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Pearl of Great Price  by Lindelea

Chapter 2. The Grim Reaper

It was harvest-time. Paladin grumbled more than once about folk who were so imprudent as to have their birthdays in the midst of the harvest season, and if they had to be born at that time they might at least have the common decency not to celebrate their birthdays in subsequent years. His children had all been properly sensible in timing their arrivals; none had come during planting or harvest. Paladin had been quick enough to accept Bilbo’s ornate invitation, however. He rued the loss of the day, though harvest was actually coming along nicely with the extra hands he’d hired this year.

It was doubly a surprise, then, for his children to arise one morning and find his place at the table empty. ‘Is Da ill?’ Pearl asked her mother as she buttered Pippin’s bread and poured out the tea.

 ‘No, he was called away,’ Eglantine said, her voice strained though she strove to keep it calm. Her daughters looked at her sharply, seeing now their mother’s reddened eyes and nose.

 ‘Are you coming down with a cold, Mother?’ Pimpernel asked in concern.

Eglantine seized on this excuse to pull a handkerchief from her sleeve and blow her nose. ‘Very likely,’ she said. ‘Now you children eat up, you’ve your chores and here it is half-past four already! You’ll have kept the cows waiting nearly an hour at this rate!’ When Nell would have stayed to help with second breakfast she shooed all the children out, saying that the more hands they had at the milking, the sooner the cows would be satisfied.

Pippin followed his sisters out to the byre, his eyes dancing with secrets. Pearl put him and Vinca to work on the gentlest of the cows while she and Nell took on the two most difficult. ‘We’ll be done in no time at this rate,’ she called. ‘Vinca, you collect the eggs whilst Nell helps Pip with the pigs, and...’

 ‘Good catch, Mouser!’ Pip crowed as one of the cats neatly caught a stream of milk from his cow.

 ‘...and I’ll help Mum with breakfast for the helpers,’ Pearl continued. ‘From the preparations she’d already started I think we’re making griddlecakes.’

 ‘Yum!’ Pippin shouted in delight. ‘Hot cakes from the griddle with fresh apple compote!’

 ‘Don’t dawdle in your egg-collecting, Vinca,’ Pearl said. ‘We’ll have to fry up several dozen at least to strengthen the helpers for their tasks... and didn’t Da say he wanted us to dig potatoes and carrots from the kitchen garden today?’

 ‘That he did,’ Pippin said cheerily.

 ‘And no contests to see who can fling a potato the farthest,’ Nell said sternly. Pippin turned an angelic look on her and she couldn’t help laughing.

 ‘Mind your milking, Pip, I’ve a bucket full already and you’re only halfway along!’ Pearl scolded.

 ‘I know something you don’t know,’ Pip answered as he once again directed a steady stream into his bucket. He was silent, concentrating dutifully on his task until he was sure his sisters were sufficiently maddened with curiosity.

 ‘Well, are you going to enlighten us before the milk turns sour?’ Vinca asked acidly.

Pippin grinned in an irritating manner, but at Pearl’s frown he said, ‘There was a quick post rider last night.’

At his sisters’ exclamations he regained his grin. ‘That’s right!’ he said triumphantly.

 ‘Why didn’t we hear him?’ Nell asked.

 ‘You were asleep,’ Pippin said, putting on a superior air.

 ‘What were you doing awake?’ Vinca challenged, but Nell shot her a pained look. Everyone knew how hard it was to get Pip to go to bed, much less keep him there.

 ‘Sleeping is such a waste of time,’ Pippin said reflectively.

 ‘None of your nonsense, now, Pip,’ Pearl said. ‘What do you know?’

Pippin shrugged, managing to keep the milk streaming steadily into the bucket. ‘That’s all,’ he admitted. ‘A quick post rider came riding into the yard on a lathered pony, left a message, Da read it, crushed it in his hand, said something I couldn’t hear to Mum, threw on his clothes and flung himself out the door.’

