Merry and Pippin had already drained more than their fair share of ales by the time the darkness outside the foggy pub windows alerted them that their spy was late.
Ring Around the Merry Prelude Part 3/5
“A Conspiracy Formed”
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April, 3018, Third Age
(Frodo is 49, Samwise is 38, Merry is 36, Pippin is 28)
Merry and Pippin had already drained more than their fair share of ales by the time the darkness outside the foggy pub windows alerted them that their spy was late.
“Perhaps he went to the Ivy Bush by mistake,” offered Pippin Took bleakly as he stared into the empty depths of his third tankard.
“No, Pip,” answered Merry. “I made our meeting place quite plain. Besides, his gaffer holds court at the Ivy Bush, and he knows full well the sharp words about “His place” the Gaffer would spurt out if he found out his son was spying upon his employer. For that reason alone the Green Dragon was the only option.”
Unconvinced, Pip gave an absent nod. He noticed Merry’s foot tapping anxiously on the sticky pub floor and his repeated attempts to draw a sip of ale from his long-drained mug. Pip smiled inwardly. It was these little moments he treasured in his older cousin—moments where Merry’s thick veneer of irrepressible self-confidence was momentarily drawn back to reveal a layer of vulnerability that only Pippin could see.
Pippin stared down at the concentric tankard-sized circles of moisture on the tabletop, rubbing several of them out with a finger before turning his eyes back to their favorite target. Merry. Merry was much more than a cousin to Pippin. The future Thain was surrounded by a constellation of older sisters, but had no brothers. Merry was the closest thing to a brother Pippin would ever have.
Perhaps the root of Pippin’s adulation of his older cousin could be found in the spread of their ages. Those eight years that separated Merry’s birth from his own seemed an eternity to the small lad. Those years meant that Merry was always destined to be bigger, stronger, smarter, faster than his younger cousin. Pippin noted with awe how Merry was always the chosen leader of any group of same-age hobbit lads. Yet Merry had always made himself accessible to the pint-sized tag-a-long. Even when in the company of a herd of swaggering tweens, Merry never turned his cousin aside. Merry had lavished attention upon Pip as a child, not the girly pinching of cheeks and straightening of collars, but //lad// things. Merry had taken Pip traipsing through the woods, showed him the hidden paths only known by Merry and shared with no one else. Merry had taught Pippin to skip rocks over clear pools, how to raid crops in the glare of broad daylight, and how to snatch unsuspecting pies cooling vulnerable and tantalizing upon open window sills.
Pippin’s parents initially believed that the future Master of Buckland might have a thing or two to teach the sapling Thain; though they immediately came to question the quality of those lessons young Master Meriadoc had to teach. Pippin, however, could not have been a quicker study. By the age of eight, Pippin was gaining a reputation equal to that of his mentor. Merry had been compelled to teach Pippin a follow-up lesson – how to escape righteous punishments.
Then the change had come. The Master of Buckland had fallen ill, and Merry had seen the shadow of future responsibility upon him. Mischievous Merry became mature Merry. The change was so evident that Pippin’s parents swept away their reservations about Merry; Merry’s lessons were suddenly ideal ones for a future Thain to take to heart. Their nephew was invited to come to Tookland for extended stays to tutor the young lad in letters, numbers, and, most importantly, responsibility. Merry went from coaching Pippin on how to escape punishments to doling them out himself. As with all matters that involved the future of the Shire, Merry took his role as Pippin’s teacher and mentor very seriously. Merry had been determined to shape the squirmy, flitty lad into a hobbit well prepared to come into his titular inheritance when the time came. And Pippin loved his Merry all the more for it.
Pippin often had to remind himself that Merry was only three years deep into his majority. To Pippin, Merry had carried the mien of authority ever since he could remember.
Pippin vividly remembered Merry’s coming of age party. Merry’s parents had spared no expense for their handsome son, the future Master of Buckland. Merry had never looked so magnificent as as he did while standing in front of the throng of well-wishers, delivering a speech that elicited uproarious laughter and uproarious cheers in equal measure. The glow of ale lit his strong features, and Pippin thought him a lovely creature. Pippin had raced to the side of the podium to congratulate his cousin, only to be shunted to the side by a knot of giggling hobbit lasses vying for the opportunity for a word, a kiss on the hand, perhaps more from the most eligible bachelor in Buckland. Fair in form and face they were, but Merry broke through them as if they were cloying mist, and embraced Pippin in a violent hug.
“Pip!” he’d said. “Let’s escape all this madness for a bit, Cousin, just you and I!”
And they’d snuck off along their “secret” trail, plopping down under a tall willow on the shore of the sparkling Brandywine to reminisce until dawn. As they sat in perfect happiness, Pippin asked the question he’d been dying to ask for years.
“Why have you been so good to me, Merry? I must have driven you mad as a child, though you never seemed to mind.”
Pip remembered the slow smile that had spread across Merry’s beautiful face as he gathered the right words.
“I have a debt to pay, Pippin, to my older cousin who did the same for me.” Merry then had set his wine glass down upon the long damp grass and wrapped his arm around Pippin’s shoulders. “And because, dear Pip, I love you!”
Of course, it was to Frodo that Merry had referred. Frodo who Merry had looked up to the same way that Pippin had looked up to Merry. Frodo, for whose sake he and Merry had found themselves waiting at the Green Dragon this night. Frodo, whose recent strange behavior and tendency to keep to himself had alarmed his cousins to no end.
