Note: I had no intention of posting so soon, but the response to the first part was so overwhelmingly lovely. Thank you!

Part Two: A Tale: November, 2980

‘Now, the King’s particular horses were not housed in a stable or a paddock, as you would usually keep horses. They roamed in a herd in the wide plain about the city,’ said the Ranger-stranger, still methodically scrubbing at the sticky residue of beer in the bottom of the mugs. ‘They could be gathered at need, and they would respond if they wished to the call of the King’s horn, but for the most part they were left to do as they pleased, nearly as wild and free as their long-ago ancestors had been. But of course every now and then a horse would require special care or some sort of attention that made it necessary for the animal to be sheltered in the city for a time.’

Barli listened raptly. He knew next to nothing about horses, except that you didn’t ever, ever try to get past one by ducking under its belly. The idea of a whole herd of horses just running around in the open was remarkable, and so very exotic: exactly what he best liked about stories of distant lands. He belatedly remembered that he was meant to be drying the mug in his hand, and wiped it quickly.

‘One such horse was a mare called Dicea. Her dam was the King’s most prized mare, and though her sire was not known there were only three stallions in the herd fleet enough to pursue that mare.’  Here he paused for a moment, thoughtfully. Likely he was wondering whether he had said more than a young boy ought to hear, as if Barli had never seen a tomcat mount a she-cat. Then the man went on. ‘Dicea was a two-year filly when she was found by one of the King’s herdsmen limping behind the rest of the horses. She was found to have a thorn in her fetlock, as long as your forefinger there.’

Barli looked down at his hands without even thinking of it. It seemed natural to do whatever the storyteller suggested. He looked up again. ‘That’s an awful big thorn.’

‘It was,’ the man said gravely.  His voice had changed, but Barli did not notice. It seemed such a natural part f the ebb and flow of the tale. ‘The King himself had to come out to fetch her, for she was skittish and horses of her blood but seldom consent to being handled by anyone other than the King and those of his line. He brought her into the city and housed her in the high stables nearest his Golden Hall, and a farrier drew out the thorn and bound the leg.’

‘Was she all right?’ asked Barli breathlessly. He never would have thought he could be this anxious about a horse, but somehow he was.

‘She was. The wound took no infection, and it healed well. But the farrier recommended that she be kept stabled for some days, so that she could be watched.’ The Ranger took a stack of soup-bowls and put it into the dishwater.  He paused to look appraisingly at Barli. ‘Now the King’s son, Théoden, was at this time a young boy – very near to your own age, by my guess. He was a spirited boy, and he was a gifted rider, and in all other ways he possessed the qualities befitting a King’s son, but he was also a mischievous lad and not always obedient. So no one was especially surprised to find one morning that Dicea was gone from her stall, and Théoden was absent from the breakfast board. It took some time to put the two disappearances together, for it was mid-morning before anyone thought to seek the gatekeeper of the city and ask if he had seen the two ride out.

‘By a curious mischance, the gatekeeper had been taken with a case of the flux, and had been absent from his post several times through the night.’ Barli giggled at this, and the man regarded him very seriously. ‘No laughing matter, Master Butterbur, when it means the city wall can so easily by breached.’

‘I s’pose not,’ Barli said embarrassedly. He thought about what would happen if one of Bree’s gatekeepers left his post so many times in a night that someone could pass through unnoticed. It wouldn’t be such a problem if anyone went out, but if some strange, dangerous person came in…

‘So it was assumed that the King’s son and the little mare had slipped out near dawn to go riding the plains. Théoden had tried such things before, though never with one of his father’s most precious of horses, and no one was much concerned. Dicea was young to be ridden, but she was strong and the boy was small, and he was a fine rider. No one grew afraid until the hour grew late and the sunset threatened and still neither boy nor horse had returned.’

Tim had been moving to take the butter-box to the scullery, but he hesitated on the threshold, listening raptly. Whether the stranger noticed this or not, Barli could not say, but just then the man turned to him and said; ‘Half a minute, young master. Let me put up the plates so that you’ve more room for those mugs.’

As he moved to pick up the first stack of plates, Tim hurried into the scullery. The Ranger seemed particularly wary of dropping his burden, for he moved more slowly now than he had while bearing the full beer-trays. The old hobbit was back in the kitchen proper before he had put away the last pile. ‘There was no use in mounting a search in the dark,’ the tall man said promptly, returning to the dishpan and picking up the rag again. ‘Though I fear the King and Queen passed a sleepless night in fear for their boy. He was the great darling of their house, you see, for though they had three daughters he was their only boy and the heir to the throne. He was later somewhat supplanted in darlinghood when another girl-child was born, but that was a number of years after this tale of mine.’

