Chapter 9. Suspect 

Things seemed to be getting worse, if it were even possible. Wholesale banishment, was clearly heard from the crowd of spectators in the babble that followed Rudigrim’s accusation. No less, someone else answered.

‘Let us not get ahead of ourselves,’ Erlingar said over the undercurrent of talk. ‘There’s quite enough on the plate as it is.’ He waited until the crowd quieted and added, ‘This Council went over that particular matter, regarding Tolly and the ruffians he aided, to our satisfaction before this convocation was called to order. We will not revisit it here. As things stand at present, there is enough evidence against the hobbit now to banish him, unless we are satisfied otherwise on hearing additional testimony, without reopening a case that has already been investigated and closed.’

Meadowsweet gave a sob, and Ferdi saw her break free from her hold on Pimpernel to lift a handkerchief to her face. 

Fortinbrand had withdrawn from the discussion at hand, for he had his hands full with a fully distraught Faramir, who was shuddering with silent sobs. ‘There, there, lad,’ he said, hugging the child close and rubbing his back with a large, gentle hand. ‘Steady on.’ And to Ferdi’s astonishment, the Querier added in an undertone, ‘Remember what we talked about.’

A tiny hope arose in him then, a stalk of spring green pushing through the soil into a wintry landscape, braving the killing frost. He could not believe that Farry would willingly take part in this, unless the lad believed he might do some good.

Or some adult had led him to believe that... some cynical part of him added. He shook his head to dismiss the thought.

‘You have something to add, Ferdibrand?’ Erlingar said.

‘Do you promise to speak all truth and only truth?’ Fortinbrand asked him.

‘I do,’ Ferdi said shortly, aware of the ironic looks from the other hobbits on trial. They all knew, as a result of the debacle of his near-banishment in the Woody End, of his relationship with Truth. He knew truth when he heard it spoken, knew a lie as it left the mouth of the speaker. Of course, that was no guarantee of his own truthfulness, he supposed. Louder, more emphatically, he said, ‘I do promise.’

‘What was the restitution agreed upon by Peregrin and Everard?’ Fortinbrand said.

Ferdi opened his mouth to reply, only to pause at the clear warning he could see in the Querier’s eye. Was the question a trap? How would he know? All he knew to do was to tell the absolute truth. He took a deep breath and answered. ‘Everard was to accompany my son Odovar to the pony market, to pay for the ponies he selected there; and he was to take on Tolly’s son...’

Erlingar’s hammer interrupted him, and when he turned a face full of inquiry to the table, the chief councillor said mildly, ‘Let Tolibold tell his own part.’

Obligingly, Fortinbrand turned to Tolly and repeated the formal question. ‘Tolibold, do you promise to speak all truth and only truth?’ For Tolly hadn’t exactly sworn to tell the truth when he’d been asked a few moments earlier, now, had he?

But, ‘I do,’ Tolly said clearly now, and swallowed hard. ‘I promise.’

‘What was the restitution promised you?’

Tolly gulped. ‘Ev’ard would take my son Gorbi under his instruction as an engineer’s apprentice, and Pippin would pay his way to the Lonely Mountain, to learn digging from the Dwarves.’ He swallowed before continuing, ‘and Pippin offered to discharge what was left of my debts, and Ev’ard to pay a part of them as well.’ He lifted his chin and said stubbornly, ‘I had been paying on them for some time already; they weren’t so great as they might have been.’

‘Ponies for Ferdibrand, and discharging Tolibold’s debt,’ Fortinbrand repeated, his hand still soothing Faramir’s back, his voice deadly calm.

‘And the lad who would learn to be an engineer,’ Rudigrim added.

‘Yes, there’s that as well,’ Fortinbrand confirmed. ‘Anything else?’

Ferdi and Tolly exchanged glances, perplexed. At last they turned to Fortinbrand and answered as one. ‘No.’ ‘Naught.’

‘There you have it,’ Fortinbrand said into the air. He turned his face to the table of councillors and added, finality in his tone, ‘I have no more questions.’

Erlingar stood up from his seat and raised his voice, speaking as he walked down the length of the councillors’ table to stand beside the hobbits on trial, waving a hand as if it were necessary to call the attention of those in the room to them. ‘So you see, my fellow Tooks,’ he said, his voice ringing through the large hall. ‘You have heard the evidence. The Thain called it “restitution” in the courtyard, but it was only a pittance... Everard Took paid a much higher proportion of what he owned, in comparison to the vast wealth of the Thain, of course, but the fact remains that he only paid for a pony or three, and agreed to take on an apprentice. And if this journey to the Lonely Mountain is ever to take place, well, that remains to be seen.’

