Chapter 19. Stuff and Rubbish

Sorry to say this chapter contains some rather unpleasant detail. Not gratuitous, simply couldn't figure out a subtler tack.

Ferdibrand thought the bed might just, possibly, swallow him up with little more than a belch and a smacking of lips, after so long a time. Why, he couldn’t remember being forced to lie abed for an entire week or more, save the time he'd been rescued from strangling at the end of a ruffian's rope during the Troubles, and then again, after the Battle of Bywater, of which in strictest truth, he had no memory thanks to another ruffian’s club.

They kept telling him he’d been at death’s door, with one foot in the grave—nay, more than one foot—if they were to be believed, he’d been taken for dead, shrouded and laid in the grave and saved only by Healer Woodruff’s frenzied action during the burial. Woodruff had been driven by fever delirium to jump down into Ferdi’s grave, and it was frightening to think what might have become of Ferdi had the healer been in her right mind.

In any event, he’d be fit for the grave if he had to lie here another hour, much less another day. Sitting up, propped with pillows was all very well and good. It hadn’t been so bad so long as his Nell, in her gratitude at his restoration and in her fear that he might still slip away from her, stayed close by. But after the healers at last pronounced him “out of danger” and “on the mend” she allowed herself to be coaxed away, at longer intervals, to give her children much needed attention and reassurance. At first he knew only some unfocused uneasiness, for she made sure he was sleeping before she’d leave his side. But when he wakened, in one of these times, to find her gone... and not to be able to follow, but ordered by the healer on watch to stay in the bed for his own good, until Woodruff released him! It was like rubbing salt in the wound to see the head healer so pale and weak herself a day or two later, evidently just arisen from her own sickbed to check on Ferdi.

There wasn’t much of anything he could do but bide his time, eat what was put before him, sleep or feign sleep to put off the watchers by the bedside, turn over in his mind the elusive words that came so reluctantly to his tongue after this latest acquaintance with a ruffian’s club, open and close the fingers of his curiously weakened hand and flex the toes, the ankle, the knee as the healers worked the leg on the affected side.

He was relieved to perceive that healing was taking place; unlike Thain Paladin, who’d suffered a brain seizure in his latter years with a similar weakening of one side of his body, Ferdi was a little better able to move and control his weak limbs as the days passed. His speech progressed as well, from barely managing one word, to putting several together, though he had to work to suppress a stammer. Nell reminded him that in his youth, he’d conquered stammering by singing his words... it had made him feel ridiculous then, and so it made him feel now, but at least he could make himself understood, and that was the important thing.

Not understood enough, however, to persuade them to let him up from the bed. Dratted healers.

However, opportunity was at hand. Nell had kissed him, a while ago, saying she was going to spend the afternoon with the little ones, tell a bedtime story at the last and then come back to him to share late supper. His head had troubled him at the time, and it had been truth when he’d told her, halting though the words had come, that he’d likely sleep the time away until she returned.

He had slept in fact, but not for long it seemed. Nell was not there, the clock on the mantel in the sitting room could be heard softly chiming the hour, early yet, halfway between teatime and eventides, and no watcher sat at Ferdi’s bedside.

Something had disturbed him, something out of place, something that did not belong in their cosy apartments... a burbling sound... the low moans of a wounded animal? Within the Great Smials?

His head did not always work as it should, these days, though he thought he was improving. Still, that sound was there, that should not be, whether or not he could identify it.

Slowly, carefully he rolled to his side, sat himself up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, wincing a little at the giddy feeling. It was different from sitting, propped with pillows, or being lifted to a chair and having his feet eased onto a footstool to rest. Such a nasty and inconvenient state, that of an invalid!

When the room’s spin grew less, he eased himself to his feet. Grasping at the bedpost, reaching for the dressing table, he limped toward the door, to stand listening. It was not his imagination; some mournful creature inhabited the sitting room, not possessing a familiar voice so far as he could tell.

