Remembering

Chapter 15. Remembering

'I think you'd like the north-Tooks,' Pippin said as he accepted a steaming cup of tea from Regi, black and strong and scalding, just as he liked it. And Regi's shudder at seeing him sip from the cup never failed to amuse him. 'They're not quite so Tookish as the Tooks, of course...'

'None of your nonsense now, lad,' Regi said, and winced.

'And so early in the morning, too,' Pippin observed. 'What ever shall we do if you use up all of your none-of-your-nonsenses before the day is over?'

'I shudder at the thought,' Regi said honestly, and determinedly took up his own cup for a cautious sip. Even though he'd added a splash of milk, his tea was still hotter than he preferred.

'...at least, not to the degree of Tookishness that the Tooks have achieved from long practice,' Pippin said as if he might be deliberately baiting his Steward. And so Regi ignored him. Yet the Thain, in the fey mood that had seized him, would not be quelled. 'In fact, I fear they might find the Tooks rather wanting by their standards.'

'Wanting?' was forced out of Regi.

'O aye,' Pippin said in his broadest Green Hills back-country intonation. And then he took another satisfying gulp of still-steaming tea before sitting back with a sigh of satisfaction. 'At least Bolham and his band found naught out of the ordinary with drinking water off the boil, with no milk or sweetening added.'

'And no tea, either, I presume?' Regi said dryly.

'They ran out of tea fairly early in the Troubles,' Pippin said, draining his cup and setting it precisely on the saucer, 'Ah, that just suits. Though sometimes, I think he said, they added some shredded tree bark to the brew, just to add some sort of flavour.' And looking up, he said, 'But of course, water was plentiful, and in the bitter temperatures of winter as icy winds pummeled the North-lands, drinking hot water or bark "tea" from a sturdy mug was a comfort of sorts.' He ran his finger around the rim of the teacup. 'Served well as a handwarmer into the bargain.'

'They sound like a hardy folk,' Regi said. Though he was not one to exercise his imagination, the idea of wintering in a Wood without other solid shelter – especially in the North Farthing, where snow and ice were common in wintertime – made him shiver and determinedly turn to a warmer subject. 'Of course, Diamond's family are the souls of hospitality...'

'The north-Tooks of Bindbole Wood are not terribly different from those of Long Cleeve that you've met,' Pippin said, 'even though they settled their piece of the North Farthing some time after the Battle of Greenfields.' He eyed his Steward keenly. 'As a matter of fact, Regi, Diamond's family didn't surrender to the ruffians that overran the North Farthing... Instead, my father-in-love picked up his entire family and all the remaining animals after a raid by Lotho's Men – for when they'd come, intending to gather the family's goods, he and his hired hobbits turned them away with bows drawn and faces grim – and then they removed to Bindbole Wood. He and his family joined others from farms and towns in the region, who'd either been burned out or were determined to resist, and he and his hired hobbits became part of The Red's band, harrying the ruffians and re-gathering their gatherings and distributing goods to those in need. Bolham spoke very highly of him.'

Regi hadn't known this piece of Diamond's history, and hearing it now startled him to the point where he spilled some of his tea. As he mopped it up, he couldn't help asking, 'Mistress Diamond spent the Year o' the Troubles with Bolham's band?'

'O aye,' Pippin said, eyeing his Steward with satisfaction. No doubt Diamond's reputation amongst the Tooks would rise a few notches over the next few days. 'She stayed within the confines o' the Wood, o' course, and did not ride out with the raiders who harried Lotho's ruffians and reclaimed the goods they'd gathered.'

'O' course,' Regi echoed. 'That's just good sense.'

But Pippin wasn't finished. 'My wife is a better shot with a bow than I am, as you know,' he continued. 'And so she joined the guard – north-Tooks that perched in the limbs of the trees within the Wood and at its edges – as part of Bolham's strategy to deter any Men from entering, or even, during the dry season, approaching the Wood since Bolham thought Lotho might order them to try to fire the Wood and drive the rebels – and the refugees they protected – into the open.' His face took on a grim expression as he concluded, 'None of the Men who dared enter the Wood on Lotho's orders ever came out again, or so it was said...'

