Chapter 23. Whistling in the Dark

Lift your voices, gladly sing

Everyone was looking at him as if he’d lost his wits, but Ferdi locked eyes with Pippin as he sang, willing that canny hobbit to take his meaning.

When you see the sign of the coming King:
With his pow’r true self revealing;

Pippin blinked in surprise, and then his eyes narrowed as he considered, and with the next line of the song they widened in understanding, as he joined in to sing, under his breath, the last three words with Ferdi.

The hands of the King are hands of healing.

‘That’s it, isn’t it, Ferdi?’ he said, falling to one knee before Ferdi’s chair, taking his cousin’s hands, the strong one and the weakened one, in his own firm grasp. ‘That’s what you were trying to say. “The hands of the King...”’

Ferdi nodded, eager, heartened by being so quickly understood, and to emphasize his point he launched into the chorus of the simple song he’d heard Pippin sing to young Farry, but now it was much more than a nursery song.

O the hands of the King are healing hands!
Spread the news throughout all the lands...

His voice petered out as he glanced about the others. Nell was blinking away tears, Mardi was solemn, and Woodruff was positively grim, though her face softened when Ferdi’s gaze met hers.

‘Healing hands,’ Pippin said, still kneeling before Ferdi. He nodded to himself, and then looked up to the healers. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘I’m due to meet the King a few days hence, at the Bridge, to bid him fair journey on his way to the Southlands. Shall I take Ferdi with me?’

Nell caught her breath in wonder, and even Ferdi felt his heart leap within him, if only for a moment. Certainly he was recovering from his injuries, but that recovery was slow, painfully slow, and the healers couldn’t tell him if he’d have all his faculties again when healing was done. Hovering in the back of his mind was the image of Thain Paladin, in that hobbit’s last year, with his near-useless arm and leg and halting speech.

Woodruff stepped in. ‘I’m afraid it’s not possible,’ she said.

Pippin mistook her meaning. He let Ferdi’s hands go and rose to his feet. ‘Certainly, the King cannot heal all ills,’ he said, measuring the healer with a serious look. ‘He cannot restore legs shattered on the battlefield, nor arms chopped away with a sword; and a soldier whose legs will never again move at his command sits on guard outside the Hall of Kings when his name comes up on the duty roster.’

Nell swallowed hard at this recitation, but Mardi and Ferdi had seen battle, and Woodruff had treated battle damage in the Troubles and after the Battle of Bywater.

‘What would he do for Ferdi?’ Mardi asked, curiosity overcoming his healer’s good sense.

Pippin shrugged. ‘I’m no healer,’ he said. ‘There was much that I saw, that I did not understand, when I was healing after the battle before the Black Gate, and while visiting soldiers of the Guard in the Houses of Healing after our return to the White City. But athelas is a wonderful thing, in the hands of the King. Frodo, at one point in our journey, had ribs bruised and battered, perhaps even broken, and Strider bathed them with athelas water, giving him relief from pain and making his breathing easier.’

He looked from Mardi to Woodruff. ‘Who knows what sort of relief it might give Ferdi? Perhaps at the least he could have his speech back.’

And looking down at Ferdibrand once more, taking Ferdi’s good hand, he said, ‘I know that your mind is not affected, Ferdi, that you’re taking it all in, even if you cannot respond as you would.’

Tears of gratitude came to Ferdi’s eyes; he squeezed Pippin’s hand in response. Then, remembering, he shook his head and stared into the eyes of the Thain, willing that hobbit to divine his meaning. It’s not for myself I’m asking...

But the head healer was also shaking her head. ‘It cannot be,’ she said. ‘Not unless you were to bring him to the Great Smials, and from what you’ve said of the Man he would not trespass his own Edict.’

‘I don’t take your meaning,’ Pippin said, turing his attention to Woodruff.

The head healer moved to Ferdi’s side, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder, speaking earnestly. ‘It sounds a wonderful thing, laddie, indeed it does,’ she said gently, ‘but I fear you’d not live to reach the Brandywine Bridge...’

Ferdi heard Nell take a shaking breath in distress, but he was thinking about Woodruff’s words, trying to make sense of them.

‘Not live?’ Pippin said. ‘But he’s so much better already!’

‘He’s been balanced on the knife’s edge,’ Woodruff said, and swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry, Nell. It’s not my way to speak so plainly, for I’d rather speak words of hope—they give themselves better to hearing and to healing. If you tell a hobbit he’s about to die, chances are he will! If you tell him he’ll live, well then, sometimes the words alone are enough to make him hold on and heal...’

‘You said he was out of danger,’ Nell whispered, and she sank to her knees at Ferdi’s other side, easing her arms around him as if he were made of delicate glass. ‘You said...’

‘Aye, lass, out of danger,’ Woodruff said. ‘If he keeps to his bed, rests and eats and sleeps, allows himself to be lifted from bed to chair and back again, does not try to stand and walk before what’s inside his head is healed enough...’

She looked to Pippin. ‘He was talking just fine, when they took him out of the grave. Rosamunda told me it was so.’ Woodruff herself had been deep in the throes of fever delirium at the time, but she’d had a full report from the healers who’d tended Ferdi after his release from the shroud. ‘But a few hours later, he’d lost his speech.’

She looked down at Ferdibrand, her hand tightening on his shoulder. ‘Something broke loose inside that head of yours,’ she said. ‘It was likely set off by the ruffian’s blow, earlier, but that it happened a day after the blow is worrying... I want to keep you as still as possible, to let your head heal, and in hopes nothing more will break loose...’

‘Not that it would do all that much damage, if you’re worried about the workings of his brains,’ Pippin said lightly. ‘He’s always been daft, as it is...’ He squeezed Ferdi’s hand in silent apology at offering hope and then having it taken away again.

Ferdi was almost afraid to shake his head, after hearing Woodruff’s concern, but it wasn’t for himself he was asking. Somehow he had to make them understand.

‘N-no,’ he said, but he retained Pippin’s hand, squeezing with all his might.

‘What is it, my love?’ Nell said softly at his ear. He could feel her sustaining arms around him, and her nearness lent him strength.

He tried, but he couldn’t make the words come, and his face twisted in his frustration. Pimpernel tried to soothe him, and it was her crooning tones that gave him inspiration.

He couldn’t speak, not enough to make them understand, but perhaps he could sing!

There was an old children’s game, where one would take the name of a friend and make a song of it...

There once was a hobbit named Tolly,
A beer in each hand made him jolly...

They stared at him again as if he’d lost his wits.

Pippin—he had the sharpest wits of them all, if he couldn’t take Ferdi’s meaning then there was no hope at all.

Ferdi loosened his grip on Pippin’s hand and squeezed again, locking gazes with the Thain. He began again, willing that hobbit to understand.

There once was a hobbit named Tolly,
A beer in each hand made him jolly
But then a dark dream
Made his eyes lose their gleam...

His voice petered to nothing as inspiration faded, and the energy that had sustained him to this point deserted him. He slumped in his chair, fighting the swimming of his head, and a bitter taste was in his mouth. He’d failed, and they had not understood him. Likely thought him daft, not thinking right after the damage from the blow to the head.

Nell coddled him, Woodruff had been humouring him these past days—which was not like her—Pippin had been unusually polite and kind.

Perhaps he truly was lost to himself. He couldn’t even make them understand Tolly’s desperate need for a healing hand.