He managed to make his way down the short passage to the sitting room. Nell wasn’t there, nor were any of the children. She’d said something about tea in the Thain’s apartments? He thought he remembered so, though the recollection of what she’d said echoed distortedly in his head.

Someone was hunched in a chair drawn up to the table, someone large and of considerable bulk, reminding Ferdi of Fatty Bolger in the old days, before the Troubles. The hobbit had his hands over his face and was blubbering into them, without even a pocket handkerchief in evidence.

Ferdi limped over to place a hand on the grieving hobbit’s shoulder. Oddly enough, the fellow didn’t jump at the unexpected contact; he merely shook his head and moaned all the louder into his hands.

Ferdi blinked and tentatively put a name to the hobbit. ‘Fer... Fre... Freddy?’

‘Go... way...’ he was told. Dismissed from his own sitting room. Dismissed by a cousin who did not even reside in the Smials, but kept rooms at the Spotted Duck in Tuckborough, paid for by his family as he couldn’t very well keep himself, unfortunate fellow.

‘Fred,’ Ferdi said as firmly as he could manage. ‘What’s... hap... happened?’

Fredebold merely shook his head again, evidently beyond speech.

Well then. Ferdi could think of nothing better than to step over to Tolly’s, to let the head of escort know that his wayward brother had strayed into Ferdi’s apartments and seemed to be in some difficulty or distress.

***

There was a tugging on the rope tied to his ankle, and a ruffian’s head appeared above him, dark against the bright sky. ‘That’s deep enough.’

Tolly looked up, half in dread, imagining a descending club, or an arrow, perhaps, and then the rain of clods of dirt upon him, shutting out light and air and life. But no, the ruffian was bending at the edge of the hole, pulling at the rope and telling Tolly to “take hold, little rat, and don’t be all day about it or we might just leave you in this hole you’ve dug.”

He dropped the shovel to grasp at the rope and was rewarded with a blow to the head from the ruffian’s fist. ‘No!’ the Man growled. ‘Don’t you go leaving that good shovel at the bottom, little thief! It don’t belong to you, but to the woodcutter’s brat! Pick it up, and bring it!’

The other ruffian laughed unpleasantly and added that Tolly would undoubtedly need the shovel for more digging, unless he’d rather make do with his bare hands.

Tolly grabbed up the shovel with one hand and held the rope as well as he could with the other—it was difficult, painful, even with the broken, blistered flesh wrapped up in the makeshift bandage he’d torn from his shirt.

He was hauled up—the ruffians were kind enough to catch him under his arms as the rope slipped in his grasp, and they lifted him out of the hole.

Then he began the weary task of gathering refuse, in various forms. There were broken toys and household items obviously taken from neighbouring hobbit holes for the ruffians’ amusement, pointless destruction evidently a popular pastime. There were mouldering half-gnawed bones, and other spoiled food, and of course Tolly’s guards encouraged him to help himself, if he were feeling at all peckish.

There was a quantity of torn and smelly hobbit clothing, likely used by the visiting Men after relieving themselves, or so Tolly gathered from the stains and stench. Tolly’s gorge rose at the thought of handling such, but he didn’t have much choice, with one watching man tapping at his boot with his club, and the other fingering a whip as he smirked. The hobbit found a wadded-up blanket that had seen better times, and with a stick he poked and prodded the more disgusting trash onto the blanket. Once loaded, he dragged his makeshift conveyance to the hole and tipped its contents in, only to have to go back for more.

It was no wonder the woodmen had complained to the ruffians about their filth and litter, and insisted that the visiting men clean up after themselves. Only it fell to Tolly, to be the one to clear the horrid rubbish away.

Numbly he trudged back and forth, his exhaustion growing as he slowly filled the hole he’d dug, He wondered if he’d have the strength to dig another if need be, and how long they would keep him digging holes and filling them up again—perhaps they’d find him a convenient dogsbody and never let him go, keeping him just for such “little tasks” as this; and he wondered whether, just perhaps, Ferdi’d had the better part of the bargain after all.