Regi blinked at this suggestion of Diamond's capability for ruthlessness, amidst the determination of her fellow north-Tooks who had guarded the Wood from invaders. Despite the sweet and gentle-spoken appearance the Mistress presented, he'd long suspected the presence of a steel blade hidden within her velvet manner. For one thing, she managed her volatile husband subtly but effectively, almost imperceptibly curbing his more capricious impulses while standing staunchly at his side in all circumstances. 

Meanwhile, Pippin had picked up his pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and jotted down a few notes on the paper that lay before him.

Regi frowned absently at his Thain's use of this innovation, a gift from the Master of Buckland on Merry's last birthday. He'd take a proper quill any day, and none of these wood-and-metal contrivances! 'And what sort of deal were you able to strike with that branch of the north-Tooks regarding wool and sheep?' the Steward said, getting down to business himself.

'Fair all around, I'd say,' Pippin said, leaning back in his chair and tapping the desk with the wooden end of his pen. 'Bolham was rather impressed – if I do say so myself...'

Regi resisted squandering one of his none-of-your-nonsenses for such a mild offence.

But Pippin went on, '...and I do – for my apprenticeship, brief as it was, to old Brockbank, to learn the ways of a shepherd and the sheep and the dogs, bless their brave and loyal hearts and intelligent souls, taught me a great deal about sheep and their ways. Why,' he said, his face brightening at the memory as he laid down his pen to gesture expressively, 'I was even able to get his dogs to heed my whistles!'

'Intelligent, indeed,' Regi muttered, and at Pippin's inquiring look, he said, 'Dogs respond most reliably to their own Hobbit... I remember the farmer we took in – during the Troubles, it was. His dogs followed him all the way from the Outer Shire. They hung around the outside of the Smials for days, and no one knew who they belonged to, and none could whistle them in, not even Goodchild who, I think, apprenticed with Shepherd Brockbank after you did?'

Receiving Pippin's nod, he continued, 'But when we'd finished vetting him and knew he hadn't come to the Smials to betray the Tooks or the Thain to our enemies, Paladin brought him out and asked him to try whistling the dogs in from the field where they were lurking.'

Pippin smiled faintly. 'Don't tell me,' he said. 'They were his dogs...'

Regi's look grew faraway. 'They were,' he said softly, in a tone of wonder. 'They raced in out of the darkness, and I watched their greeting, and his joyous welcome...' He shook his head. 'I've never seen anything like it before or since. If the dogs had turned themselves inside out in their delight, I would not have been surprised. Why, they covered that farmer with their bodies as if they meant to become fur coats, and they jumped and danced and turned circles and licked at his hands and face. And your father...'

After a moment of silence, Pippin prompted, 'My father?'

Regi blinked – and might that have been a tear? Pippin wondered – and shook his head. 'He hadn't laughed – really laughed – since the word came that you'd disappeared. But seeing that reunion – so much joy, heaped up and overflowing... his laugh rang out, just as it had in the old days, when he was still just a simple farmer and the burden of the Thainship had not descended to weigh so heavily upon him. The well-being of all the Tooks and Tooklanders – and all of it depending on him, and him alone...'

'But he wasn't alone!' Pippin protested. 'He had you, for starters, for you were practically his right hand throughout the Troubles, and Ferdi, and Tolly...' But at the name of Tolly, he stopped, sat staring a moment, and then sighed.

'No further word of the hobbit from the north-Tooks, I take it?' Regi said quietly.

Wordlessly, Pippin shook his head. And then he seemed to shake the rest of himself, and he picked up his pen. 'And so,' he said, 'Bolham will be sending us a small flock of yearlings next week, from the bloodlines we spoke of. I inspected them thoroughly. Not a bad one in the bunch, I warrant!'

He jotted another note on the paper and added, 'And then, he'd like some of the lambs that result from the crossing of our strains with his, though of course that would be some time in the future...'

'Of course,' Regi agreed. 'And how much did he ask for the yearlings?' Pippin told him, and he recorded the figure in the ledger, saying, 'A fair price, indeed! ...especially if they are as fine as you said they are.'