Barli wrinkled his nose. He didn’t much care for the idea that a boy his age might get a baby sister some years later. He certainly didn’t want one. He loved Meadowlark plenty, and even liked her most of the time, but she was older. That was much better.

‘When dawn came, word went out to the King’s men that search parties were to be assembled. The Lord Mayor of the city offered his own Riders also, and a muster of more than a hundred men was gathered – as many as could be spared without harming the city’s defences,’ the Ranger said. ‘Among those chosen to search was a certain man from the Lord Mayor’s company. He had been but lately promoted to field sergeant, which meant that when drills were given to the Riders it was he who led them through their repetitions until the manoeuvers were done to the Captain’s satisfaction. It was not a popular job, but he did it well. He was a young man, and he had been in the city somewhat less than a year. He had not grown up among the horsemen, and had not spent the early years of his manhood as they had, galloping across great swaths of land at a high speed and looking down at the earth from a lofty saddle. Though he could ride as well as any other, he had been raised to go about on his own two feet. He knew the earth he walked well, and he knew how to look for subtle signs and to track both game and folk in the Wild.’

‘Was he a warrior?’ Barli asked eagerly. This was all very exciting, and the fact that it was a story of a young boy instead of merely grown people made it all the more so. Tim was listening too, though still going ponderously about his end-of-evening chores.

‘He was,’ said the Ranger. ‘The other Riders called him The Eagle, for he was swift and his eyesight was keener than that of any other man in the company. When the orders to assemble were given, he made use of both. He ran from the barracks and down to the gate while the others were preparing to mount horses. There he looked for signs of a young, unshod mare or a boy’s costly boots. Near the gate itself the tracks were muddled with all that day’s traffic, but farther out it was easy to see that no such feet had gone forth from the city walls. So the young soldier went to his captain and said that he did not believe the boy had ridden off onto the plain.’

‘And had he?’ gasped Barli.

‘The Captain thought that he had,’ the man said soberly. ‘The Lord Mayor thought he had, and the King himself was certain. So the sergeant was told to hold his tongue and fetch his steed and hurry out to join the other men at once, for they were already assembled and he now was tardy. That is a grave matter among soldiers, you know. One must never lag behind.’

Barli didn’t know anything about that, for there were no proper soldiers in Bree. There was only the Watch, and they didn’t really go anywhere all as a group. But he didn’t say this: he was too eager for the rest of the tale.

‘But the sergeant was certain that the King’s son had not passed the city walls that way, and the gate was the only way to get out of the town and onto the plain. The King’s city had no second gate, like Bree has. But it did have one very important thing in common with your own town here.’

‘What was it?’ asked Barli, still more excited. He felt that he could imagine it all: the walled town, the soldiers on their proud horses, and the young sergeant on foot, lagging behind but certain that his captain was wrong.

‘Like Bree, one side of the city rose up upon a stony slope,’ the Ranger said, gesturing with one soapy hand before falling back to work. ‘Yet where Bree sits at the foot of a hill, this city was at the foot of a great mountain. The mountain was so tall that even in high summer the snow upon its crown did not melt, and its sides were riddled with cliffs and chasms and meandering byways that could not be mapped nor penetrated by attackers of any significant number. Yet one man might find his way through them and up into the high places, if he was patient and lucky. It was this way that the sergeant believed that young Théoden had gone. This is the last of the cups, now: dry it carefully. We’ve got all this way without breaking a single one!’

There was a playful glint in his eye as he said this, but Barli didn’t think broken cups a matter for jest. Obviously the Ranger-stranger did not know what Da would do if they did drop one.

Now finished with the tableware, the man cast his eyes on the heap of dirty pots, grease-crusted skillets, and pans with the food baked on in black crusts. Old Tim was a fine cook, perhaps the finest in Bree, but he was a prodigal dish-soiler. Nick had often complained of it, and it was likely another reason he had been so eager to be gone.

Before the man could pick up the first pot, however, the kitchen door flew open and Da came in, carrying two large trays heaped high with dishes. They must have come from one of the private dining rooms, for the residue on them had long since gone cold and congealed. Da set the trays down unceremoniously on the table and sighed in long-suffering irritation.

‘Just about everyone in the house wanting hot water tonight,’ he grumbled. ‘Tim, you leave that be and get the kettles boiling: the upstairs stove's noways sufficient for this! Why folks choose the coldest night yet this year for a good wash I’ll never know! Want me to do the hauling, I s’pose. I half think we ought to start charging for water!’

He blustered out of the room, still grumbling to himself. Barli watched him go. Da often said such things, but he would never dare to try charging guests for wash-water. It would have ruined the reputation of The Pony in three weeks.

