Enlightenment and Madness

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins sat at her dressing table in her bedchamber, running the bristles of the silver-backed brush Lotho had given her through her hair. She paid little heed to the brush though usually she spent time admiring it. She paid little heed to the thinning grey hair it was passing through, though usually it worried her. She stared into her own eyes as the mirror reflected them to her. Good strong eyes which still saw the world around her clearly, though they were getting a tad bit cloudy around the edges of the irises. But it wasn’t the clarity of her eyes that had Lobelia’s attention this day, it was the expression in them. Her grey-blue eyes held question and doubt . . . they held a touch of fear.

How long things had been changing, she really couldn’t say. Had it been in the spring when Lotho had begun to act so peculiarly? Had he been afraid of more than snooping hobbits? And what about herself? There was a tightening at the corners of the eyes in the mirror and Lobelia was drawn forward toward her reflection. With a slight nod she acknowledged the truth, she had let herself be swayed for much too long a time. Shuttered up windows, all their needs met, supplies supplied. A high wall about the garden.

"A most lovely jail Bag End has become," she said aloud to the Lobelia in the mirror. "I should’ve set my jaw and gone where I wished months ago. And you knew it." Lobelia reached for the face in the glass with her right hand while touching her cheek with the left. "But you surely did not expect anything the likes of what you saw, did you, old lass? No. Didn’t expect the likes of that."

Her eyes held their gaze but her hands slowly sank to rest on the polished top of the dressing table. She had heard some sort of commotion coming from the direction of the town whilst out in the garden one afternoon two weeks past, and decided to try the latch on the door in the high wooden fence. It had opened. She walked around the side of the fence to where she could look down The Hill toward Hobbiton. Now, even more clearly, she could hear the loud voices and could see figures scurrying about. None of Lotho’s Men were around the hole, so she took herself off down the lane. She didn’t go bold as brass right to the front of the crowd, as was her custom, but choose instead to stay at its edges, away from the Men who might recognize her. They were riding by on their big horses. Behind them were a couple of wagons full of hobbits with bruised faces, holding onto the wagon’s sides with bound hands. There was apparently something else moving along the road that she could not see for the hobbits in front of her, but from their reactions, it was more upsetting than the spectacle in the wagons. They went as far as the green, turned about, then headed back toward Bywater and the Great East Road. Before the Men ordered the crowd to disperse, Lobelia had started back to Bag End, cutting through the fields with their black-tarred shacks so as to avoid the lane. She jerked to a halt four feet away from old Gamgee. No words were said betwixt them but looks were exchanged. He tipped his head toward one of the repulsive huts before opening its rickety door, going inside then shutting the door behind him. Lobelia somehow made her way home though she was aware of nothing until she was shutting the door in the fence behind her.

Slowly she came back to the present, once more aware of her reflection in the mirror. "So, Lobelia Bracegirdle Sackville-Baggins, you got what you always claimed you wanted. You live in Bag End and I truly doubt either the Thain or the Master, have more wealth. All the Shire has seen you and your son rise to the top while they’ve all been put in their places." She searched the face in the mirror, delving deep into those eyes surrounded by the wrinkles of time. "Huh!" she huffed. "And I can see just how deliriously happy you are with your life, old lass. You’ve hated them all, all these long years, and to what end? You wanted it all for yourself, wealth, power, influence. Well . . . here ‘tis, Lobelia, here it all is."

Lobelia sat quietly for several long moments reading the things she saw in her eyes. Slowly her eyelids closed. Slowly, she sighed, a deep sorrowful sigh. " ‘Twas all for the best, this being an unwitting prisoner in my own home. If I had been out and about, if I had seen it all happening more slowly, over time . . ." She sighed once again, her head drooping, her shoulders rounding. "Bound and beaten hobbits being carted away to the Lockholes I should think, brought up this way to strike fear into the hobbits of Hobbiton. Old Gaffer Gamgee living in a hut that is little more than what one would build for a privy. I’ve never liked the old windbag, always going on as though he knows everything about everything. But really," she looked again at the Lobelia in the glass, "does he deserve to live in a privy-house? Does he, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins? You wanted them all to suffer as you have suffered." A fire glowed in her usually cold eyes. "You’ve never, understand me now, you venomous old hag, never, never, never have you lived like that! Never, never were you paraded about to be shamed before the eyes of every hobbit in the Shire!"

Lobelia glared at herself until the flash of fury passed. Tears gathered along her lower eyelids before forming drops on her lashes, before forming tracks on the dry skin of her cheeks. She would do something, though at the moment she had not the slightest idea what, but she would do something to make amends. The haughty coolness of her grey-blue eyes was washed away by her heartfelt tears. It never would return.

Lotho Sackville-Baggins sat in his study. In his large chair. Behind his large desk. In his mind it was a sunny day. In his mind they were all sunny days. He never looked out of Bag End’s shuttered windows.

He looked at the map of his mighty realm, spread in all its glory before him on the desk. Small wooden cubes of several different colors were placed here and there upon its surface and Lotho gleefully moved a few of them from one town to another.

"Mine! All of it, every foolish hobbit and every Man. Mine," he laughed to himself. "Every crop in every field. All the live stock can be "dead stock" if I so choose." He stopped. He looked about the room. He tipped his head this way and that, listening. He was always watching, always listening. "They can send their spies, it will do them no good. I know where they all are. I know their sneaky ways. Mother taught me. I know all about them. Natuck caught that hobbit cook poisoning Mother’s tea and he caught that cleaning servant trying to set fire to our home. Well, ha!" Lotho snapped his fingers. "So much for their little conspiracies and plottings. They shan’t get anything past Chief Lotho Sackville-Baggins. I have others whom I trust. No hobbits are going to worm their way into Bag End."

The Chief’s rambling was interrupted by a knock upon the door.

"Enter."

"Just your faithful Natuck, Chief Lotho," said the Ruffian as he came in and shut the door behind himself. Natuck really was having a harder and harder time not laughing out loud every time he came into the fool’s office. "I see ya be thinkin’ on movin’ some of the lads about again." He gestured at the map as he spoke.

"Yes, yes," Lotho said cheerily. "I’ve had reports of hobbits trying to hold back gatherable goods on the new farms in the far West Farthing. We can’t have any of that, can we now." He winked broadly at Natuck.

"That be truth, Chief. And I heared it be Tooks involved."

It had quickly become obvious to Lotho’s Men that all they need do to gain his cooperation in any matter was to utter the incantation, "Tooks are involved." The Chief hated and feared the Tooks more than any other family of rats in the Shire.

"Then, then . . . we . . . yes," Lotho muttered, standing up to better shuffle around some of the small colored pieces on the map. "Ah, move half the Green Group . . . and, and . . . let me think . . . a third of the Purple Group, and ten or so from the Black Group out to those farms that are being un . . . un . . . uncooperative. Yes. That should handle things." He sat down with a thump. His face was flushed, his breathing quick. "Thank you, Natuck. You may go now."

Natuck gave Lotho a small bow before turning to leave. Lotho did not see the wicked smile on his trusted servant’s face. Natuck knew there were no groups to go with the little colored cubes, and even if there were, the Ruffians were heavily concentrated at Michel Delving, Hobbiton, around Tookland, in the East Farthing and Buckland. There were no new farms nor bands of the Chief’s Men in the far western reaches of the Shire.