Aftermath

Chapter 25. Aftermath

Years afterwards, Estella's memories of her earliest hours after being taken in by the back-country Tooks remained misty and fragmented, and many of them, she suspected, she had pieced together from hearing others' accounts at a later date. Not long after the door had closed behind Ferdi and Harley, it slammed open again with a bang that briefly startled Estella out of the haze that surrounded her, and she heard Mum raise her voice to scold, sounding remarkably like Grandmama Bolger at her most indignant.

Grand... she murmured.

'Steady, laddie-mine,' Mum soothed, stroking Estella's hair back from her forehead. 'All is well.'

'I know,' Estella said dreamily.

'They're gone!' a young voice was shouting. 'Off at a gallop! Da and the Fox...'

'But they left the lad here?' an older young voice said, not quite as loud.

'They left the lad,' Mum confirmed. 'And use your indoor voice, Hardy! A ruffian halfway to the Brandywine River can probably hear you blathering!'

And then the hobbit mum began to issue a stream of orders, and a mad scramble erupted, or so it sounded to Estella, whose eyes had closed again as if of their own mind. Feet, she thought, but they're hobbit feet, not Men. And... but she was unable to name all the other accompanying sounds, clinking and clanking and softer sounds, as of fabric or perhaps leather being taken down from hooks, and was that the lid of a trunk opening and, after a few moments, banging shut again? 

Occasional bursts of speech rang out, sounding like statements or questions. Most of the questions were answered by Mum, who still sat on the bed beside Estella. But all the words ran together in a blur. Is it called a blur when you hear it, or does one only see a blur? Estella wondered idly.

And then a gentle hand was lifting one of Estella's eyelids, confirming that one does, indeed, see a blur (whether one might also hear a blur remained a matter of debate). And then Mum said, 'Herry, put down that wax and bowstring and help me with the lad! I ought to have realised how ill he is, but my mind has been rather preoccupied with the Fox up to this moment...'

'I'm here, Mum.' Estella thought it might be the tween who'd helped her earlier.

'Help me sit him up,' Mum said. 'We'll prop the pillows at his back. Build up the fire and swing the soup kettle over it to warm. I'm going to try to get some more water into him, and then broth...'

Estella seemed to be floating away on a cloud... that suddenly dissolved as she felt her earlobe squeezed in a painful pinch. 'Ow!' she protested, half-opening her eyes to see Mum's face, quite close, and smiling at her.

'That's better, lad,' Mum said. 'Now, I want you to drink more of this good water from our spring. Sweet and fresh, it is, and icy cold when it issues from the rocks on the hillside... Slowly, now. Plenty more where this come from...' Estella drank as ordered, though her eyelids drifted closed again. The water was sweet and refreshing, somehow anchoring her to the earth so that she no longer had the sensation of floating away on a breeze. But she was so weary! Why would they not let her sleep?

The young voice suddenly spoke close at hand, jarring Estella awake again. 'They left the lad here?' His voice was still loud, but not as loud as before. Perhaps he was using his "indoor voice" now.

'O aye,' Mum answered, her voice properly quiet and soothing. 'The Fox left his nephew here... from a family of Tooks in the Woody End, I think he said.'

'There are Tooks in the Woody End?' the young voice said in wonder.

'There may be,' Mum amended cautiously. 'But keep your voice down, Hardy! And no more talk about Tooks who might be outside of the Tookland! For should a passing ruffian hear you, such talk would put them in danger!'

'There are no ruffians inside the borders!' Hardy said confidently but, perhaps, foolishly.

'Hush, lad, and none of your nonsense now. Go and pick up the bowstrings Herry was waxing, and apply the wax as your da showed you.' She raised her voice. 'And Gerry! Check his work when he's done!'

'Aye, Mum!' Estella thought the answer might have come from the other tween. Twin tweens, she thought absurdly. Tween twins. Any road, the both of them are easy on the eyes... They may break a few hearts when they're older...

But the owner of the young voice lingered. 'What's his name, Mum? And how old is he?'

'His name's Twig,' Mum answered. 'And he's about the same age as you, I think. Eighteen? Nineteen, perhaps? Not a tween yet, for he obviously hasn't started growing into his full Tookishness. And now, Hardy – those bowstrings!'