When the door swung closed again, Barli turned his gaze on the dirty dishes. The tall man was already sorting them into heaps for washing, his sharp eyes searching the remnants of the meal. There was a wax rind pared from a wedge of cheese, and he dragged that over his bottom teeth to scrape away the thin layer of eatable stuff that clung to it. He found a few more chicken bones, all of which received the same thorough treatment as the first one had. It looked like hard work for little reward. Tim had given up on trying to look busy and was staring at the hungry stranger in disbelief. When the man picked up a scrap of bread crust and began wiping the clotted gravy from one of the plates, the hobbit threw up his hands.

‘Stop it now, just stop it!’ he cried. ‘It don’t look right at all, eating like that! Sit down and I’ll fix you up a bit of something. The master don’t need to know if you get it down quick.’

The man froze, the unpleasant-looking morsel halfway to his eager mouth, and his eyes were fixed on Old Tim. There was something happening behind them, all right, but Barli didn’t know what. The grey almost looked like storm-clouds now, circling tumultuously in a darkening sky. Then the Ranger’s hand fell to his side and the crust of bread fell onto the plate where he had been piling chicken bones and other things not even a famished man could digest.

‘That’s not necessary,’ he said quietly. ‘If it pains you so, I will stop.’ Then he went to the waste bucket next to the slop pail, and tipped the contents of the plate into it. He looked at Barli with determined freshness. ‘Now where were we? Ah, yes. The mountain.’

‘I’m going to fix you something,’ Tim repeated, marching around and stretching on his toes to grab one of the clean bowls from the middle of the man-sized table. ‘It isn’t right, someone going hungry with all this good food about. It isn’t decent. All very well for Mr. Butterbur to save a penny here and there, but I can’t stand by and—’

‘I cannot eat it,’ the stranger said, more softly still. His eyes were very kind when he looked at the hobbit. ‘You are good-hearted to wish it, but I will not break my word. I agreed to work for the leavings, and now they are gone I have had that part of my recompense, meagre though it was. If it is any comfort, little master, it is the shelter from the storm that is my greatest need tonight.’

‘How would that be any comfort to anybody?’ Old Tim huffed, giving the Ranger the blackest look that Barli had ever seen on his round, honest face. ‘I think you’re a fool, do you know that?’

‘Mayhap I am,’ said the man, as if he half believed it himself. ‘But I will bide by my bargains. The mountain!’ he exclaimed forcefully, beginning to carry the dishes over to the counter that had been empty only a minute ago. ‘So the sergeant—’

‘The Eagle!’ Barli said, anxious to be back into the magic of the tale and far removed from hunger and want and (so far as he could see) blind mulishness.

‘Quite so.’ The Ranger’s lip curled in that peculiar way of is. ‘The Eagle disobeyed his captain. He did not fetch his horse and tack, and he did not ride down to the muster at the city gate. Instead he climbed up through the streets, up past the market and the houses of the merchants, up past the mansions of the great lords, up even beyond the Golden Hall itself, to where the gardens of the Queen gave upon the stony slopes.

‘It is not easy to track anything over bare rock, but there are signs the most careful of seekers may find. Still it took him until midmorning before he was sure that he followed the right trail. Once he had found them, the tracks were unmistakable. A young horse leaves a very different spoor than an older one, and it is easy to see if a hoof has never been shod. The sergeant followed these tracks through many twisting ways, and across a bubbling spring that raced down the mountain and might have obscured the tracks from any less careful hunter. Then at last, when the afternoon was waning, the sergeant came to a place where not only the track, but the trail itself ended. There was a deep chasm that broke the path and plunged down into darkness far below.’

Barli gasped, his eyes enormous. Tim was wrathfully scrubbing his own worktable now. Barli had forgotten all about the dish in his hand as he looked up at the stranger in awe. ‘Did they fall into it? Was the boy… was he killed?’

‘That was what the sergeant feared at first,’ the Ranger admitted, nodding his head. ‘But as he stood there in his dismay he heard a nicker and a high whinny, and when he looked up across the deep gorge what should he see but the King’s handsome little mare? He realized at once that she must have jumped the gap and landed safe upon the other side. But there was no sign of her rider.’

‘What did The Eagle do?’ asked Barli.

‘He steeled himself and he stepped back a few paces, and he ran to leap the gorge,’ said the man. ‘It was a little less than eight feet wide, and he made the jump cleanly – even as the mare must have done, but with only two feet to land on. Startled, Dicia reared and galloped off, but she returned a minute later when the man whistled and called her by name. She was still wearing a saddle and bridle, but the former had been put on inexpertly and the girth was too loose. It was not loose enough that the saddle could slip from her back, but when the sergeant tested it he found that it slid badly from side to side. It now seemed obvious what had happened: at some point young Théoden had slipped from the saddle and fallen from the horse.

‘The sergeant was sick with dread, for it could so easily have happened in the jumping of the chasm. But he could not give up hope entirely, and he asked the horse what had happened to her rider.’

