Chapter 34. All Trussed Up and Nowhere to Go

Tolly tied the reins of his pony to the pack saddle of one of the laden ponies, with a gentle stroke for the pony’s jaw and a few soft words. ‘There’s the lad, Wren, there’s the lad. You’ll follow, and rest yoursel’ a bit. It’s a long way to the Bounds.’

He moved to untie the lead lines of the pack ponies and walked between their heads, leading them along the faint track, little more than a hunter’s trail.

‘Tolly!’

He paid no heed to the whispered summons, nor to the louder one that followed, but his lips tightened in irritation. It was a long way to the Bounds, indeed, and he was making it longer by taking the liberty of granting Ted’s--the ruffian’s, he reminded himself fiercely--last request.

At last he turned his head and snapped, ‘Hold your tongue!’

Far from holding his tongue, Ted seemed instead encouraged by the response. ‘Please, Tolly,’ he said, ‘not for me, but for Tod...’

‘You don’t seem to understand,’ Tolly said, seemingly to the ponies walking to either side of him. ‘I swore an oath, to serve and protect the Thain, and he swore an oath to protect the Shire, and in particular, the Tookland...’

‘We are no threat to the Shire, or even the Tookland in particular,’ Ted said, though he found it dizzying to be riding with his head hanging down, and he found it difficult to marshal his thoughts.

Tolly snorted and muttered something under his breath about ruffians, but Ted persisted. ‘Please, Tolly, I’ll pay the penalty, as demanded by the King, but don’t leave our mother alone in the world...’

‘What of your brother? Your sisters?’ Tolly said, half swinging to stare at Ted before biting his lip and resolutely facing forward again.

‘Our older sister married a Breelander,’ Ted said, his words disjointed as his pony stumbled over a patch of rough ground. ‘Our mother would return to the home of her childhood, but who will take her?’

‘Your father? Your uncle? Your older brother?’ Tolly said.

‘All dead,’ Ted replied. ‘A woodman’s life... over the years a deadfall took my father, and a snag my brother, and we lost Uncle early on--he was set upon in the Chetwood by ruffians, before the King’s Rangers cleared them out of the Breeland.’

Tolly’s lips tightened in a mirthless smile and he muttered again about the company one keeps.

‘They were not ruffians!’ Tod said hotly, following the conversation as best he could.

‘Oh aye,’ Tolly responded, heavy with irony, and said no more for a mile or two, though Ted continued in his attempts to persuade the hobbit that they meant no harm.

At last Tolly spoke again. ‘Why, then, did you trespass the King’s Edict?’ he said. ‘Surely you knew the penalty... you saw the penalty if you passed through the wood outside of the Bounds.’

Ted shuddered, and Tod gagged at the memory, and if he’d eaten more recently he’d’ve lost his last meal, what with riding face-down and the thought of what he’d seen a day or two before.

But Ted gulped as best he could, because Tolly had asked a question! ...which was more than he’d done, since their capture, and Ted meant to make the most of the opportunity. ‘We came only to reclaim what was ours,’ he said.

‘The land was the Thain’s,’ Tolly said, ‘though I suppose you might say it was Lotho’s, after he stole it away.’

‘Not the land,’ Ted said eagerly, ‘but what we left behind... buried in the land, you see...’

Tolly frowned. ‘Buried,’ he said, and added, ‘in the land,’ and his thoughts went back to the day he was nearly buried there, in that place they were soon to reach.

‘When the ruffians came from Lotho,’ Ted said, ‘and Dad decided to stay, at least through the winter months, for our little sister had never been strong...’

‘Aye,’ Tolly acknowledged, when Ted’s narrative stopped.

The Man blinked hard and sniffed, thinking of his little sister, gone these many years, for all the good staying in the Shire under Lotho and then Sharkey had done. He must persist, for he had Tolly listening, at least, and that was more than he’d hoped.

‘Uncle took me out in the dark of the moon,’ he went on. ‘There were always ruffians, always, coming and going and some staying. Our cot was a convenient place for them to cadge a home-cooked meal and exchange news with those others who went about frightening and gathering. Two were snoring on the hearth as we eased ourselves out, that night...’

Tolly remained silent, but craning his head, Ted could see the hobbit’s shoulders stiff, taut with listening.

‘We buried our valuables,’ he said, ‘for fear the ruffians would gather from us as well as hobbits--we were Shirefolk, after a fashion...’

‘Valuables,’ Tolly prompted, when Ted faltered again, dizzy with the shaking of riding face-down over a rough stretch of trail.

‘A few coins, a silver cup, and... a bit of jewellery,’ Ted said at last.

‘Jewellery,’ Tolly echoed, and for some reason to his mind came a scrap of memory, a glimpse of delicate filigree around her neck as Anemone bent over him, when he was in the tub, being warmed from the chill he’d taken the day he found little Toddy wandering in the wood.

‘Just a few trifles,’ Ted said.

‘Worth risking your necks?’

‘It meant something to our mother,’ Ted said after a long pause, where the ponies’ hoofs seemed loud in the silence. He swallowed again, thinking how to proceed, to snatch some measure of gain from his loss. ‘If you would but swear to return these things to our mother in Bree, we’d go quietly to our doom without protest or reproach.’

‘You’ve no grounds for reproach, any road,’ Tolly said sourly, and he walked on in silence after that, not heeding anything else the brothers might have to say.

At long last they stopped, and Tolly stretched, and then he said, ‘We’re here.’

‘Here?’ Ted said, and Tod added fearfully, ‘The Bounds?’

