Spring

Rethe, S.R. 1395

It was that rare day that only comes once a year, the day that all creatures, whether they can read a calendar or not, know that Spring has come. 

Even if the puddles are still rimed with frost, winter has lost its hold on the world.  Birds can sense it and shout their love songs to the morning.  Crocus poke brave green fingers through still frozen soil and the sun's rays begin to bathe the world in real warmth again rather than the mocking illumination of winter.  It is the day the world truly begins to wake from its long slumber.

Their pony needed little guidance along the well-travelled East Road and Frodo gave it its head.  Bilbo had settled back in the seat of their little cart, trusting his ward to guide them, and would soon be asleep, or so the indications suggested. 

Frodo didn’t mind his companion’s silence.  He was just glad to be outside at last.  Snow had lain thick on the North Farthing and cold had kept a particularly strong grip on the rest of the Shire as well.  It had been such unusually hard weather that it had even kept his robust guardian from his usual weekly jaunts.  The forced confinement had rankled both of them, but now, in the midst of spring's emergence, they relished the fresh, newly warm air.  

They weren't exactly on a social call.  Paladin Took, cousin to them both through their respective mothers, had asked Bilbo for his counsel on a matter concerning the Thain's mother.  Lalia the Great had offered to foster one of Paladin's daughters and to teach her the keeping of the Great Smials.  She had apparently been quite taken with the girl and Paladin was seriously considering the proposition.  There were some intra-family politics involved that Frodo wasn’t privy to, but from what he could glean, Paladin had been trying to convince Lalia to support his claim of succession for quite some time.  Without a direct heir, custom dictated that Ferumbras III's title would likely pass to Paladin anyway, as he was the next most closely related male descendant, but according to Bilbo, there had been resistance to that tradition from Paladin's eldest sister, Miralinda, and her son Isengar, and there were historical precedents from Bilbo's own family that gave their arguments credence.  Paladin was eager for Lalia’s and, thereby, the Thain’s favour, to insure that his right to succeed would not even be questioned.  Bilbo had confirmed Frodo’s own sense that such a course was the most desirable one for all concerned.

Though there had to have been more to it than Bilbo had let on.  The fact that the elder Baggins had been called to advise on the matter said a great deal in and of itself.  Bilbo was one of the few people who didn’t tread lightly around Lalia, they being of an age and he being the sort who didn't worry much what others said of him.  Paladin was troubled, that was clear, but Frodo couldn’t understand why he would even begin to think of sending his own daughter away.  Buckland folk, queer though some might have thought them, parted with children reluctantly; it had taken years for Rorimac to be convinced Frodo would be better off in Hobbiton, so Paladin’s actions struck Frodo as very queer indeed.  There had to have been more at stake than his claim to the Thainship, but what, Frodo couldn't even begin to guess. 

He had met Paladin's daughters before and young Pip.  Pippin was a charming faunt with a knack for trouble, but the girls were, well, girls.  Aside from some roughness about the edges of the eldest, he'd never noted anything about any of them he would have considered remarkable.  Obviously, Lalia had seen something he hadn’t been able to. 

All he knew was he was very glad it wasn't him being sent to Great Smials.  He'd heard the talk.  'Lalia the Fat' she was called when those who might take offense weren't in earshot.  Ferumbras was thought a decent enough fellow, but the common wisdom was that she really ran Great Smials, and with an iron will by all accounts.  Even so, one couldn't say the Shire hadn't been prosperous during the years following Fortinbras' death.  Trade within the Shire was brisk and there was even talk of dealings with the south as well as renewing ties with Bree, but there was a strangely unwholesome feel to the whole business and it was clear certain families, namely the Clayhangers, had been much more prosperous in it than the rest. 

Bilbo was snoring contentedly when the cart rolled past Tookbank and into the western edge of the Green Hill country.  Little settlements like Whitfell and Holly were dug into the hills all around the Tooklands and filled with Tooks and Took relations.  Paladin's home, Greenfields, was a quaint, well-run farm with apple trees and sheep dotting the green just to the north and west of Great Smials.  His hole faced north and across the fields one could just make out the dark line of the trees along the East Road and, if the day was clear enough, the grey-blue mound of the Hill itself. 

"We're here, Uncle," said Frodo, pulling the pony to a halt in Paladin's yard.  A farmhand came from the barn and took the beast's head as Bilbo collected himself to disembark. 

"They're here!"  A high-pitched child's voice made Frodo turn in time to see a towheaded girl dart from an overhanging apple tree into the door of the smial. 

“Pervinca,” chuckled Bilbo, “if I’m not mistaken.  She was but a faunt the last time I saw her.”  Frodo helped the older hobbit down, though he hardly needed the assistance, and followed him across the courtyard.  Flowers grew in unkempt riots of colour in the beds bordering the little space, adding a charmingly dishevelled look to the home.  Careful gardening, it seemed, was not the priority at Greenfields that it was at Bag End. 