‘He asked her?’ Barli wrinkled his nose at this. The story had been going along so well, so perfectly believable and wholly riveting, but this was silly. Everyone knew that horses couldn’t talk. ‘Horses can’t talk,’ he declared irritably.

‘True,’ the man agreed. ‘But sometimes a clever horse can understand. Not the words, perhaps, but what the speaker truly means. Either this horse understood what the sergeant was trying to ask of her, or she herself was so worried for her young lord that she was waiting only the invitation to help him. Whatever the case, she led the young Rider on, around a bend and up a twisted, stony way to a place where there was a bad jog in the rock. It was a perfect place for an inexperienced horse to stumble, and lose a rider from an insecure saddle. And there, just in the shelter of an outcropping of rock, the sergeant found Théoden, the son of the King.’

Barli longed to hear more, but the door shot open again and Da was back, carrying the two big kettles he used to haul water to the rooms. He thumped them down in the same place he had left the trays, and then heaved the still larger kettle from the fire to fill the other two. ‘You come along with me, my son,’ he said briskly. ‘I want help carrying the towels. Tim, you go on and fill this up again and see about getting a start wiping down the tables. The men staying in Number Eight are still idling over their wine, but maybe that’ll give them the hint it’s time to be off to bed. And you!’ he added much more sharply, scowling at the Ranger. ‘Haven’t you done with them dishes yet? Get on with it, or it’ll soon be Saturday!’

It would soon be Saturday whatever they did, Barli thought. He knew far better than to say it, though, just as he knew he could not protest being dragged away from the storyteller. He trotted after his father to the cupboard that Mam always kept stocked full of neat, laundered towels. For half an hour he hurried from room to room, leaving the cloths where they were wanted and listening to Da’s cheerful banter. Between each room he scowled blackly and muttered about folks who didn’t think an innkeeper needed any sleep at all.

When at last he was dismissed, Barli ran back downstairs as quick as he could go. Da would be busy for a while yet, collecting the used towels and taking any last requests from guests before they went to their beds. In the kitchen, he found the stranger sloshing brown-hued wash water around the bottom of the big frying pan while he scoured it. His back was bent right into the effort, and his face set in a grim determined mask that was a little frightening. In the chimney corner, Old Tim was working at his midnight luncheon. It was a part of his pay: all the proper hobbity meals from midday on, and one last extra mealtime right before he went off home, on account of having to work on so late. Da didn’t grudge him that any more than he truly grudged his wages. Tim was the very best, and he ran his kitchen without waste.

Barli’s own stomach grumbled and he went to the breadbox. He was allowed to help himself to a bread-and-butter sandwich whenever he wanted one, and he wanted one now. He was beginning to feel his tiredness, too, and he knew he ought to go to bed, but he did so want to hear the rest of the story. A nice sandwich would refresh him very well.

But he stopped with his hand on the cover of the box. He looked back over his shoulder to the man at the dishpan. It wouldn’t be a nice thing at all, to stand there still working and not even half-fed while somebody else was eating. He guessed maybe Tim hadn’t stopped to think of that, but he would. He left the bread where it was and went back to the other side of the room.

‘Will you tell me what happened?’ he said meekly.

‘Hmm? What?’ The man looked up from his work in bewilderment, like one awakening from a dream to an unexpected question. His eyes took a moment to focus on Barli, and he blinked twice in rapid succession. ‘Oh, to young Théoden and the mare,’ he said.

‘Yes!’ Barli couldn’t help sounding eager.

The Ranger turned back to the dish and fell to scrubbing with fresh vengeance. ‘The sergeant went to the boy, and saw at once that his leg had been broken in the fall. Théoden was frightened. He didn’t know the man, you see, because the sergeant was just a servant of the Lord Mayor, and not worth the notice of a King’s son at all. But he was in pain and he was in great need of help, and after a while the sergeant managed to convince him that he would do him no harm – though he made plain that he had to tend the leg and that would not be easy for the boy. At last Théoden did not shy away when the sergeant came near, and he was able to get a good look at his leg.

‘It was not such a bad break: no more than most lads see at least once in a lifetime. But they were halfway up a mountain on the wrong side of a gorge, and night was coming fast. It was autumn, and the nights could be very cold. They had neither food nor blankets, though the sergeant had his cloak and a skin of water. He bade the boy drink, and he wrapped him as warmly as he could. There was nothing with which to splint the leg, for there were no trees on that bare rocky incline. But like all of the Riders, The Eagle was accustomed to carrying his sword wherever he went. So he unbuckled his belt, and he slid the sheath from it. Then he took the sword from the sheath, and with a firm blow of the blade cleaved it in half midway up its length.’

Barli frowned in puzzlement. ‘The sheath? What good would that do?’

