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You Can Lead a Took to Water  by Lindelea

Chapter 10. A Prancing Pony Breakfast

The sound of a wide yawn, coming from the direction of the hearth, greeted Eglantine as she came out of the pantry bearing the better part of a ham. Startled, she nearly dropped the heavy burden, but had enough presence of mind to stagger the last few steps to the sideboard.

‘You ought not to burden yourself so heavily, Mistress,’ their special guest said, starting up from his bedroll. He was looking much better for the rest, and it seemed his bread-and-broth had strengthened him as well, for he stood as straight as the kitchen ceiling would allow, and neither staggered nor swayed.

‘Now then!’ Eglantine scolded, getting her breath back. ‘You ought to be in bed!’ She moved to the kettle of porridge, steaming over the fire, to give it a good stir.

The Man spread his hands to either side, a winsome smile on his face, and he bowed to her, a graceful, courtly gesture. ‘But I am well!’ he said. ‘Thanks to your nursing, and Master Mardibold, here.’ And he nodded to the healer, now sitting up straighter and blinking sleep from his eyes.

‘Here now,’ Mardi said, hauling himself to his feet, and rather more slowly than his erstwhile patient had managed. He echoed Eglantine, ‘You ought to be in bed!’

Robin’s grin widened. ‘It looks to be a beautiful day,’ he said, gesturing to the brightening light coming in at the window. ‘Hobbits will be at the haying, and a wanderer must a wandering go! Make hay whilst the sun shines, and make haste as well, that’s what I always say…’

‘It’s your wandering ways that got you into this state of affairs, I’ve no wonder,’ Eglantine began, shaking her ladle at him, but he laughed and shook his head.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I must lay the blame squarely at the feet of Mistress Lalia, I fear.’

‘Hush, now!’ Eglantine said in startlement, while Mardi added his own, ‘Not wise, to speak of the Mistress…’

‘You won’t tell her, I hope!’ the Man said in alarm, holding up a staying hand, but then he put down his hand again and shook his head once more. ‘In any event,’ he said, ‘I’ll never go near the Great Smials no more, no never!’

‘Well I never!’ Eglantine said in astonishment, trying to imagine fat, indolent Lalia besting this Man, twice as tall (though Lalia would be twice, perhaps four times as wide as he).

Robin lowered his voice and raised a hand to the side of his mouth, as if to speak a secret. ‘I stopped at the Smials,’ he said. ‘My journeys seldom take me through that part of the Tookland, but I was taking a short cut, seeing how I was expected at Bywater on Midsummer’s Day, as I always do…’ He looked to Mardi and back to Eglantine. ‘I was belated, for the Wood Bridge had washed out in the spring rains, and I must go the long way round, as you might know.’

Both hobbits nodded; it was said that Mistress Lalia’s purse strings were too tight to hire the Brandybucks to build a new bridge, and old Rorimac was no scatter-gold, to pay out of his own pocket to send his engineers to do the work, when it was the Thain’s business to keep the roads for the mythical King. ‘A workhobbit is worth his wages,’ he was fond of saying, and Eglantine at least, on visits to Brandy Hall, had heard him say it more than once.

Robin rubbed his hands together. ‘But,’ he said, ‘a tale is easier told when the hands are occupied as well… so, if you please, Mistress… If you're to suffer the novelty of a Man in your Tookish kitchen, well, then, he might as well make himself of use.’

And moving easily, though with his tall form he had to crouch somewhat to keep from knocking his head against a beam, he crossed to the sideboard, took up a carving knife, and began deftly to slice the ham. Ignoring Eglantine’s open-mouthed surprise, he took up his tale once more.

‘I had to go the long way ‘round, and over the Stone Bridge by Tuckborough, to get to the north side of the Tuckborne, for the spring, ‘twas a wet one, and the stream is strong and swift and deep, running through this part of the great Green Hills…’

‘A wet spring it was, indeed, and a hot early summer, such that the hay grew tall quicker than usual, ready for the first cutting a full fortnight early,’ Eglantine agreed, moving to slice more bread, seeing as the ham was in good hands.

‘Well,’ Robin said, ‘I’d been warned about Mistress Lalia, truly I had, by a tinker and a tailor, and a candle-stick maker as well, all of whom told me she charged a high toll to pass through Tuckborough, at least for a Man or a Dwarf (I heard she hadn’t quite enough nerve to make demands of any Elf passing through, or perhaps her toll-takers don’t)…’

‘Ah, the Toll,’ Mardi said, nodding in sudden understanding. ‘You ran afoul of the Toll, I take it?’

‘I ran afoul of a couple of sharp-tongued Tooks, with sharper arrows,’ Robin said. ‘And when they demanded the Toll for my safe passage, and I said I hadn’t any coin, silver or otherwise, why, they escorted me to the Thain…’

‘Ferumbras isn’t overly fond of Men,’ Eglantine said, ‘but I’ve never heard it said he was unreasonable.’