'It helped, I think, that I brought two "Heroes of the Tookland" along with me,' Pippin said. 'O' course, they did not take part in the bargaining nor the vetting of the sheep, but they still played a vital part, I deem. On the evening we arrived, The Red had invited a dozen of his former band to meet us. He framed it in the guise of a welcome, a celebration of sorts... but I had the feeling that he and the hobbits he trusted most implicitly were sizing us up throughout the evening. If we had failed the test, I think, there'd be no new sheep coming down the Oatbarton Road from Bolton to improve the bloodlines of Pearl and Isum's sheep, much less the flocks belonging to the Great Smials.'

'I'm sure Tolly would be capable of winning the north-Tooks' respect and approval quite as well,' Regi said.

'I'm sure Tolly would have been,' Pippin said, emphasising the past in his reference. 'And how are things with Meadowsweet? Apart from missing her husband, that is? Does she want for anything that we might be able to provide?'

'She has not lost the child, as Woodruff feared she might from the shock and loss,' Regi said.

Pippin closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them again. 'I'm glad,' he said. 'A child to remember him by. For all the good it does.'

'It does a great deal of good!' Regi said, startled.

'No, you mistake my meaning,' Pippin said, holding up a staying hand. 'All I mean to say is that the child cannot bring Tolibold back from the dead or even stand in as a substitute for a loving husband, no matter how much of a comfort it may be to its mother. And I grieve that the child will never know its father – one of the finest hobbits I've ever known. I hope...' and he broke off, staring into space before returning his gaze to Regi.

'You hope,' the Steward prompted.

'I was wrong,' Pippin said – to his Steward's surprise – 'in being disturbed at our cousins talking about Tolly as if he were still among us. In fact, it is my hope that we all will continue to keep him alive in our thoughts and our stories, that we might somehow make him real to his children – the babe already born, and the new one to come – that they would come to know their father, and his deeds, and his character, and every little detail...' He stopped and swallowed hard and then finished in a voice that was husky with grief, '...every detail of what made him who he was. For if we cannot restore the hobbit to his children, the least we can do is to help them see him, if only in their mind's eye, as someone who lived and was real and loved and loving, and not simply a hollow memory, a name to be spoken on Remembering Day.'

*** 

Autumn was deepening in the North Farthing. Though the Sun did her best to warm the days, the weather had turned cool, and the nights were becoming more icy than crisp. These days, when the Sun rose to greet the day, her playful beams often lit up the frozen paintings left by the frost-faeries on the windows of the herb-gatherer's cot in the Wood, causing them to sparkle until they melted away. The Sun, herself, seemed increasingly reluctant to rise from her bed in the mornings and ever more eagerly went to her rest, seeking her pillow a little earlier every day and leaving the frosty air to the Man in the Moon to cope with. 

Wallas and Gorbyl redoubled their gathering – collecting nuts and the last of the berries and wild grapes along with digging the wild roots growing in Wood and meadow and marsh. The children stayed closer to home, for their task was to collect the bounty in the kitchen garden Gorbyl had dug in the part of the clearing that received the most sunlight, onions and carrots and potatoes, which had to be gathered in before the rains began, saturating the soil, rotting the crops and then freezing on the ground in the form of ice and snow. And though the summer cabbages had all been harvested some days earlier, the winter cabbages were not quite ready to gather in.

'And Yuletide is just around the corner!' Gorbyl said at eventides one night. 'And you know what that means!'

Wallas didn't, but the childer did, and raised a cheer.

At her da's blank look, little Lark climbed onto Wallas's lap and framed his face with her hands, looking deep into the eyes that looked so much like her own, the dark, smoky green of the deep forest where the evergreens grew thick. 'You remember, Da,' she said persuasively. 'We all go out together to gather the greens for the Yuletide market in Bolton! Granda's told us stories about you and Mum and him gathering greenery in the Wood, and throwing balls of snow at each other, and the time Mum put a snowball down your back and ran away and you chased after her and caught her, and you were going to wash her face with snow, but you said you couldn't bring yourself to it so you washed your own face with snow!' And Gorbyl and the childer laughed at the story, and Wallas smiled.

But Lark wasn't finished. 'And then we'll all go together to the market! And Granda will buy us sugared nuts! But you have to be careful,' she said, her bright smile dissolving into a solemn look.

'And why is that, my little songbird?' Wallas asked, and Gorbyl saw his lips twitch as if he were suppressing a smile of his own.