‘The sheaths used by the men of Rohan are not leather like those you see on knives and short swords in Bree-land,’ the man explained. ‘They are made of thin wood and beautifully ornamented with bright paints. Rent in twain, the two halves of the scabbard made a good firm splint. So the sergeant bade the boy look away and speak to comfort the horse, and while Théoden was thus occupied the man set his leg. It was sudden and it was very painful, but the King’s son was valiant. He cried out, but he did not weep. And he lay still while The Eagle bound up the splint with strips of cloth from his shirt.’

All this was rather too much for Barli. It sounded awful, and he felt a little uneasy in his grumbly stomach. But he could not help but listen on. ‘What then?’ he asked.

‘Then they had to get down the mountain.’ There was a splash and a rush of water as he took the big pan and tipped it out. All the baked-on grime was gone, and the Ranger dried it swiftly before hanging it up on its peg, down near his hip where Tim could reach it easily. ‘The boy could not walk, but with his leg splinted he was able to keep a seat on the horse. Boys in Rohan learn to ride at a very young age indeed, and as the King’s son Théoden had had the best of tutors in the art. His usual form was better than that of many folk you can see riding around Bree-land. Making sure the tack was properly tightened this time, the sergeant put the boy on Dicea’s back and they started down. He walked beside the horse instead of leading her, lest Théoden should slide from the saddle with his injured leg out of the stirrup as it was. It must have been very painful for him to ride thus, but Théoden did not complain. He was a brave child, and in time grew to be a brave young man.’

He was interrupted by the thud of the kitchen door as Da came back in. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Last one’s abed.’ He looked at Barli and wiped his hands on his apron. ‘Didn’t think we was going to get through it, three people short like that. Couldn’t have done it without you, my boy! You'll make an innkeeper, and no mistake.'

Quietly, the Ranger went to the back door and opened it. Then he took a firm hold of each handle of the heavy dishpan and heaved it from the table. Three-quarters full it weighed nearly seventy pounds, but the man lifted it as easily as Da could lift a loaded apple-box. Not even slightly bowlegged, he walked steadily for the door. Even though his father was looking at him and had been speaking to him, Barli could not help watching in awe.

‘You done good work tonight,’ Da said. ‘Do you want a piece of apple pie before bed?’

Barli did, very much, but he felt guilty even thinking about it. Old Tim was eating peaceably at his table, but outside in the freezing rain the stranger was still working on, hungry. He couldn’t have had even half a bowl’s worth of table scraps, no matter how busy the night had been. Folks in Bree just didn't leave much by way of tailings.

‘No, thank you, Da,’ he whispered.

His father frowned, puzzled, and then he shrugged. In came the Ranger again, hunched against the stinging sleet. He closed the door with his foot and set the dishpan on its side to dry. As he came Da looked at him, and as Da looked his eyes took on a sly gleam. ‘Well, you get off to bed then, son,’ he said fondly, chucking Barli under the chin but looking all the time at the tall man. ‘And you.’ Now his voice was cold and scornful again. ‘The common room floor wants scrubbing. There’s a brush in the bucket by the door: see you do a proper job. Last chore of the night and then we’ll be ready to go for the morning, as agreed.’

Barli craned his neck to look up at his father, not knowing what to do. Again, again Da was trying to get something for nothing. Scrubbing the common room floor was a daily job, all right, but it always waited until morning. That way the muck and mud that patrons tracked in all night could dry so that most of it was whisked away with the willow broom. He had heard the terms of the bargain: the stranger had promised to work until The Pony was shut up and ready for morning. That meant the night work only.

The Ranger-stranger couldn’t possibly know that, of course, and Barli wanted to speak out and tell him. But if he did, Da would box his ears for sure. Da saw a way to get out of another unpleasant chore that usually fell to Mam, and he was taking it.

Then Barli realized the stranger had not been looking at Da as he gave his orders, but at him instead. He squirmed a little under the keen gaze, but he could not help stealing his own look at the tall man’s face. For an instant, just for an instant, lips tightened and brows furrowed and eyes narrowed in anger. He had seen the truth in Barli’s face, and he knew that he was being cheated. Now he would speak out after all. Now he would go for that great long sword. Now…

Now? Now his face was blank and impassive, his eyes veiled and all at once very weary. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said crisply. ‘Warm water, or cold?’

Da frowned disgustedly. ‘How would I know that? It’s woman’s work. Woman's or beggar's. Come on, my lad: off to bed now. You done me proud tonight.’

Normally the adulation in his father’s voice would have warmed Barli to the core. Tonight it left him colder than ever. He let himself be led away numbly, as the stranger who knew such a wonderful, terrible, exciting tale stooped to pick up the scrub-brush and pail without another word. The empty common room seemed enormous, its shadowed corners vast in the glow of the embers and the three smoky lamps. The floor looked big as the village square to Barli, and every bit as muddy. Down the hall they went, and Da stopped at the door to Barli’s little bedroom.