Estella understood, somehow, that "full Tookishness" was a reference to Tooks being taller, on average, than the typical common hobbit. For her own part, Estella had chafed at her own lack of height – for at her age, any further growth spurt was improbable and probably impossible – and her delicate bone structure. What a trial it was to be the shortest one in her family! Her mother, a Took, had tried to comfort her with the notion that she was the image of her Tookish great-great-grandmama, small and slight, fair and graceful, such that whispers of "faerie blood" followed in her wake. It had always puzzled her – how could Tooks be both taller and fairer than average hobbits and shorter and fairer due to the faerie blood coursing through their veins?

Still, when Freddy had taunted her for being so short in their younger days, the idea that she was part faerie had provided a shield of sorts against the thoughtless darts her brother had tossed in her direction.

And, it seemed, Estella's "faerie blood" was providing another sort of protection in these latter days... for it had made her small and slight enough to pass for a lad... a teen, even... someone who'd hardly draw a second glance from a passing ruffian. If there were any, that is, wandering about inside the borders of the Tookland.

After a mug of broth had followed the mug of water, Estella was feeling better, and she was more alert. She was able to keep her eyes open now, and she watched with some astonishment the bustle of the young hobbits around the main room of the smial. Preparations, she thought. Blankets rolled tight and tied, food stuffed in sacks, weapons taken down from hooks on the wall and inspected and serviced... Occasionally one of the youth would look her way, catch her eye, and smile or wink, a sort of welcome when there seemed to be no time for a proper welcome.

Golden late-afternoon sunlight was streaming through the west-facing window, and Estella's thoughts turned to Ferdi. She swallowed hard, remembering Mum's warnings and her own fears for the resolute hobbit.

And then the door slammed open again, but Mum delivered no rebuke, for it was her husband Harley. 'The Muster's been sounded!' he said. 'We must march to the bounds at our best speed!'

He surveyed the room and the staring youth, who'd frozen upon his entrance, and nodded. 'Good,' he said. 'You've saved us a cartload of time!'

'From what the Fox said,' Mum answered, 'little as it was, I figured as much.'

'Right!' Harley said. 'All you tweens, take up your packs and bows!'

'But Da!' Hardy, evidently the youngest of the bunch, protested. 'I can shoot as well as any of my brothers!'

'Nae, lad,' Harley said, crossing the room to lay his hands on the youngster's shoulders and look down into his son's earnest face. 'Tweens only. I need you to stay here and watch o'er your mum.'

'But she can shoot as well as any of us!' Hardy said.

'She can,' Harley answered. 'But if you're attacked in force, two bows are always better than one. And you haven't started your tween growth yet; your legs are still too short to keep up with us.'

'But—!' Hardy protested, tears in his eyes, and then all the resistance went out of him. He stood straighter and saluted in the Tookish manner, touching his nocking fingers to his brow. 'Aye sir!' he said smartly. 'Have no worries about the missus and childer!'

...by which he meant Mum and herself, Estella thought, and despite the seriousness of the situation, she couldn't help smiling at being called one of the "childer" of this stalwart family.

Harliburt moved to Estella's side and crouched down to address her. 'I bring you greetings from your uncle, Twig,' he said.

'He's...?' Estella said, almost afraid to ask.

'Still i' the world, stubborn as the hobbit is,' Harley said. 'And the healers there at the Smials have tied him to a bed with extra windings of rope, or so the Talk says...'

'Why didn't I think o' that?' Mum said. 'No matter! I will, the next time!'

Harley smiled at his wife and rose from his crouch to bend over Mum and administer a lingering kiss. 'Be safe,' he told her when the kiss ended. 'You and the lads.'

'And you and the lads,' she answered in kind, 'Go with grace.'

Estella saw the archer swallow hard, and then Harley nodded, turned away, scooped up the pack waiting by the door, and walked out of the smial, followed by a line of tweens.

After a long pause, Mum cleared her throat and said, 'Close the door, Hardy.'

'Yes'm,' said the youngest Took, and complied, but not with his usual bang. Instead, he closed the door softly, slowly, with the barest snick of the latch at the end.

*** 

Mum and Hardy moved the bed that had recently held Ferdibrand back into the bedroom where it usually resided. The little smial had three bedrooms: one for the parents, and two holding four hobbits each, meaning the seven tweens and one teen belonging to the family. 'We'll leave Twig's bed here by the fire for a day or two, until the lad is himself again,' Mum told Hardy.

'Twig's bed!' Hardy said. 'Then where is Gerry supposed to sleep?'

'Well Gerry's not here right now, so I don't think he'll mind,' Mum answered. (Nonetheless, Estella made a private resolve to follow healer's orders to the letter, eat and drink all she was given, and make the rapidest recovery in the history of the Shire so that Gerry would have his bed back in good time.) 