Tolly, driven to desperation, leapt to his feet. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘That was not the way of it at all! You don’t understa –‘

Into the rising tumult of the crowd resulting from Erlingar’s summation and Tolly’s outburst, the sharp rapping of the hammer sounded, as Rudigrim had scooped up the hammer to restore order in Erlingar’s absence from the table.

‘Take them out!’ he shouted. ‘Guards! Escort them from the room. We will have a discussion – a civilised discussion – and the Tooks will render their decision.’

Hands jostled Ferdi from several sides, “helping” him so vigorously from his seat that he nearly tripped and ended sprawling on the floor, but somehow he managed to gain his feet, at least temporarily. The general confusion, a mixture of the babble of the spectators, the sounds of wild grief skirling above the conversations, Tolly’s continued protests mingled with a shout from Everard, rose around him, muddling his head.

He wasn’t quite sure how he came from there to here, this quiet room, sitting in a comfortable chair in a parlour, silent except for the ticking of a dwarf-made clock, the pop of a fire on the hearth, and an occasional cough from the Thain, the last one followed by a muttered protest. ‘I am well, Ev’ard. Don’t fuss.’

‘Ferdi? Are you with us?’ Tolly was bending over him.

‘Where else would I be, I ask you?’ he said irritably.

Tolly gave a sigh and sat down on the footstool where someone had evidently taken the care to prop up Ferdi’s feet. ‘Anywhere but here, I warrant.’

Ferdi looked around the room. The Thain stood, in defiance of Regi’s and Everard’s attempts to get him to sit himself down. He and Tolly made up the count: all four of the hobbits on trial were present, along with Reginard, who’d thrown in his lot with them.

The cheerful fire on the hearth, the cosied teapot and five cups, waiting in vain, the plate piled high with tea biscuits, were all aching reminders of what they were about to leave behind. He knew what was going on in the great room at that moment. The discussion was continuing, and when the last Took had had his or her say, Erlingar would tap his hammer and ask if anyone had anything to say in defence of the accused. Ferdi very much doubted that anything that might be said, with things having gone this far, would change the way the wind was blowing.

The Tooks had not locked them in, of course; there were no locks on the doors in the Great Smials. There was no need for locks here. The councillors could have perfect confidence that when they sent to fetch the accused back to hear their doom pronounced, they would find them in the same place they had put them.

He struggled to his feet, pushing away Tolly’s supporting hand, and went to Pippin. ‘Cousin,’ he said, ‘I – I don’t know what this is about.’ All the Tooks who had been directly involved in the trial that had taken place in the Woody End just before the turning of the year had expressed satisfaction and relief with the solution they had worked out there. What business was it of all these other Tooks?

‘We have made a mockery of justice, it appears,’ Pippin said calmly. ‘At least, I have, to all appearances.’

‘I don’t follow,’ Ferdi said, made aware that Tolly was now standing at his shoulder when that hobbit spoke.

‘Restitution,’ the escort said brokenly. ‘I – we –‘ He was breathing raggedly. ‘I have ruined us all, with my pride.’

Pippin, seeing Ferdi’s blank look, said, ‘By tradition.’ The words were heavy with irony.

‘By tradition?’ Ferdi prompted.

The Thain began again, ‘By tradition, as I admit to my chagrin...’ His eyes measured each hobbit in the room as he resumed his explanation. ‘Not all that long ago, all the hobbits gathered in this room lived through a trial in the Woody End.’ He waited to see each one's nod. ‘Merry reminded me then that restitution in the case of a false accusation encompasses half of the accuser’s worldly goods and holdings, to be rendered to the accused. Liquidated, if necessary, and turned into money, or simply transferred as is to the ownership of the injured party.’

‘Such a harsh penalty has made false accusations rare indeed in the history of the Tookland,’ Regi said.

‘And I should have heeded his counsel,’ Pippin said, ‘even forced upon you, Tolly and Ferdi,’ and irony mixed with regret shone from his eyes, for he had some years earlier declared his reluctance to force any other to his will, ‘all unwilling though you might be, the compensation you both were due.’ 

‘But I didn’t need your money,’ Ferdi said in outrage. ‘I –‘

‘The Tooks would hardly count the pledge of loyalty on Pippin’s part that you accepted, instead, to be equal to half his wealth,’ Regi countered, his reasonable tone suited to a quiet discussion while hammering out policy in the Thain’s study, perhaps, but seeming out of place in the here and now.

‘Well they ought to!’ Ferdi said hotly. ‘It is worth more to me, in fact!’

‘Why, “a loyal Took” is a byword the length and breadth of the Shire,’ Everard put in. ‘Perhaps they would take such a thing for granted, and see Pippin as escaping or avoiding the consequences of his actions.’ He sighed. ‘As it stands in my case, the cost of a few ponies, and training Gorbi, does not constitute half of my holdings, either.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Even though we all had the best of intentions, I fear the Tooks will see me, too, as avoiding the penalty I owe.’