‘Goodnight, now, Barli,’ he said. Then he did something he did not usually do, and bent to kiss the crown of the boy’s head. He grinned. ‘Been a very good night, on the whole. Customers happy, all sound abed, work done, free pair of hands to help, and the money-box is so full I’ve had to hide some of it in your mother’s sewing-basket! Shhh: don’t tell!’

‘I won’t,’ Barli said reflexively. He wanted to hug his father. He wanted to enjoy this moment when Da’s mood was good and he was feeling loving, and he wanted to be happy after a good day’s work, but he knew it hadn’t been. It had been a bad day’s work his father had done: bad as any rum trick dishonest old Will Ferny might pull on an unsuspecting farmer. He had cheated that man, and cheated him horribly. Just because he was a Ranger didn't make it right.

So when Da went off to check the casks in the cellar – a nightly ritual that he credited with the good repute of his brew – Barli slunk guiltily into his room. He took off his clothes and washed his face and neck, and he put on his nightshirt and he brushed his hair. And he couldn’t stop thinking about the Ranger. Da would be down below for at least half an hour, and after that he would go out to check the horses and put out the lamp. He might not come back to the common room for an hour or more. Barli could slip out in and be back long before then.

The floor in the front corridor was very cold beneath his bare feet, but it warmed almost at once over the threshold into the room still redolent with the smells of supper and pipeweed and mulled bear and the heat of many bodies. It was darker still now, for the fire was dying down under a thick blanket of ash. Even so he could see that all the chairs had been turned upside-down with the seats on the tables, and the benches had been stacked four high. At first he couldn’t see the stranger, for he was over on the far side of the room in the gloom, but he heard the swish-swish of the coarse-bristled brush, and he could smell the vinegar mixture that Mam always used to wash the floor. Tim must have told him how to mix it.

He was doing a proper job: he had started by the kitchen door where the floor was cleanest, and he was working out. As he came into view, on his knees with his left hand bracing him and his right working the brush, Barli felt another guilty wrenching deep in his guts. He wanted to flee back to his room before he was noticed. The man hadn’t looked up yet; hadn't seen him . His shaggy hair was falling to hide his face, and he kept his head bowed over his work. The brush raised a muddy froth as he came to an especially dirty place, and he dipped it into the bucket to rinse it. Mam always said that nothing smarted on dishpan hands like vinegar: that was why she had Nick wash the breakfast dishes. Nick, who would have rather done just about anything than scrub the common-room floor, had never complained about that.

Mind made up, Barli moved on a very quiet, bare foot to turn for the door. From the middle of the room came a quiet voice, rough with weariness.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t the heart for storytelling just now,’ the man said in low apology. ‘The end of the tale will have to wait for another day.’

Barli swallowed. He had been caught out, but he didn’t know how. He hadn’t made a sound, and the man hadn’t looked up even once. ‘I didn’t come about the tale,’ he said. Then, unable to restrain himself, he blurted out; ‘What’s wrong with you?’

The stranger raised his head at last, that dark, dark hair falling around his face. His nose was long and very straight. The bones of his face stood out eerily in the dim lamplight. His eyes seemed to have a light of their own. Then he pushed himself up with his left hand, rather stiffly, and sat back on his booted heels with the scrub-brush resting against his leg. The knees of his queer, skin-snug wool trousers were soaked from crawling across the sections of floor he had just washed.

‘Wrong with me?’ he said, nonplussed. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Why’d you let him do it? Cheat you like that? You saw: I know you did.’ Not caring about the mud and grime beneath his bare feet, Barli crossed the room and stopped just short of the fresh wetness where the Ranger had been working. ‘This is a morning job, and he’s making you do it because he doesn’t want to, and he knows he’ll have to if you don’t, and he knows you want a bed so bad you’ll even – even—’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. He had no idea what he had been about to say.

‘What should I have done?’ the stranger asked, his voice still very mild.

‘Argued with him! Told him you wouldn’t do it! Told him if he wanted you to he’d have to give you a proper supper! Anything at all!’ Barli raged.

Then the man did something that surprised him more than anything else the entire evening. He laughed. It was a sour, chortling laugh that fell cold in the big empty room, but Barli thought there was a note of genuine merriment there too: as if the man knew that he was being put through his paces out of spite and hated it, but saw that there was some incomprehensibly funny side to all of this, too.

‘What a comedown that would have been!’ he chuckled, and he heaved himself back onto hands and knees and began scrubbing again. ‘To go from matching wits with one of the keenest minds among living Men to quarrelling with a village innkeeper over scrubbing a floor. Far better to bend my back and get it done.'