“Welcome, Bilbo!”  Eglantine Took stood in the open front door, her generous and imposing frame almost filling it.  “And Frodo!  So good to see you again!  But you are as thin as a rail!  What has this old scoundrel been feeding you?”  With open arms and many a motherly cluck, she directed them into the smial.  “You must excuse the mess,” she said, “but you know how children can be.”  She winked at Bilbo and gave a nod to Frodo as she took their coats. 

The front hall was paved with light coloured stone sanded smooth and polished, though the finish was worn were the traffic had been heaviest.  A clear set of muddy footprints lead toward the left hand doorway off the little room and low voices could be heard from behind the closed door.  While Eglantine hung the coats in the closet, the door opened and Paladin appeared.  He nodded gravely to Bilbo and Frodo and stepped back to let a truly wretched looking figure come from behind him.

It was covered from head to furry toes in thick, drying mud.  Mud coated curls laid upon the bowed head in great dangling clods so that Frodo could barely see the dirty face beneath them.  Little clumps of the stuff were falling off as he moved, framing the chastened whelp in an accusing little circle.  His torn shirt had once been white from the look of it, but Frodo doubted even the famed laundresses of Great Smials would ever get it clean again.  He turned a dirty, plaid cap nervously in his hands. 

“Eglantine?”  Paladin’s voice was disapproving and tired.  “Would you?” 

His wife sighed and took the youngster’s arm. 

At that, the lad looked up and Frodo was struck by the fineness of his features, the delicate jaw line under muddy smudges and the glittering brightness of his green eyes.  He started and stared as realization struck him.  The muddy tween was a girl. 

But she had eyes only for Paladin.  She did not cry or resist when Eglantine drew her away, but kept staring back at him as if hoping for some sign, a reprieve or repudiation.  On her face was the shattered longing of one whose heart had been well and truly broken.  She knew she would not find it. 

Frodo watched until the opposite door closed behind Eglantine and her charge.

“Having a spot of trouble?” Bilbo asked.

Paladin ran a hand through his brown curls.  “You’ve no idea, my friend.  Though, as Eglantine will surely point out, I can blame no one for this but myself.” 

“If you don’t mind my asking, cousin Paladin, who was that?”

“That,” grimaced Paladin, “is the reason I asked you here today.”

Pearl?  That girl was Pearl Took! 

“She’s growing into a lovely young lady,” chuckled Bilbo.

Paladin glared at him.  “You’re good if you can tell that under all that filth.”

“What happened?” asked Frodo.  Her abject expression had troubled him far more than the mud had. 

Paladin sighed and gestured for them to return to the room he had just exited.  “Eglantine would tell you ‘I’ happened, but it’s a long story.”

“I thought you said she wanted to go to Great Smials?”  Bilbo found a chair by the grate in the little parlour, Frodo settled beside a tray that held the fixings for a morning tea.  He looked up at Bilbo, who nodded in assent, and began making his guardian a cup.

“She says she does,” Paladin agreed.  “Though I’d never have thought she’d be the type to go in for all those high manners and etiquette.  She’s always taken after me and I never took on airs.”

“She didn’t look very happy about something,” offered Frodo and instantly felt self-conscious for voicing his opinion in the elder hobbits’ presence. 

Paladin didn’t look happy about it either.  “It’s hard to say what her motives are these days.”

“I remember when she was just a faunt,” put in Bilbo.  “She followed you everywhere, Paladin.  I think it drove Eglantine mad, but she would never mind anyone but you.”

Paladin winced as if Bilbo had brought up a painful memory.  “No, she didn’t,” he agreed.  “She was my girl from the day she weaned.  Always wanting to help on the farm, chasing chickens when she was just three, helping me to mow the fields when she was old enough to handle a team, and I’d never seen a lass, or lad for that matter, who had better aim with a stone.”  Paladin sighed again.  “That was what Eglantine says the problem was; I didn’t have a lad, so I made one out of Pearl.”  He shook his head.  “Though I never did encourage her, sakes, I tried to discourage her from the moment she first tottered out into the fields, but if Pearl takes after her mother in any way, it is strength of will.  The more firmly we scolded her, the harder she fought to get her way.

“When Pimpernel came, Eglantine gave up trying to gentle our Pearl.  I don’t blame her.  She had her hands full with the other girls and we both thought she would surely grow out of her ways.  There are some battles that aren’t worth fighting. 

“I daresay I did enjoy having her with me.  Together we went fishing, hiked across the width of the Tooklands just as I would have with a lad; there was nothing Pearl wasn’t game to try.”  He paused, looking guiltily up at Bilbo.  “I confess, I liked having her to share my passions with, even if she was a daughter.