‘Your old home,’ Tolly said, and from their awkward positions the Men craned to see what they could... thick brambles, with the stonework of a crumbled chimney rising above the ruins of the foundation. ‘Not much left, I fear.’

Part of the shed was still standing, grey-weathered boards leaning together though the roof had long since gone. Tolly tied up the ponies and went to poke around in the shed, coming out with a battered spade. ‘Don’t fancy digging with my hands,’ he said, hefting the tool. ‘Now, where are these “valuables” of yours?’ For in truth, he only half-believed their tale.

It was awkward, for he had to fight his way through the encroaching brambles to reach the old crumbling chimney, and then he had to concentrate on counting his paces, for everything looked different from what he remembered. His paces weren’t all that different from Ted’s, at least the man’s boyhood stride, but he stretched his legs just in case, and when he’d counted off the right number of steps, taking him out of the glade, he began to dig.

He was glad of the fine leather gloves that protected his hands--this time. A prickle on the back of his neck told him of watching eyes, and he half-turned to see the men’s heads lifted, straining to see. How odd, he thought, that events should bring him back to this place, to this occupation, even to the detail of the two watching ruffians.

He took a deep breath and turned back to his digging. He only half-believed their tale--in his experience, ruffians would tell any lie to try and win his sympathy, in attempt to evade their doom. He’d been friends with Teddy and Toddy, two boys, still young enough to believe in everlasting friendship. But times changed, Tolly told himself, and Men did, as well, or so it seemed. The pleasant tinker, the wandering conjuror, the trader who brought coffee from far places, these had all been replaced with thieving, murderous ruffians.

O aye, Pippin might vouch for the King and his friends the guardsmen of Gondor, but the Thain was fond of telling all sort of outlandish tales, about walking trees and enormous delvings and trolls the size of a byre.

His anger returned in a rush as the hole grew deeper. What, did they expect him to dig himself in over his head once again? He threw a suspicious look behind him, half-expecting to find them worrying at their bonds. But no, Tod’s head drooped against his pony’s side, and Ted lifted his head at Tolly’s turning.

‘What is it? Did you find it?’ the man called eagerly.

‘Naught,’ Tolly said in disgust. ‘A fine prank you’ve pulled. What were you hoping to gain?’

‘No,’ Ted said, straining to lift his head higher. ‘It’s there! It must be there!’

Tolly threw the shovel down and walked back to the ponies. ‘I don’t know what you were up to,’ he said. ‘Are there more ruffians, then, coming to meet you here? And you thought to busy me about some wearying task, that I might not hear them as they come, until they knock my head in and throw me into my own hole?’

‘No,’ Ted said, and Tod added his protest.

Tolly began to untie the lead lines. ‘Please,’ Ted said. ‘If you’d untie me, I could pace it off, I could do the digging...’

‘You think me such a great fool as all that?’ Tolly said, a sneer on his face to hide the pain in his heart. ‘That’s what this is about, a way to get me to untie you? After I’ve done what you asked, brought you to your old home...?’

‘Please, Tolly, by the blood that’s between us,’ Ted said, but Tod interrupted, his gaze piercing the hobbit.

‘By the friendship you swore,’ the younger man said softly. ‘For ever and a day, and a fortnight more...’

To Tolly, it felt as if a great fist had clenched itself round his heart, and his breath shuddered within him. They’re ruffians! he told himself. They’ll say aught, to win free, and murder me into the bargain...

But seeming of their own volition, his hands were tying up the ponies again, and then he turned to Ted, untied the bindings holding him to the pony, gave a push to unbalance the load so that the man fell sprawling.

Tolly stepped back, stringing his bow and fitting an arrow. ‘Free yourself,’ he said, his tone unfriendly. ‘If you work hard enough at it, you ought to be able.’

It took several tries, but Ted was at last able to draw his bound wrists behind him, over his heels, to his front, and while the hobbit watched, stony-faced, he worked his hands free at last, and then unbound his ankles.

The hobbits had taken his boots away when they’d captured him--they’d be sent to the King, a record of sorts of Men caught in the Shire--but he braved the brambles, wincing as he minced his way to the chimney, at last resting his back against the stone. His face was pale as he lifted his eyes to meet Tolly’s. ‘That wasn’t so difficult as it might have looked.’

‘I’m that happy for you,’ Tolly said, and nodded towards the place where he’d dug his empty hole.

Tod had lifted his head as high as he could, the tendons standing out in his neck, and he was whispering something under his breath.

‘Go on,’ Tolly said, holding his arrow steady.

‘You might rest your arm,’ Ted answered, drawing a deep breath. He closed his eyes, the better to imagine the clearing as it had looked, one midnight all those years ago.

‘You’re not going to go to sleep on me, now, are you?’ Tolly said. It was as he’d thought--a play for time, a distraction, a way to escape.

‘Somehow I think you’d make a poor mattress,’ Ted said, not opening his eyes. ‘Ours, we always stuffed with bracken, very sweet and comfortable.’

Tolly did not want to smile, but his lips twitched. How could the man...? But of course, he was trying to put Tolly at his ease. It was a good thing, the hobbit thought, that Tod could not loose himself while tied a-ponyback. ‘None of your nonsense, now,’ he said, and it was an echo of golden days in this very wood.

‘Come along,’ he added, raising his bow a little. ‘Count your steps, and dig where you fetch up, and if you come up empty I’ll have to shoot you where you stand, for I won’t trust you to be still and let yourself be trussed for delivery to the Rangers.’

The man drew another deep breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped off, though brambles twined their thorny vines all around him. He grunted as the thorns pierced his feet, but he dared not falter. Tolly's arrow would pierce further, should he fail.