Barli drew back, puzzled and a little frightened. He didn’t understand this man: didn’t understand him at all. He was hungry, and he wouldn’t eat even when he was offered good food, just because he had given his word to work for table scraps. He was tired, but he kept on working even though he had already done all the work he had given that same word to do. And now he was laughing while he scoured the mud and street-muck from a floor he had been cheated into washing. For he was still laughing, almost silently, as he moved the brush in rightward-moving spirals on the floorboards worn smooth by years of shuffling feet. His shoulders were fairly shaking with mirth.

He started to back away, but his hip bumped one of the tables and he had to turn quickly to keep one of the chairs from tumbling onto the floor. Barli caught it and settled it back, and when he looked at the stranger again he had stopped his inexplicable spasms of amusement. Now he was silent again, and serious: working with such single-minded diligence that it was as if the scrubbing of this floor was tied up in the very fate of the world.

Now that he was once more patient and determined in his mortifying lot, Barli felt the need to do something kind for the man. His father had been spiteful, and he didn’t want this Ranger-whatever-that-was to go away thinking this was the way folks were treated at The Prancing Pony – even if it apparently was. He had no idea what to do, but Tim would know. Old Tim always knew what needed to be done, whatever the situation. It was another reason Da couldn’t do without him.

Distraught and longing to turn the whole ugly problem over to an adult’s hands, Barli ran awkwardly across the wet floor to the kitchen. He didn’t even pause to think that he left muddy footprints actross the clean expanse of floor as he did so. It was such a relief to come through into the well-lit room. Mam always insisted on plenty of candles in the kitchen. It wouldn’t do to send out a plate with a hair or a beetle in it, just because Old Tim couldn’t see it.

The hobbit was at the fire, doling himself up another helping of food. He looked up as the boy came in. ‘What’s the matter, lad?’ he asked with a sigh, tapping his serving spoon hard on the plate to dislodge the heap of mashed potatoes. There were plenty of those left for tomorrow: more than enough to top the cottage pies. ‘Your da’s down checking the casks if he’s wanted.’

‘Can’t we do something?’ asked Barli. ‘It isn’t fair.’

‘Fair don’t mean much once you get to be old enough to make your own way in the world,’ said Tim sagely. He took the gravy boat from the warming shelf and poured some of the dark, steaming fluid over the potatoes and three thick slices of ham. The bowl of peas was almost empty and he scooped up the whole lot, glistening with melted butter. ‘That Man out there’s made his choices. He made whatever choice left him without nowhere to go in the world, and he made the choice that let him get hungry enough that he don’t got any pride left, and he made the choice to strike a deal with Mr. Butterbur. Made the choice to stick with it, too, even though the master’d be none the wiser. Don’t rightly know why he done that last, but he done it.’

‘But…’ Barli protested feebly. Tim went to the breadbox and took out a good thick hunk, spreading it liberally with butter. He took out a second, did the same, and held it out to the boy.

‘Go on, eat up,’ he said. ‘You can’t work on ‘til the small hours on just the one supper: that’s Big Folks’s folly. If you want to join me for a proper sit-down woth all the trimmings, you go right on ahead. You didn't make any tomfool bargains.'

Barli took the bread and bit into it, his growling stomach refusing to let him resist on principle. He munched eagerly, tasting the clean, fresh, yeast lightness of Tim’s good dough, and the salty sweetness of the butter, and for a moment he didn’t care who else was hungry or tired. He had worked hard today, and his whole body could feel it. He deserved something to eat before he went to his bed. They all did.

Old Tim had set down his plate, but he didn’t resume his chair. Instead he took his knife and cut one of the pieces of ham right up the middle. He sliced one half into thirds, and ate them one by one, leaving the other half whole. With his fork he scattered a few peas over the plate as if they had rolled there. Then he took a very noticeable spoonful of the mashed potatoes, and he ate it. The gravy pooled atop the rest of the mound began to trickle into the bare place. Tim considered, head tilted to one side. Then he broke the tip off the hunk of bread and ate that, too, positioning the rest like a painter putting the final touch on a portrait. He crossed the room to put his used cutlery next to the dishpan, and he brought a fresh knife and spoon to lay beside the untouched fork at the table. Then he nodded in satisfaction.

‘I’m off,’ he said abruptly, reaching for his cloak and wrapping it warmly around his shoulders. ‘Guess my eyes was bigger than my stomach. You get off to bed, Master Barli, and don’t you fret no more ‘bout other people’s choices. On your way out, stop and tell that fool Ranger that he ought to change his water. And he ought to wash up my dishes, too, before he goes back to it. Gravy left too long sticks like glue.’

