Chapter 27. In which a Took takes a hint

This chapter is milder than the previous two, but still PG.

Summary, as promised: In Chapter 25, Woodruff, having come down with a high fever, interrupted Ferdi’s burial, insisting that she be lowered into the grave to check for a heartbeat. While in the middle of this endeavour, she fainted and was borne away, and the burial resumed. Meanwhile, Sam’s part of the muster found the club-wielder’s back trail and began to follow it in hopes of finding the rest of the ruffians, and Farry. Eventually they found that there were two ruffians at the Three-Farthing Stone, and so they split up to pursue both trails. At the same time, Farry was being used as a visual aid in a lecture on how to cut up kidnap victims (lecture only, demonstration to follow).

The lecture continued in Chapter 26, and upon its conclusion the youngest ruffian was ordered to take certain “tokens” from Farry, to be left where hobbits would find them and bring them to Farry’s father. The plan was to distract the Thain with grief and horror, affecting his ability to lead a muster, allowing the ruffians to make their escape. However, the young ruffian, finding a stray lamb stranded in some thorn bushes, was at the chapter’s end considering a substitute for the requisite items...

Just when Regi thought things were going smoothly, the line moving and the white of the shroud once more disappearing beneath a steady fall of earth, he saw a ripple in the crowd. Once more someone was moving against the flow, thrusting through the bodies with more determination than politeness. Once again the flow of mourners paused, swelled outside the gate to the burial ground as curious hobbits on their way to the feast turned around, curious. This had to be the most unusual leave-taking since the death of old Gerontius! (Not counting Lalia, of course. No one wanted to speak ill of the dead, after all.)

He was mortified to see that the interruption came, this time, by the hand of his own wife.

‘Rosa!’ he said. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

‘I have to know,’ she gasped, in eerie echo of the head healer. ‘I was thinking, walking back to the Smials... She’s out of her head, certainly, but she revived and begged to know if it were true. “If what were true?” I asked her, but she kept begging. I asked her what put the thought into her head. She never did say... but what if...?’

She paled and swallowed hard at the awfulness of the unspoken thought, and then she swayed, lifting a hand to her forehead.

‘You’re not about to faint, are you?’ Regi asked, somewhat acidly. It was all he needed; his own wife disrupting Ferdi’s laying to rest.

‘No,’ Rosamunda said uncertainly, but then she straightened, and in the next moment, before Regi could stop her, she’d seized the rope that one of the gravediggers still held, told the astounded hobbit to hold firm, and began to lower herself into the grave, calling Ferdi’s name!

The curious mourners crowded closer, the ones at the edge of the grave in danger of being pushed over, as a matter of fact. Regi bawled for order, told everyone to take a step back, and such was his tone that they did, pushing back those others who crowded behind them... but they still craned to see.

Rosamunda straddled the body, and was sweeping away the earth from Ferdi’s upper regions. ‘Ferdi!’ she cried again. ‘Ferdi! Do you hear me?’

And from within the shroud, the partly-buried hobbit answered clearly, sounding quite put out for some reason. ‘I’ve ears, haven’t I?’

Fully a score of hobbit mums and lasses swooned, then, some of them barely restrained from falling into the grave, and pandemonium reigned.

Rosamunda brushed away the last of the dirt from Ferdi’s head and pulled the shroud away from his face, but his eyes were closed and she wondered if it had been a trick of some sort. Perhaps some wit, above, had made it sound as if Ferdi had spoken. She pulled the edges of the shroud further apart, and laid her head upon Ferdi’s bared breast, and silence fell once more.

Regi found he was holding his breath as his wife lay unmoving. Was everyone who touched the body bewitched?

But then Rosamunda raised her head, her cheek streaked with dirt that had found its way through undone shroud and loosened clothing. ‘His heart, it’s beating,’ she said in an awed voice. ‘He’s breathing, oh, ever so slightly, but he’s breathing... I think he’s fainted.’

Him, too, someone muttered. Seems to be a lot of it about.

Regi restrained himself from jumping into the grave; he contented himself with organising Ferdi’s removal. It was rather complicated by the fact that his healer-wife would not let them merely fasten a rope around Ferdi under his arms, to haul him up rather like a sack of taters, as they had Woodruff, but insisted that he be brought up lying flat and well-supported.

It was quick work to commandeer a number of cloaks and coats from the surrounding hobbits, a soft bed of sorts to lay him on, to keep him from the further chill of the ground, and more to cover him, while yet another litter was sent for.