“But things changed after Pippin came along.  Eglantine pointed out, and rightly, I’ll grant her, that now that she had given me a son, she needed to begin to tame her eldest daughter again.  Pearl hadn’t outgrown her boyish ways as we’d hoped and it was time she began to behave like the lady she was to someday be.”  He sighed once again.  “It has been very hard for all of us.  Lalia’s offer was the first proposition that Pearl has not resisted straight away.”

“You say the child has requested to go to Great Smials and serve her?”  Bilbo sounded as doubtful as Frodo felt.  “The picture you paint is of a spirited girl, not one who would likely submit to the yoke of such formal surroundings.”

Paladin nodded.  “When Lalia asked, Pearl said yes.  Gladly too, or I’m no judge of my own child.  Either she’s got the wrong idea what she is getting into with Lalia or the old dame has softened in her dotage.  I am as baffled as you are.”

Bilbo sipped his tea in silence.  Frodo poured the last of the pot into his and Paladin’s cups and dutifully set the empty dishes on the tray by the door.

“What kind of an agreement has Lalia offered?” Bilbo asked at length.

“It’s not a standard apprenticeship, if that is what you are asking,” Paladin answered.  “And I was very firm that my daughter retains the right to break from it at any time she wishes.  I would not even consider the arrangement unless that was a part of the contract.”

“Lalia agreed to this?”  Bilbo seemed surprised.  Paladin nodded.

“Yes.  Wonder of wonders, but she did.  And, she promises to endorse me as heir as well, even if she and the Thain later decide Pearl is not a suitable apprentice.  However, if Pearl leaves Great Smials of her own accord before her apprenticeship is fulfilled, Lalia says she will not honour my claim.”

Bilbo frowned thoughtfully and shook his head.  “I don’t like it.  What is to stop Lalia from holding the girl with her under threat of denouncing your claim?”

“I will already have the Thain’s written endorsement in hand and in the agreement itself will be a clause that says if Pearl is ever coerced by either of them, the Thain will immediately step down and install me or my heirs in his place. 

“This agreement is decidedly one sided, Bilbo.  I will have the Thain’s written endorsement in hand.  Lalia trusts me not to use it until such time as the Thain steps down, and the only exemption she has requested is that, should the Thain produce a direct, blood heir, my claim would then be forfeit to his issue.  The fellow is in his eighties.  I suppose he’s still capable of producing one, but he’ll need a wife and I don’t think he’s likely to find one who’d willingly put up with Lalia at this point.”

“And Pearl has agreed to this?  I find that fact alone highly suspicious.”

“Heaven knows why, but she has.  You must know Lalia has always got on with my Pearl.  She treats other children like the curmudgeon she is, but Pearl has always been her favourite.  When my daughter was eight years old, I lost her in the maze of the Great Smials.  Was beside myself 'til one of Lalia’s maidservants came and told me the Thain's mother was entertaining her.  I went to retrieve the girl immediately and found her in smudged petticoats playing ‘Pirates’ with the old dame.  I’d never got so much as a nod out of Lalia, but Pearl, somehow, had her positively enchanted.

“What she’s told us is that she’s finally given up on Ferumbras giving her grandchildren and has decided to engage some herself.  She’s made mention of Pearl’s recent melancholy, to rankle Eglantine no doubt, and offers her service suggesting that the girl might do better in a less crowded, more structured home where she can get personal attention.  Eglantine is fit to be tied, but we’re both at a loss for how else to handle the girl.  And Lalia insists she has nothing but the best of intentions for her.”

At that, Bilbo scoffed.  “I’ve known Lalia for too long to give that much credence.”  He pulled out his pipe and weed and began preparing a smoke.  “What does Pearl think she wants?  The girl must have some idea why Lalia has asked for her.”

“You may ask her yourself, Bilbo.  Eglantine will be bringing her back once she’s made herself presentable again.” 

Bilbo scraped the bowl of his pipe thoughtfully and knocked it out upon the grate. 

“That I will do,” he said firmly.  “In the meanwhile, have you drawn up a contract?  And may I look it over?  I’m no solicitor, but I’d like to see what scheme Lalia is concocting.  Altruism is a very fine quality, but I doubt it had anything to do with her motives in this matter.  She would not be doing this unless she saw a way to benefit herself or her family, I am sure of it.”

Paladin smiled.  “As I thought too.  You may indeed see the contract, I was hoping you would, and I would appreciate your invaluable advice on it.  I might have done my dearest girl an injustice by letting her run wild for so long, but I don’t want to make things worse by placing her in an untenable arrangement.”

Bilbo patted his arm reassuringly.  “We will find a way protect the girl and not invalidate your claim.  We owe it to the Shire.  You would be a far better Thain than Isengar, or, I’ll wager, Ferumbras.  Now, let us see this contract.”