Then he opened the heavy back door and strode out into the night. Barli watched him go, bewildered. He wanted to run after Tim and scold him for selfishness. Tim always washed his own dishes, even when Mam was in the kitchen and offered to do them for him. Why was he picking at the poor strange man who’d been working hard all evening for no better reward than the shreds off chicken bones and a few swallows of stone-cold soup? But the hobbit was gone and the door shut fast, and Barli’s toes were curling from the chilly draft that had come in through the door.

Then he looked at the plate again, with its heap of potatoes still faintly steaming, and the good thick pieces of meat, and the bread that the hobbit hadn’t even bitten into, though he’d torn a piece away, and he understood. Old Tim’s eyes weren’t bigger than his stomach: he’d taken that second helping on purpose, and left it almost untouched but unfit for tomorrow’s patrons. Tailings.

la

Barli slept deeply, untroubled by dreams or the stirrings of his conscience. He had delivered Tim’s message, and had watched the Ranger go back into the kitchen with the bucket of water to be changed. Then he had hurried off to his bed, much comforted. When he heard the first morning sounds of his father starting up the upstairs stove to heat more wash-water, he got out of bed. Da would still be in a good mood today, and Barli knew what he was going to do. He was going to ask his father, who had praised him for his hard work, for a favour. He would explain about the story if he had to, but he hoped he wouldn’t. Da wouldn’t understand that.

When he heard his father coming down the stairs, Barli was dressed and waiting. He came out into the corridor with a sunny smile on his face, though the sun was only a faint grey suggestion somewhere beyond the town walls on another grey November morning. ‘Morning, Da!’ he said happily.

His father looked at him and grunted acknowledgment. ‘Good boy: up before I call,’ he said with his usual taciturn approval. ‘Go and make the bed in Number Three. That long-legged good-for-nothing’s off already, so we can get an early start on the chores.’

Barli frowned, not sure he had heard his father correctly. But there had been no other good-for-nothing at The Pony last night. ‘The Ranger? He’s gone?’

‘Long gone,’ said Da dismissively. ‘Waiting when I got up, he was, wanting the front door unlocked so he could be on his way. Went striding off into the gloom, proud as you please, as if he weren’t a beggar at all. Strange sort, Rangers. Never trust a vagrant.’

‘But…’ Barli was flabbergasted. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. He was supposed to talk Da into letting him bring the man a good hot bowl of porridge, which Old Tim was probably already starting in the kitchen. And then he was supposed to hear the rest of the story: how The Eagle had got Théoden safely down the mountain, and what the King had said when he got his son back, and what happened to the mare who could understand what a man was asking her even if she didn’t know the words. Now he would never know what happened.

‘I told you: they’re queer. Not right in the head,’ Da said darkly. ‘Have to be half-mad, don’t they? Living wild this time of the year. My advice to you, son? If one of ‘em ever comes begging when you’re the landlord, turn him out to freeze!’

Then he sneezed noisily into his hand and went stumping off towards the kitchen, wiping it on his seat.

Still half disbelieving, Barli ran around the corner to where the door of Number Three stood ajar. He looked in. It was one of the cheapest rooms: small and cramped, with two narrow little beds that often slept a pair of travellers who didn’t even know one another but who could each afford only half the rate. It didn’t have a proper fireplace, but only a little grate. It was cold as the grave, too, and the room wasn’t much better. Da hadn’t troubled to lay a fire: not for a guest who couldn’t pay.

The curtain was pulled back from the window, and a little light filtered in. It was enough for Barli to see that neither bed had been slept in. They were made up just as Meadowlark had left them three days ago. She had a particular way of folding the coverlet down invitingly beneath the pillow. Puzzled, he stepped into the room. On the floor between the two beds was one of the brown wool mats that his mother had been so proud to buy this summer to cosy up the smaller rooms a bit. They hadn’t been very dear at all, which is how she’d managed to talk Da into it. Meadowlark said knowingly that Mam hadn’t talked Da into anything, but Barli didn’t see what she meant by that.

The mat was meant to be flat on the floor, but this one had been rolled up into a fat sausage near the head of the beds. It was squashed down in the middle but plump on each end, as if something heavy and more or less egg-shaped had rested there. The Ranger-stranger had slept here after all, but down on the floor instead of in one of the beds. Remembering what he had said about travelling folks appreciating clean sheets, Barli had to admit that was probably wise. Odd rooms on the first floor were changed every other Tuesday, and this was the off-week. There had been at least half a dozen guests through here since the last change of bedding.

He bent down to shake out the mat, and Barli felt a hollow hurt in his chest. He had thought the tall man and he had been getting on well, despite everything else. He had expected him to want to say goodbye. To wait to say goodbye. And he had made so much last night of keeping his word even when it wasn’t easy. Wasn’t an unfinished story another kind of broken promise?

Perhaps Da was right. Perhaps you couldn’t trust a Ranger.