 ‘Flung himself?’ Pearl questioned. ‘Don’t over-dramatise, Pip.’

 ‘He did!’ Pippin defended. ‘You ought to have seen him.’ His grin faded and a serious look took its place. ‘And then Mama put her head down upon the table and wept for a long, long time. I wanted to go to her, rub her back, but then she’d’ve known I was out of bed, so I went back to bed instead.’

 ‘Someone’s died,’ Vinca said importantly. ‘It’s got to be that. Whom, d’you think?’

 ‘Auntie Essie?’ Nell hazarded a guess. ‘Auntie Rose?’

 ‘Stop that!’ Pearl snapped. ‘There’s no use speculating and borrowing trouble. I’m sure we’ll find out what’s what when Da returns. In the meantime let us do be sensible and not start rumours with careless talk!’

 ‘You’re so very sensible, Pearlie, it’s disgusting,’ Pippin grumbled, but at the look she gave him he turned strict attention on his milking. They finished their chores in silence.

For three days the hired hobbits worked at harvesting Paladin’s crops under the direction of a sober-faced neighbour. No news was forthcoming from their mother. The hired hobbits seemed to have some idea of what had happened but whenever one of the children came near, they’d stop talking or change the subject to something obvious like the weather or the progress of the harvest.

Near teatime on the third day, Paladin Took returned to his family, looking older than his sixty-eight years. He hugged each of his children tightly, sat heavily down in his chair, accepted a cup of tea from his wife, and sat without drinking or speaking, his eyes shadowed.

At last Vinca broke the silence. ‘Did you have a good visit, Father?’ she said brightly.

Eglantine started to scold her heedless daughter, but Paladin lifted a hand to stop her. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘They don’t know; you didn’t tell them.’

 ‘You told me not to say anything until you returned,’ Eglantine said.

 ‘That’s right,’ Paladin said, and subsided into silence once more. The children lost their appetite for tea and biscuits, looking from mother to father. When Pippin pushed his plate away the spell was broken. ‘Eat up, lad,’ Paladin said.

 ‘What’s happened, Father?’ Pearl asked. ‘It’s some terrible thing, isn’t it?’ She waited for reassurance, but none came.

 ‘Yes,’ Paladin said, and added, his voice breaking, ‘It is a terrible thing, lass, a terrible thing indeed.’ He took a shaky breath, covered his face with his hands and began to weep. The children sat stunned, scared, not daring to move as Eglantine rose from her chair to rub her husband’s shoulders with her strong hands. For long moments they sat thus, while the tea went cold in the cups.

 ‘You may be excused, children,’ she said, but her husband shook his head.

 ‘No... no,’ he said, regaining control of himself, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his face and blow his nose. ‘No, they’ll have to hear the news eventually, and I’d rather they hear it from me than one of the wild rumours that have already started to fly.’

Pearl shot a righteous look at her brother and sisters. At least they had not been the source of any such rumours.

Paladin cleared his throat. ‘Ferdinand Took won’t be coming next spring to train ponies,’ he said irrelevantly.

Pippin looked puzzled. This hardly seemed cause for shock and tears.

 ‘That’s a pity,’ Pimpernel said carefully. ‘Though I won’t mind not seeing Young Ferdibrand... he always teases me so.’

Her father nodded and smiled faintly. ‘That he does,’ he agreed absently. He took a deep breath. ‘There was a fire,’ he said.

The children gasped. Eglantine sat down beside her husband and took his hand. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave it there.’

 ‘They don’t know exactly what happened,’ Paladin said, taking refuge in reciting facts. ‘They think perhaps a buyer put down his pipe so that he could run his hands down the legs of the pony he was considering, and forgot to take it up again.’

 ‘You don’t allow pipes in a stable!’ Pippin said, shocked.

 ‘All were busy about some task or other; Ferdinand sent the buyer to the stables “ahead of him” and promised to be along in a moment or two. His brother Ferdibrand caught him with a question, his son Young Ferdibrand was in bed with a fever and Rosemary was tending the lad. The buyer ought to have had the sense to knock out his pipe before he went in...’