The child shook her head slowly and earnestly. 'If you try to snatch the nuts from the paper cone too quickly, you'll burn your fingers!'

'O my precious!' Wallas exclaimed, and he reached up to take one of her hands from his cheek and examined it closely. 'And have you burnt these delicate little fingers, just so?' And he tenderly kissed her fingertips, and little Lark giggled at the tickly sensation.

And then Wallas lifted the little one high into the air and "flew" her to her bed, and helped her with the fastenings on her dress, and popped her night-gown over her head and tucked her in warm and snug, and as he sat down on the side of the bed, before he leaned to bless her forehead with a good-night kiss, he whispered. 'I think I'm looking forward to Yuletide.'

'Good!' Lark said, arresting her da in the middle of bending down, his lips pursed. 'I think everyone should!' And then the two of them, Wallas and Lark, laughed until Gorbyl and the lads were drawn to the doorway to find out what delight might be sparking the peals of laughter.

Gorbyl found himself watching Wallas more closely as the days grew shorter, for he thought he recognised the signs of winter sadness in the hobbit, which surprised him. Before leaving ten years earlier, Wallas had been remarkably unflappable and even-tempered, but since his return, he seemed to brighten with the Sun and struggle to keep his spirits up during the darker hours or on gloomy days when heavy clouds hid the Sun, as was happening oftener as the world turned inexorably towards Winter. The old hobbit wondered what had happened to him, that his moods were so closely tied to the light, or lack of it?

Lark, too, sensitive creature that she was, seemed to notice her da's changes of mood. In the dark of early morning, as the little family sat down for breakfast, she'd climb into Wallas's lap and lay a kiss upon his cheek, and then she'd smile into his eyes and sing a morning song to him, bringing a smile to the long face. And when the song ended, Wallas's arms would tighten around her in a hug, and then he'd lift her high in the air to make her squeal, and then set her carefully on the floor, and call her his little songbird, and tell her she had better go and peck up all the caterpillars on her plate (or in her bowl) before they crawled away!

And she would laugh and scold, 'They're not caterpillars, silly Da! They're scones!' (or eggs, or porridge, or whatever the breakfast offering was that day). Wallas's resulting smile from Lark's antics often lasted until the Sun's light grew strong enough to sustain him through the rest of the chilly day.

His dreams, too, began to trouble Wallas, but though he'd admit to Gorbyl that he'd dreamed in the night, he was unable to describe the dreams themselves in any detail. Sometimes he would cry out in the night, and Gorbyl would get up and go to him, rub his back and murmur soothing nonsense until the hobbit quieted again. In the morning, he'd remember frustratingly little of the dreams that had disturbed him. 'I saw places so different from the Wood,' he'd said after one such awakening, 'but I could not put a name to them or find them on a map, and there were people I felt I ought to know, but they turned and walked away before I could see their faces clearly, and I knew not their names that I might call to them...'

'I think your mind is trying to remember what you saw and experienced before you came to us,' Gorbyl said gently. 'But such memories can be like butterflies; the tighter you grasp them in your hand, the more they batter themselves to pieces until they're tattered and torn and hardly recognisable.'

Wallas's long face grew longer at this thought, and Gorbyl patted him on the shoulder. 'Let them go,' the older hobbit said. 'When the time is right, you'll see them clearly – so clearly, and likely so unexpectedly, it'll make you wonder why you had so much trouble in the first place!'

'I hope you're right,' Wallas said.

Gorbyl laughed. 'Yer old da is always right!' he said stoutly.

'Except when you're wrong,' Wallas said. 'If you do say so yourself.'

'And I do,' Gorbyl said ruefully, and then he brightened as if he'd just had a wonderful idea. 'But what's a mind for, if you can't change it?'

In the moments that followed, the old hobbit savoured the sound of Wallas's laughter.

*** 

'Yuletide is just around the corner,' Pippin said, holding a message sheaf that had arrived just that morning.

'So it is,' Regi said. 'I suppose I ought to check on that shipment of nuts from the Woody End...'

'I suppose you ought,' Pippin agreed, and then he shook the message at his Steward. 'But that is not what I was going to speak with you about.'

'What's in the message?' Regi asked.

