marked the second foot to match the first.

‘And then the part that Red, here, likes best,’ the fat man said, shooting a grin at his younger brother.

The young ruffian glanced over at Red, to see an answering grin, and then the latter licked his lips, eyes glistening in anticipation.

‘Save the best for last,’ Red hissed. ‘That’s one of the fine things about our line of work. So much to look forward to. It’s almost a pity, when they pay us twice what we ask and faster than demanded, and we have to send our guests home again with nothing to remember us by.’ His grin widened as he saw that the young hobbit was wakening, the bright little eyes—ah, so bright, so enticingly bright and clear—winking sleep away, the small, heart-shaped face split by a wide yawn, giving a glimpse of the small pink tongue within. Ah, yes, this was the best part, telling the victim exactly what would happen to him, that he might know the dreadful anticipation, the trembling, the horror... and then the exquisite pleasure of the actual doing...

The little hobbit's eyes met his, and Red gave a nod of welcome, even as his eyes hungrily devoured his prize. Not long, now, not long... The lines were drawn, and soon the knife's edge would follow, and more.