Pippin had noticed the change in his dear cousin. If Merry had been like a brother to Pippin as a child, then Frodo had played the role of Uncle. Pippin had seen the excitement in Merry’s eyes whenever it was mentioned that cousin Frodo was coming to visit, an excitement that did not diminish with age. By the time Pippin had hit his early teens, Merry had been on his personal quest to mold him into Thain material. Frodo had no such ambitions, and treated the teen like a teen. He’d offered Pippin guidance untainted by judgment, and untrammeled companionship. Pippin could ask Frodo about anything, and often did. Sometimes it seemed to Pippin that Frodo was the only adult hobbit who was not try to transform him into anything. Frodo was a quiet, soothing presence with whom the young heir could feel completely at ease.
As Pippin grew into young adulthold, he and Merry became Frodo’s constant companions, tramping all over the Shire with him, telling stories under the stars, reminiscing over streaming cups of tea, laughing over frothing mugs of ale. Frodo was a serious chap, but not //too// serious. Perhaps //peaceful// was a better term. But Frodo’s serenity had begun to crack of late. Pippin saw that his elder cousin held his shoulders as if they carried a great weight, and often stared into the flames of his hearth as if they held some nameless threat. He’d stopped confiding in Pippin when they were alone together, and the clear laughter that had been Frodo’s trademark when sharing ales and tales at the pub seemed a distant memory.
“Something is up, Pip,” Merry had said. “There is something dark and serious hanging over Frodo’s head, Pippin! And if he won’t tell us himself, it’s up to us to find out on our own and help him however we might.”
“Frodo’s a hard nut to crack,” Pippin had replied sorrowfully. “But what do you have in mind?”
“Who better to crack a nut,” Merry had answered, “than a gardener.”
It was Merry who had approached the reluctant gardener for this “secret” assignment. It had taken some doing, as Sam was as honest a fellow as one could hope to meet, but Merry had a way with words. He’d convinced Sam that his master might very well be in grave danger, and only Sam stood between his Mr. Frodo and some unspeakable doom.
At first the information came slow, hints here and there about dark events far outside the Shire boundaries. But Sam eventually found his feet as a spy and was, it turned out, a very capable one. Fredgar Bolger, their longtime friend, had been brought into the conspiracy within a week for his full-time residence in Hobbiton and for his ability to ask the right kinds of questions to supplement Sam’s information in a non-suspicious way. And only a month into their conspiracy, the three hobbits knew that Frodo’s problem was somehow connected with Bilbo’s adventures, and more particularly, with the magic ring that never left Frodo’s pocket.
“Have you ever looked at the ring up close, Pippin?”
Pippin jerked his head up from his palms. He had been so lost in thought that the sound of Merry’s voice had startled him.
“No, Merry, not up close,” answered Pippin in a daze.
“I have,” said Merry out of the blue. “I’ve held it.”
“When?” blurted Pippin incredulously? “How?”
“A few months ago when we visited Bag End. While Frodo and you went off to fetch the rest of your walking clothes, I noticed Frodo’s weskit draped over a chair. I couldn’t resist. I took it out for just a matter of seconds.”
“Did you turn invisible?” asked Pippin
“I’m no fool, Pip—I didn’t dare wear the thing! But I did hold it. Up close, Pip, it was so very perfect, perhaps the smoothest most flawless piece of jewelry I’ve ever set eyes upon. It felt cold and heavy in my hand, and seemed to reflect lights that were not present in the room.”
A faraway look entered Merry’s eyes that Pippin had never seen before. Merry stared at his unadorned hand with a longing that Pippin did not quite understand.
“It seemed such a small thing back then, Pip. Such a small thing, but so lovely a thing. It really is a preci---”
“That was, of course, before you knew where it came from,” interrupted Pippin who had suddenly become uncomfortable.
Merry tore his eyes from his own hand and drew them back to his cousin.
“Yes, of course,” answered Merry with a discomfited smile. “Before I knew.” Merry took another abortive sip from his empty mug before huffing impatiently. “Where IS that Sam? We’ve been waiting ages!”
Silence descended between the two cousins as they both took to boring into the pub’s door with unblinking eyes.
Suddenly the door opened with crunch and in fell a stout red-faced hobbit looking very flustered and with a face beaded with perspiration.
“Sam!” Merry and Pippin said in tandem and louder than they’d intended.
Sam stumbled over their table and sat himself down, huffing and puffing hard.
“Sam, would you like an al----?”
“He’s leaving!” Sam spluttered out. “He’s leaving to take the Ring to the elves!” Sam paused to swallow a sloppy breath of air. “And I’m to go with him!”
“Very well then!” answered Merry. “Then it’s settled! We’ll go too!”
“But Merry,” offered Pippin. “What if Frodo does not wish for us to come?”
“Pippin,” said Merry. “He’ll have no choice! We won’t let him do this alone. It is too very important.”
“Important for who?” asked Pippin, responding to Sam’s befuddled expression.
“All of us, Pip.”
“Us?” questioned Sam.
“For all of us that care for Frodo,” replied Merry. “And perhaps for all the Shire as well.”
Merry turned his eyes back to Sam, a thoughtful expression cast upon his face.
“So Sam. Tell us exactly what you found out about this ring.”
TBC