'Very good, Regi,' Pippin said. 'You're on exactly the right track!' He put the opened message down on his desk and smoothed it with a thoughtful hand.

'If you won't tell me what it says, at least tell me who it's from,' Regi persisted.

'I'll do both!' Pippin said, beaming with pleasure. 'Bolham the Red has invited us to visit, with several aims in mind: He wants us to walk the Bolton Yuletide Faire since none of us, save Diamond, has ever seen it, and apparently the event is quite famous throughout the North Farthing.'

'When?' Regi said, picking up his quill to make notes.

'The Faire opens on the first Highday of the month. Mayor Sam will be there to open the Faire, and the Thain is among the notables invited to the opening ceremony.'

Regi looked at the calendar and pulled at his lower lip, considering. 'It might be possible,' he said. 'It's early in the month, for a mercy, and as long as you're back by mid-month, the Tooks shouldn't grumble too oppressively.'

Pippin muttered something under his breath about grumbly Tooks.

But Regi had seized upon an earlier phrase the Thain had employed in the current discussion. 'Who is "us"?' he asked patiently. Honestly, sometimes when Pippin was in high good spirits, it took more effort to pry all the necessary information out of him than for a woodpecker to pry bugs out of an old tree.

'Apparently, Red always has a Yuletide gathering of all his band – all those that are able to come, any road – on the first Highday of the month, to coincide with the opening of the Faire, and many of the band bring their families along to Bolton for the festivities, and so he's invited some heroes of the Tookish Resistance, as well,' Pippin said, somehow sort-of-answering while not-answering Regi's direct question.

'So, Hilly and Haldi, I should imagine,' Regi said, 'and their families?' he guessed. 'And you and Diamond and the Mistress and the lad?' No guess required as to that point, thankfully. 'At least, I should think your family would enjoy a famous Yuletide Faire, with all the sights and smells and festive fare...' He scrutinised the Thain. 'Were you thinking of descending unannounced upon The Red with a large body of Hobbits, or has he issued a sweeping invitation to begin with, as it were?'

Pippin laughed and said, sidestepping the point, 'But when and where have you been to a Yuletide Faire before, Regi? For I'm not aware of anything out of the ordinary happening during Yuletide in Tuckborough...'

'That's neither here nor there,' Regi began, but Pippin interrupted him.

'O it's there! It's definitely there and not here!' 

Regi shoved aside the None of your nonsense now, lad! that he was sorely tempted to say, instead asking, 'And I should think Bolham's band would be particularly interested in meeting Ferdibrand, as the Fox of song and story and even, it seems, growing legend, and since this appears to be a family affair, if you were to invite your sister, and the children, o' course, to come along, then he'd be able to travel to the North Farthing and not violate the Tooks' "early days" tradition.' 

'Capital idea, Regi! That's absolutely splendid!' Pippin said, clapping his hands together. 'And I like your word-play: family affair and Yuletide Faire... not to mention the festive fare you mentioned earlier...'

By no means had Regi deliberately engaged in word-play, but he scarcely wanted to dignify the idea by refuting it. So he fell back on asking a question. 'And did you want me to attend?'

'Well,' Pippin said, tilting his head thoughtfully. 'You are invited, as a matter of fact. You, and your wife, and your children... though I suppose you'll have to leave the children at home since you haven't got any of those quite yet...'

Regi gritted his teeth at this excess of whimsy and said, 'So would you like me to set out the dates and make the arrangements, Sir? For we'll have to work around the Yuletide preparations here at the Smials and schedule everything very carefully to avoid setting off a lot of grumbling amongst the Tooks.'

'That's very kind of you, Reginard,' Pippin said, nodding his appreciation. 'Why don't you do just that, and let me know when we'll be travelling there and back again so that I can give Diamond plenty of notice to do her packing.' Behind his hand, he added, 'She is the preparingest hobbit I ever knew, next to my cousin Merry, you know.'

'Indeed,' Regi said dryly, and then, to his immense relief, the conversation moved on to other topics.

***  

Author's notes: 

The story of the farmer and the sheepdogs during the Troubles is found in the story collection This and That in the chapter titled, 'Sheepdog Trials'.

Tolly's (Wallas's) winter sadness is a remnant of the Black Breath, as described in The Farmer's Son.

***