'Any road,' Mum added, 'the bedrooms are full up, they are! So what I'm thinkin' is, when Twig is better, we'll make up a pallet by the kitchen fire. Twig can sleep by night on the hearth before the banked fire and have a little warmth e'en though he's sleeping on the floor, and by day he can roll up his blankets and set them aside, out o' the way, until bedtime comes rollin' round once more.'

'That sounds right grand,' Estella said. 'Why, imagine it! A pallet on the floor before the hearth! For in the Wood, as I'm sure you know, we sleep upon stacks of pine boughs or ferns, and we almost never light a fire, for we'd only have to put it out again in the morning!'

Hardy seemed startled, as if he'd never before thought about life anywhere else but in a little smial dug into one of the great Green Hills of the Tookland. But Mum smiled at Estella and tweaked her nose. 'That's the spirit, lad,' she said. 'Always be ready to try something new, for ye never know what ye'll discover!'

Whether it was due to Mum's skill as a healer or Estella's determination, the latter was on her feet the next day. She helped the others carry Gerry's bed back to its proper place, and then she dove into the details of daily living. Thanks to her fortnight with the forest Bolgers, she was already a competent worker when it came to farm chores in the Green Hill country. She could milk goats, skin rabbits (though she found it difficult to eat when rabbit was on the menu, and Mum did not scold her for it but offered bread and cheese to her instead), build and bank a fire, and chop wood with the best of them.

From Chrysanthemum, she also began to learn about herb-gathering – though they never went far from the smial, not with the emergency happening at the border – and what to do with the medicinal plants they gathered, whether tying them in bunches to dry them or making up decoctions or teas or tinctures or creams or poultices or other preparations. She enjoyed sitting around the well-scrubbed table by the kitchen fire after a day of chores and gathering, all of them working together at a task. Sometimes they'd talk, and sometimes they'd sing, and sometimes they'd work in silence, all of them thinking of the Mustered hobbits waiting at the border; and Estella was also haunted by the idea of the gathered, hopeless hobbits awaiting their doom in Bywater, though she said nothing to the others. 

'May grace go with them,' Mum would murmur, and the two lads would bow their heads, wink away tears, and answer in a whisper. 'O aye.'

*** 

About ten days after the archers had departed, Mum stood up from the chair where she was mending at sounds in the yard, voices and shouts, farewells and halloos. 'They're back!' she said, hope and dread mingled in her tone. She hurried to the door and threw it open (though not with a bang, of course). 'Darlings, dears, and loves!' she cried. 'Well come! You're all here!'

Hardy and Twig jumped up from the hearth, where they'd sketched a game board to play at "Kings" with pebbles and sticks for pieces.

'O' course we're all here!' Harley said with a laugh, seizing Mum in his arms right there in the doorway and engaging in a lengthy kiss.

He released her but kept a steadying hand on her arm as Mum swayed and put a hand to her head. 'O but you always leave me breathless when you do that...' she mock-scolded.

'I know!' he laughed, and added, 'All's well!'

'All's well?' Mum echoed, staring into her husband's eyes.

In answer, Harley put his hands under her arms and whirled Mum around in circles until she was laughing and gasping in protest, whilst the lads followed their da in from the yard and gathered around their parents, raising a cheer.

When at last he put her down again, Harley said, 'All's well, I tell you! Not a single casualty – at least amongst the hobbits of the Muster!'

'O!' Mum gasped, her hand at her throat. 'O but that's the finest news a hobbit's ever told me...'

Harley put his arm around her waist and turned to Estella, still standing by the hearth, watching the joyous homecoming. 'Come here, lad,' he said, beckoning, and when Estella crossed the room to them, he gave her a brief hug, just as he had given to Hardy a moment before, and said, 'I've a message for you fro' your uncle!'

'My uncle!' Estella exclaimed.

'O aye,' Harley said. 'He's in fine fettle, he is.' He turned his head towards Mum and explained, 'The Muster marched to the Great Smials before we were dismissed to our homes, and so I lingered there just long enough to look in on the Fox...'

'Did you?' Mum said coolly. 'And so you found him still in the world, I take it, despite all the foolish risks that hobbit insists on taking!'

'Naught of the fool in that hobbit!' Harley disagreed.

'I beg to differ,' his wife said with dignity, raising her chin in the air. 'So did he march with the Muster?'

Harley laughed. 'You think he'd do that?' he asked, his tone incredulous.