The children waited, hardly breathing as he sipped at his tea, not seeming to notice it had gone cold.

 ‘The buyer had come and gone with his pony, leaving the stall empty... the fire got a good hold before anyone noticed,’ Paladin said. ‘Stell was the first one to see it, and she screamed so, that Young Ferdi got up from his sick bed to see what was the matter.’

 ‘Stell always was a bit on the dramatic side,’ Eglantine said reprovingly, but her husband shot her a quelling glance.

 ‘You don’t know the all of it yet,’ he said, ‘or you wouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’

 ‘Dead!’ Eglantine gasped, turning white.

 ‘Yes,’ Paladin said. ‘The long and the short of it is, Ferdinand’s brother, “old” Ferdibrand, brought the prize stallion out safely and when he ran back to fetch more ponies out... half the roof fell in on him.’

Pearl gasped and Nell gave a sob, while Vinca and Pippin stared in silent shock.

Paladin swallowed hard. ‘Young Ferdibrand was half-fainting with fever and shock, Stell was holding him and screaming, young Rosemary was watching, frozen with horror... and Ferdinand ran into the burning stables to try to pull his brother from the flames.’

 ‘O Dinny,’ Eglantine breathed.

Paladin determinedly continued. ‘The rest of the roof came down... young Ferdi got up and ran to the Water to join the neighbours hauling water in buckets, but in his weakness he fell in the stream — thankfully a passing Brandybuck saw him and jumped in to save him.’

 ‘Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to know how to swim,’ Eglantine murmured absently, in shock.

Paladin met her eye then, saying almost apologetically, ‘Stell threw herself into the stream after her son, not thinking, I’m sure... not wanting to lose him as well as her husband and brother-in-love...’

 ‘O no,’ Eglantine whispered.

 ‘The Bucklander jumped into the stream again but was too late to save her,’ Paladin finished.

 ‘And young Ferdi?’ Eglantine said, almost afraid to frame the question.

 ‘He was half-drowned; still he was alive when pulled from the water,’ Paladin said. ‘But he’s lost his wits. He neither moves nor speaks. He’ll eat if you put food in his mouth, drink if you hold a cup to his lips, but he sees nothing, hears nothing...’ Nell gave another sob.

 ‘Poor lad,’ Eglantine mourned. ‘Poor, poor orphaned lad. And Rosemary? How is she?’

 ‘They’re not orphaned, not quite,’ Paladin said. At his wife’s gasp, he said, ‘They pulled Ferdinand from the flaming rubble, still alive. I don’t know how he’s still alive...

 ‘Alive? The news was that he’d burned to death...’

 ‘He’s alive,’ Paladin repeated. ‘I expect to have news any day of his death. He was terribly burned, of course.’ He sipped again at his tea without tasting it. ‘If he survives, Lalia has ordered him and the children moved to the Great Smials where they’ll be cared for as long as need be.’ In Rosemary’s case, until she married. In the case of the father and the son, well, one was badly burned, and the other’s plight brought to mind the old saying: “A hobbit who won’t eat is soon no hobbit at all.”

 ‘What can we do?’ Eglantine said. ‘How can we help?’

 ‘I offered to take Rosemary in; she’d be as another daughter to us, when...’ Paladin could not continue the thought. When father and brother were gone.

 ‘You offered,’ Eglantine prompted.

 ‘Lalia said it was very kind, and we’d bake that bread when it was risen,’ Paladin said. ‘For the nonce, they’ll be going to the Smials, if Ferdinand is strong enough to survive the journey.’

Nell sobbed again, and her father looked at her kindly. ‘You may be excused, lass,’ he said. She nodded and stumbled blindly from the table, serviette held to her face.

 ‘I always thought there was some feeling between her and Young Ferdibrand,’ he said quietly. ‘He was forever plaguing her so...’





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