‘No, and I think he’d have let me off with a warning,’ Robin said, turning the ham and resuming his carving. ‘He told me never to set foot in these parts again, unless I had the silver to pay my passage… something about the cost of keeping the roads for the King…’ His eyes reflected some puzzlement. ‘I wasn’t aware there was any,’ he said, ‘King, that is.’

‘Be that as it may,’ Mardi said, skirting the dangerous subject. (The King existed at the convenience of the Mistress, after all. When it was convenient for her to demand service of Tooklanders, to keep the roads, or Tolls of outlanders who travelled those roads, then she would call upon the name of the King. At all other times, of course, she ignored him. Whoever he might be. It was dangerous, however, for any other hobbit to claim such august acquaintance or sponsorship in the Mistress’ hearing.) ‘So Ferumbras was going to let you off…’

‘But evidently word was brought to the Mistress before her son was quite finished with me,’ Robin said. ‘And I was stuck! If I didn’t have the silver, well then, the Mistress had decreed they must have it out of me in terms of work!’

Mardi nodded. ‘Ah,’ he said wisely. ‘I see.’ And he did. He’d seen a few miserable, hungry-looking wretches breaking rocks down to gravel for the roads, in the quarry near Tuckborough, with grim-faced, armed Tooks watching them to make sure their work was satisfactory. He’d heard they were law-breakers, Men who’d run afoul of the Thain, though he’d never before imagined what ill they might have done.

Robin confirmed this. ‘Break rocks, I must,’ he said, taking one hand from the ham to look at it ruefully. ‘Break them into stones, and the stones into gravel, to be taken away in wheelbarrows for the mending of the roads, or so I was told.’ Mardi had noticed the marks of recently healed blisters on the hands as he’d tended the Man, and now the healer unconsciously clenched his own fists as the Man went on. ‘With a great hammer, too heavy for a hobbit, nearly too heavy for a Man – more suited to a Dwarf, I should think…’

‘And so the Mistress ordered you to work in the Quarry for a day or three,’ Mardi said.

Eglantine, in the meantime, had the griddle warming, and had picked up the basket of fresh-laid eggs, gathered only that morning, but Robin intercepted her.

‘Here, now,’ he said. ‘To thank you for your succor and aid and hospitality, please, Mistress, I beg of you…’

‘What?’ Eglantine said in astonishment.

Robin laughed. ‘There is an inn, a very fine establishment, in Bree,’ he said. Eglantine and Mardi goggled, to think of this Man, such a far-traveller! Bree! ‘The Prancing Pony… perhaps you’ve heard of it?’ He looked from one blank expression to the other and shrugged. ‘Well, if you ever travel through the Breeland…’

Not much chance of that! both his listeners were thinking, as he continued. ‘…the breakfast they serve there, well, it’s worth writing home about.’

He nodded to the barrel of potatoes. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Mistress, peeling a quantity of those whilst I chop the onions…’

As he set about, stirring up griddlecakes (Eglantine fetched, at his bidding, the rest of the ingredients from the pantry, to add to the eggs) and setting them baking, and frying onions, and par-boiling potatoes preparatory to frying them with the onions, he continued his story.

‘Not just a day, or even three, I’m sorry to say,’ he said, ‘in that terrible Quarry, in the heat of summer, beneath the blazing Sun…’

‘But three days’ work,’ Mardi said, ‘that’s as much as any Tooklander might give to road work, at any one time, and one or two days a month, during the finer months, is more likely. Ten days, for the whole year, at the pay of a silver penny a day…’

‘Ah,’ Robin said, ‘but that’s not counting the room and board…’

‘Room and board!’ Eglantine said in consternation. ‘She ordered you to work as hard as a Dwarf in a mine, and charged you for room and board? I hope the accommodations were to suit…’

Robin lowered his voice still more, so that his words were scarcely to be heard amongst the sizzling from the frying onions and potato chunks and ham. ‘A place to lay my blankets,’ he said, ‘in a shed with musty, flea-infested hay; and stale bread to eat, and as much water as I might care to drink…’ He looked to Eglantine’s stricken face. ‘But no matter, Mistress,’ he said. ‘I gave my fortnight to the King’s roads, ten days labour for my leave to use those roads, though most times I walk across the fields, and then four days to pay my “room and board” – and so I am free to roam the Tookland, this year at least, and my Toll is paid in full.’

‘Oh, Robin,’ Eglantine said, grieved, but the Man had stopped talking and put on a broad smile, and turning, she saw why. Pippin was standing in the doorway, grinning at their guest, his sisters clustered uncertainly behind him.

‘Robin! You’re well!’

‘Never better,’ the Man said, stopping long enough to bow before turning back to his cooking. ‘And you’re all just in time to lay the table! For breakfast is nearly ready, and I’m sure the good farmer and his hired hands will be here at any time, done with their early-morning labours, and ready to tuck in!’





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