'I wouldn't put it past him, not at all,' Mum said grimly.

With a broad grin, Harley said, 'Nae, but he's been tied to a bed these past ten days... When he began wheedling to get up after only a few days, Healer Woodruff, that harridan, told him she meant to keep him i' the bed a week, and when he protested a week, she made it two!'

Mum laughed and pushed at Harley. 'Don't you dare call that fine healer a "harridan"!' she scolded.

'Well she is when it comes to draughts and keeping Tooks in bed,' Harley countered.

'Call her a vixen, then ­– it means much the same thing, but in this case, I'd say the Fox has met his match!'

'Very well, a vixen,' Harley conceded. 'O but you ought to have seen it, my love! It was glorious!'

'What, keepin' the Fox in his bed?' Mum asked.

'Nae!' Harley said. 'The battle! Though it was more of a rout.' He gestured to the lads to gather round, then said, 'We went to ground well in front of the traps, you see.'

'Before the traps!' Mum said in dismay. 'Ye didn't have the traps to protect you?'

'Nae,' Harley repeated, 'for you see, the Thain aimed to protect the hobbits of the Outer Shire from the ruffians' dastardly intentions, e'en though the Shire-folk wouldn't listen to him in the first place and so landed themselves in this muckle of a mess!'

'And so he aimed to protect them and not you?' Mum demanded. 'What sort of Thain is he, then?'

'Thain of all the Shire,' Harley said quietly. 'As he was always meant to be.'

'I don't...' Mum said, and Estella knew exactly what she'd meant to say, for she didn't understand herself.

'The ruffians' plan, as our Captain explained to us,' Harley said, 'was to march the hobbits of Bywater and Hobbiton and Overhill before them, to absorb the arrows of the Tooks and spring our traps, to be hauled into the air by our snares and to fall to their deaths in our pits...' He dropped his voice and said grimly, 'And they would have left them there, had they been able to overrun us, to bleed and starve and thirst until they died...'

This was not news to those who had just returned from the Muster, but the three who had guarded the home front stood aghast.

'We could not let them be marched to their doom!' Harley said, 'And so Thain Paladin, he told the Captains and Seconds to arrange a good portion of our forces beyond the start of no-Man's land.'

'But wouldn't they trample you underfoot and give your positions away to the Men following them?' Mum asked. 'Or...' her eyes widened with horror, and she gulped. 'Or did ye have to shoot them? The hobbits?'

'There was the matter of a rumour,' Harley said gently, squeezing his wife reassuringly and smiling into her upturned face. 'The Mistress organised the spreading of a rumour amongst the folk living in the Outlands – as she has many times since this whole miserable situation began – and it went something like this...' And he began to sing, a simple child's tune, quite familiar to Estella,

When the Tooks give a shout,
Throw yourself to the ground,
Lest their arrows hit you,
Not the Men all around.

And he grinned. 'And so, when the Thain – who'd climbed up a tree to watch the assault, imagine it, at his age! – gave the signal, his messenger blew a great blast on the horn, and the entire Muster shouted! And those marching hobbits threw themselves to the earth as quick as lightning falls from the heavens. And those of us lying in the grass rose up and started shooting, along with the archers who were up in the trees – mostly the younger ones, like our tweens,' he said aside.

'And as soon as our arrows started to fly, those Men, they turned tail and ran at the top of their speed,' Harley said triumphantly. '...and they may be running still, for all I know!'

'How many fell?' Mum asked quietly.

Harley sobered. 'That, I cannot say,' he said. 'For they scooped up their wounded as they went, and there may have been some dying among those...' But he put on a determined smile and said, 'But no hobbits were harmed, not even the ones who were marched to the border, to what the ruffians intended to be their deaths...'

'And what'll happen to them?' Mum asked. 'What'll happen to the families they left behind?'

'The Thain and Mistress planned that for them, as well,' Harley said. 'Our spies will sneak them back to their homes, a few at a time, that the ruffians might not intercept them and march them off to the Lockholes. And so, they'll just gradually and mysteriously appear, and go back to their daily lives...'

Mum and Estella both sighed.

But Harley wasn't quite finished. 'And I hope that the word will spread, and the Hobbits of the Outer Shire will think more kindly of the Tooks from this day forward,' he said. 'For we've not abandoned them, even though it was them who abandoned us first.'

'O aye,' Mum whispered, and Estella echoed the words in her heart. 'Grace go with them.'

*** 

Author's note: Almost finished! One more chapter remaining.