If you are re-reading, please note that this chapter has been slightly edited to reflect Merry and Pippin riding out from the caravan together.

Chapter 4.

 ‘You didn’t know it would melt the next day,’ Goldi said soothingly as they shared a bath in the big copper tub before the fire. Their private apartments were hushed, for they’d sent the servants away once the tub was filled with steaming water. She sighed at the feel of Farry’s fingers as they gently lathered her hair.

 ‘At least the ground didn’t freeze,’ Farry replied, his hands making slow, foamy circles. ‘The Tooks are grumbling like anything, I’ll warrant, at being called out to work in the mud and cold, wind and snow.’

 ‘Let them grumble,’ Goldi said. ‘It’s what they’re best at.’

 ‘Yes, they get so much practice at it,’ Farry said, adding glumly, ‘and they’ll probably perfect it whilst the Thain is gone.’

 ‘Your da wouldn’t have put you in charge if he didn’t have every confidence,’ Goldi said, half-turning, but some soap ran dangerously close to her eye and she had to grab for the flannel. ‘I noticed you didn’t pay enough heed to their grumbling to let them off today!’

 ‘No,’ Farry said, picking up a pitcher and immersing it in the tub. Goldi squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath as he poured it over her head. ‘That storm was a warning. Snow, and in October!’

 ‘The winters have been getting ever milder,’ Goldi said in a muffled voice. ‘We don’t even get as much snow as my father remembers from his early years. Nothing like they say there was in Bilbo’s time...’ She caught her breath, pulling the flannel away from her face and turning to her husband. ‘You don’t think...’

 ‘Just because there hasn’t been a Long Winter, or a Fell one, in decades, doesn’t mean that Winter has left the Shire for good,’ Farry said. 

 ‘Or ill,’ Goldi added absently. ‘Frodo says the mild winters makes for terrible slugs in the garden.’

Farry gave her a slippery hug. ‘Trust you to find the good in a snowstorm,’ he said, then frowned again. ‘I only hope the travellers...’

Goldi gave him a push, which sent a splash of water slopping over the sides of the overfull tub, onto the floor. ‘There you go again!’ she accused. ‘You’ve spent too much time in Buckland! Why, you’re as great a worrier as Uncle Merry! And it’s after teatime! No worrying allowed!’ She punctuated each statement with a splash.

 ‘We’ll have to mop up,’ Farry said, peering over the side of the tub at the swimming stones.

 ‘Indeed we will,’ Goldi retorted, deliberately sending a great wave of water over him. He retaliated, and the level of steaming water in the tub was significantly lower before a truce was achieved.

 ‘Half a second,’ Faramir said, dropping a kiss on his wife’s dripping curls. He hopped out of the tub, took up one of the coppers hanging near the fire, and poured the water into the tub. He made a face at the feel on his feet of the cooling water on the floor and kicked a stack of towelling over the spreading pool.

 ‘Don’t use up all the towels!’ Goldi remonstrated, but he laughed.

 ‘Plenty more where those came from,’ he said, climbing back into the tub. ‘The servants have left us enough to mop up ourselves and all the water in the tub besides!’

Goldi laughed. ‘They’re getting used to us,’ she said, and snuggled against him. They stayed in the tub until their fingers wrinkled, and then laughing, they climbed out, towelled each other dry, and tumbled into the big bed. When the servants crept in, late in the night, they did not waken, even as the tub was emptied and quietly removed.

***

Pimpernel could not convince Ferdibrand to ride in a coach, and so the next morning found her riding pony-back beside him, just to keep an eye on him. His head always troubled him when a storm was brewing. Pippin and Merry had consulted with the King, and he’d agreed to stay over in Edoras until the storm was past. ‘Just as well,’ he’d said. ‘No need to travel in stormy weather. Eomer and Lothiriel will welcome the longer visit when it's rained itself out.’

 ‘If we can ever get away at all again,’ Estella had muttered to Diamond, riding along in the Queen’s coach. ‘Those Rohirrim are the souls of hospitality! We might find ourselves staying a month, or more, rather than a week.’

Arwen laughed. ‘It is why we usually only stop over a day when travelling,’ she said. ‘They can understand haste on a journey. But a visit... when you’re on holiday, there’s no reason to make haste to leave, and there’s always something important just about to happen...’