‘And so the original penalty stands,’ Pippin said quietly. ‘Banishment. At the very least, for Ev’ard here, and myself.’

‘The fault was ours to begin with,’ Ferdi argued stubbornly. ‘We hid the disappearance of your son from you, from Diamond, from the Tooks... in a sense, we really were guilty of child-stealing as charged...’

‘And the Tooks may still see it that way,’ Pippin said, his tone heavy with sorrow. ‘I’m sorry, Ferdi. Tolly.’

Tolly pushed past Ferdi and fell to his knees before the Thain, covering his face in his grief. ‘The fault was mine!’ he sobbed. ‘I let those Men go – they were hardly ruffians, but I let them go! And then, I deceived the Tooks, hid the disappearance of your son... but worst of all...’

‘Tolly,’ Pippin said, putting his hands on Tolly’s shoulders to try and urge him to stand.

‘No,’ Tolly said raggedly. ‘Don’t you see? It was my pride, my foolish pride –‘

‘And mine,’ Ferdi broke in, for all the good it did to say the words, which was none at all, really. ‘You must let me have my part, old friend.’ He took a shaking breath and continued, though Tolly's hands remained over his face, and he did not turn to hear what Ferdi had to say to him. ‘Dearest of cousins, I quite insist.’ He closed his eyes, took another breath, opened them again, stared at the escort a moment longer, then took his eyes from Tolly, to meet Pippin's gaze. ‘I was mistaken to think of you giving me your money, the restitution that Merry originally proposed, there in the Woody End, as “Thain’s charity” – and now we all must pay the price of my error.’

‘And the Tooks are all too likely to banish us all, such a muckle we’ve made of things,’ Regi said. All but Tolly looked at him in astonishment. ‘I have thrown in my lot with you, remember,’ he said wryly. ‘I stand – or fall – with the Thain.’

‘I won’t be Thain for much longer,’ Pippin said absently.

‘No matter,’ Regi said. ‘You’ll always be Thain, so far as I’m concerned.’

‘To the end of my days,’ Pippin said, quoting from the oath he’d taken at his confirmation. He shook his head. ‘Or something to that effect, anyway.’ He looked down at Tolly again, took that hobbit by the arms, and hauled upward. ‘Get up.’

Resisting the pull might well cause harm to the Thain, as Tolly knew all too well, considering the precarious state of Pippin’s health. Ferdi breathed a sigh of relief to see Tolly give in to the pull, lowering his hands from his face, wet with tears, and allowing Pippin to help him stand to his feet again.

Pippin took the desolate escort into an embrace, holding him tightly. ‘And so we are to be banished, all together,’ he said softly. The others in the room nodded, and he looked from face to face, still speaking mostly to Tolly, it seemed, but including every one of them in his words as well. ‘We will go to the Southlands, and our families with us,’ he said, and swallowed as if there were a lump in his throat.

Ferdi raised his hand to rub at his eyes, to find wetness there. Looking around, he saw tears on every face as they anticipated the inevitable. But Pippin was not finished with what he had to say.

‘I know of a fair, green country where we will be welcome,’ he said. ‘Honoured guests,’ he went on, ‘and the people there will be glad to call us their own. A land nearly so green and lovely as the Shire herself, as achingly beautiful as the Green Hills that we love, with high rolling hills and forests of graceful trees and tumbling streams and waterfalls. It is a place,’ he continued, ‘where I upon a time found hope, and healing, and unlooked-for joy after all my ills.’

He turned his head aside to cough, and Ferdi wondered if he might find healing there again, in that southern country, but there was evidently more to be said. ‘Ithilien, that land is called,’ Pippin said. ‘And the land is ruled by a Prince who is kind, just and wise – I named my son for him. Faramir.’

‘Ithilien,’ someone echoed, Ferdi wasn’t quite sure who. It might even have been himself, for his lips had moved, testing the word, tasting it, though he hadn't thought he'd spoken aloud. The name sounded foreign to his ears, and yet it resembled the whisper of leaves in response to a caressing breeze.

‘We can make a home there,’ Pippin said. ‘A new settlement of hobbitry. Much like Marcho and Blanco, as they set out to find a new home – a new beginning that one day became the Shire.’ He patted Tolly’s back. ‘All is not lost, cousin. When one life ends, another is just beginning...’

Ferdi was moved to step forward, to encompass both cousins in his arms. He was aware of Everard and Regi doing the same, felt arms encircle his shoulders, as the five soon-to-be exiles huddled closely together, comforting one another.

A great shout rang in the air, strong enough to vibrate the closed door on its hinges and causing them to break apart once more. Aye!

Pippin looked at each of them in turn, and then he nodded to himself. He tried to speak, but his voice failed him. He cleared his throat and said hoarsely, ‘The Tooks have come to agreement.’ 

***