***

Farry awakened to the sickening taste of fresh blood. The gag was in place, and the beginning of his ruin was accomplished. He was surprised, at first, to open his eyes and see, for the ruffian chief had been very clear as to the proper order of doings. He blinked his eyes, dreading the sight he’d see—perhaps the young ruffian’s thumb, hovering above him, ready to press out one of his eyes.

But the young ruffian’s back was turned to him, and he seemed to be just about finished burying something. Farry flinched away as the young Man turned around, and then his eye fell upon a grisly sight beside him... a blood-soaked pocket-handkerchief, bearing a severed tongue, dark and bloody, and...

Farry’s surroundings spun about him, and he thought he would faint. His tongue, it was, and that was the taste of blood in his mouth, and yet there was no pain. He didn’t know why there’d be no pain. He’d bitten his tongue, a time or two, and he had been expecting to waken blind and in agony.

But beside the tongue were, horribly, two eyeballs, one turned as if it were staring at him in silent reproach.

Farry blinked, hard. Yes. He was seeing. He had his eyes. But how?

‘There,’ the young ruffian said, scrubbing his hands on his not-at-all-clean trousers. ‘The scavengers will probably dig him up again, poor lamb, but at least the carrion birds won’t be circling round anytime soon to give us away.’

Farry stared, sick and uncomprehending. Who was dead and buried? Whose eyes...?

He cringed as the young ruffian crouched beside him, laying a gentle palm on his shoulder before turning away to clean the bloody knife with a corner of the handkerchief. ‘There,’ the Man said, slipping the knife into his boot to free his hands, and then he tied up the horrible “tokens” so that the eye no longer stared at Farry. And yet the blood, soaking through... and the blood, in his mouth... Unconsciously he pushed at the gag with his tongue, and realised for the first time that he still had a tongue, apparently intact.
 
Seeing the young hobbit’s grimace, the ruffian said, ‘Lamb’s blood. I had to make it look as if it was yours, don’t you see? And now I must cover your eyes, or they’ll know...’

Farry stared at him in confusion, scarcely daring to hope. Could this ruffian have turned against the others? Was he taking Farry’s part? And what did he mean, “lamb’s blood”?

‘I’m sorry,’ the ruffian said, and he brought a torn and dirty cloth to Farry’s face, blotting out the world, and Farry felt it drawn tight behind his head, and a knot tied. The ruffian whispered, as his fingers completed their work, ‘You keep this on, and don’t weep—the tears will give you away; and if you make any sound at all, make it a moan, a tongue-less noise, do you understand? And don’t push at the gag...’

Farry managed to nod. He felt his shoulder squeezed, and then the ruffian was saying, loud enough to make him jump, ‘Here it is... take it.’

‘So fine and fancy we are,’ the brawny man was heard to say, with heavy irony. ‘It’s not customary to bandage them when you’re done...’

‘No blood trail, he said,’ the young ruffian said in a sullen tone. ‘And I couldn’t bear the sight, nothing looking out where those bright eyes had been, and I the one to have blown out the lights!’

‘You’ll get used to it,’ the brawny man said.

‘I hope I never do,’ the young ruffian muttered under his breath, and only Farry heard the words, evidently, for the brawny man said, ‘What was that?’

‘How long did it take you to get used to it?’

The brawny man laughed. ‘I’ve lost count, laddie. Too many ago, it was. They all begin to look the same, when you’ve done enough of them. Our friend likes to put a polish on it all, call them “guests”, make them as comfortable as may be, to put them at their ease, at first—makes them offer much less trouble, I’ll admit. But I could never look at them as men, or women, or little children, and still do my part! I had to learn to see them for the gold they could bring, and naught else. My advice to you is to look on them as a butcher looks upon his next task. Why, if he had feelings for little lambies he’d lose his livelihood!’

‘You can say that again,’ the young ruffian said, his tone less grudging. It had been difficult to slaughter the young lamb, weak as it was; to dip the gag-cloth in the blood, to stuff it in the hobbit child’s mouth, and then to take the still-warm tongue from the carcase, and then to gouge out the glazing eyes.

‘Here, give me Red’s knife,’ the brawny man said. ‘He was that put out, you know, having honed it to such a lovely finish, and then not have the chance to use it himself. I’ll save you the trouble of returning it to him.’

‘Thanks,’ the young ruffian said.

Farry then heard footsteps, moving away, and then he was lifted. ‘Remember!’ the young ruffian hissed in his ear, and he nodded to show his understanding.