 ‘And they press you to stay and celebrate,’ Estella said, rolling her eyes. ‘This foal is about to be born, or that race is about to be run, or somebody’s getting married, or...’ Arwen laughed, remembering, as Estella continued, ‘If I had a gold coin for every day we lingered past our departure date on previous visits...’

Diamond wasn’t listening. She was staring through the curtains. ‘Look at the sky!’ she whispered. The northwest sky behind them was black and threatening, though the Sun shone brightly on the plain.

 ‘It’s a good thing we’re nearly to Edoras,’ Arwen said softly. ‘I think we shall not make camp this night’—there were no inns on the vast sweep of grassy plains—‘but shall drive straight through until we reach the Golden Hall.’

The storm continued to creep ever closer as they travelled through the day. They did not pause for luncheon, but ate as they rode.

 ‘Wouldn’t you like to rest in a coach for a bit?’ Pimpernel said to Ferdi, noting the pinched look around his eyes.

 ‘You call that rest?’ he said, breathing deeply of the bracing air. ‘This is what I call restful!’ He leaned forward and his pony increased its gait until they were cantering across the plain, for Pimpernel stayed right with him. ‘Isn’t it glorious?’ he called.

Pimpernel laughed as her hair came free of its hairpins and streamed behind her. The curls would be a mass of tangles this evening, and she’d make Ferdi pay well for this day’s work... He’d spend a long time brushing out the tangles when they reached their resting place this night. She leaned forward to urge her mount to a gallop, and Ferdi followed suit. A horn sounded faintly behind them, but the wind snatched the sound away before they took note.

They rode to the top of a rise and stopped to give their ponies a breather. ‘Look,’ Ferdi said, pointing ahead to a gleam of gold. ‘The Golden Hall! We should reach it before middle night, for it’s just teatime now.’

 ‘It’s beautiful,’ Pimpernel said, drinking in the sight of the hill crowned with gold, surrounded by an undulating sea of grass rippling in the breeze.

They gazed awhile in silence before they heard hoofbeats approaching from behind, and Pippin hailed them. ‘Hoy! Did you not hear the King’s recall?’

 ‘Recall?’ Ferdi said, turning to see the Thain ride up, Master of Buckland immediately following, but that was not the sight that made him gasp even as Pimpernel stifled a cry of alarm. Threatening clouds filled half the sky, coming on rapidly.

 ‘He wants everyone in the coaches who can fit,’ Pippin said, ‘and if large hail comes down the guardsmen will take shelter beneath the coaches.’

 ‘Doesn’t do the horses and ponies much good,’ Ferdi muttered.

 ‘That cannot be helped,’ Pippin said. ‘Your head ought to have been telling you a storm is coming, and a nasty one from the look of it.’

 ‘It has,’ Ferdi said shortly.

Merry broke in impatiently. 'This is no time to inquire after his health, Pip; we've got to get back. There's no time to lose.'

 ‘Are your ponies rested?’ Pippin said. ‘It might be a good idea to go back at a gallop, the way those clouds are coming on.’ Grey streaks could be seen reaching from sky to ground behind the little group of riders and coaches in the distance. ‘We’re likely to be wet through before we’re halfway.’

The wind, hardly noticed when it was at their backs, was blowing stiff and chill in their faces as they turned their ponies to return to the caravan.

 ‘That’s odd,’ Pippin muttered as the grey curtain approached the caravan. ‘It almost looks like...’ He broke off with a gasp as the curtain enveloped the coaches and riders in the distance, swallowing them completely.

 ‘That’s some rainstorm,’ Ferdi said uneasily. ‘Perhaps we ought to be riding away from it rather than towards.’

 ‘It’s moving faster than a pony can gallop,’ Merry said, soothing his pony’s neck as the beast tossed its head uneasily.

 ‘How will we find them?’ Pimpernel said, having to raise her voice in the face of the rising wind.

 ‘It’s only rain,’ Ferdi said, though he and Pippin exchanged worried glances. ‘Come along.’ He squeezed his knees together and his pony moved out reluctantly, as loath as his rider to ride into the wild weather ahead.

Halfway to where they’d last seen the coaches, they found Ferdi was wrong. A blinding whirl of snow enveloped them, blotting out their surroundings, making it difficult to see each other though they rode knee-to-knee.