Chapter 31. Ulrich's Tale

The next day was a mirror of the previous one: a late departure, slow procession at the speed of a walking hobbit which was, happily for Ulrich, not too fast for a shackled Man, and an early camp. Ulrich reflected that he might welcome the trial and subsequent hanging by the time they finally reached Minas Tirith.

Ulrich’s supper appeared promptly that evening, brought by the same booted hobbit. Ulrich looked at the slices of roast meat with a wry twist to his mouth. How did they expect him to manage with only a spoon? Still, he reflected, they might not have bothered to feed him at all.

He picked up one of the slices in his fingers and took a bite. ‘Good meat,’ he said through the mouthful. ‘Nice and tender.’ He eyed the hobbit. ‘Aren’t you eating?’

 ‘I’ll eat later,’ Ferdi said.

 ‘It takes away your appetite to see good food wasted on someone about to be hanged?’ Ulrich said, taking another large bite. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate the company, mind. You’re about the only one speaking to me these days.’

 ‘Silence gives one time to think,’ Ferdi said.

 ‘Probably not the happiest occupation for a man in my position,’ Ulrich commented.

Ferdi, who’d had a time in his life when he’d known much the same trouble, nodded thoughtfully. He looked up at the sound of quiet voices nearby, to see Merry talking to the guardsman watching Ulrich. The Master of Buckland bore two plates, one of which he handed to Ferdibrand as he settled himself with the other.

 ‘I know how you hate cold food,’ he said at Ferdi’s surprised expression. ‘Now eat!’

The meat and vegetables were not piping hot the way Ferdi preferred them, but at least they retained some warmth. He dug in hungrily. Merry did the same, and Ulrich continued his meal, so silence reigned in their circle for a time.

At last Merry looked up and said, ‘How did you and Elessar come to meet? I am curious to know how he ended with a ruffian for a friend.’

Ulrich laughed, and several guardsmen in the vicinity turned to stare in surprise.

 ‘I was not a ruffian at the time,’ he said. Pointing a greasy finger at Ferdi, he added, ‘Ah, I know what you are thinking, master perian. “Once a ruffian, always a ruffian,” is it not so?’

 ‘O no, ‘tis much simpler than that,’ Merry protested. Fixing his cousin with a stern eye, he said, ‘More like, “All men are ruffians,” isn’t it, Ferdi?’

 ‘I never said that!’ Ferdi said, putting down his fork.

 ‘I beg to differ,’ Merry said mildly, taking another bite. ‘This meat is most tender and flavourful, wouldn’t you say?’

 ‘Quite,’ Ulrich said, absently wiping his fingers on his trousers and using his spoon to attack the honeyed spiced carrots and creamed onions. ‘Better than any camp food I’ve had the pleasure of eating.’

 ‘It is a boon to travel with hobbits,’ Merry said. ‘You may travel slowly, but your belly will never complain.’

Ulrich laughed again. He polished off the rest of the contents of his plate and laid it aside, shoving it as far towards Ferdi as he could reach, to save the hobbit the trouble of stooping swiftly to take the plate and stepping out of reach again. ‘A good meal,’ he said again, and then turned back to Merry. ‘How did I meet the King?’ he said. ‘It is simple enough a matter. I was fishing in his lake.’

 ‘You were a poacher?’ Ferdi said. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’

 ‘Ferdi!’ Merry remonstrated, but Ulrich waved his protest aside.

 ‘Nay, little master, so it would appear on the surface, to one who did not possess all the facts.’ Ulrich took a swig of water from the tin cup. ‘It was not his lake at the time, or at least I did not know it was. I did not know that the King had returned, you see.’

 ‘Fine it was, to catch his fish as long as he was safely in the Southlands,’ Ferdi observed.

Ulrich shook a finger at him. ‘That was not the way of it at all,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Annuminas was in ruins, with dark things skulking through its deserted streets. The Rangers returned and put things in order.’

 ‘We returned with them, remember?’ Merry said aside to Ferdi.

 ‘About time,’ that hobbit grumbled.

 ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Ulrich said. ‘You put a few things in order yourself, didn’t you? I remember you, sitting so proud on your pony as we reclined in the dust with our hands on our heads, hoping not to be shot out of hand.’

 ‘How many hobbits did you kill in the battle of Bywater?’ Ferdi asked, twisting his lip.

 ‘None at all, you might be surprised to learn,’ Ulrich said. ‘My thoughts were on escape only. I was heartily sick of the business. Were it not for the fear of Sharkey...’

 ‘Oh?’ Merry said quietly.

Ulrich was sober now, no laughter lurking yet ready to break out despite his dire circumstances. ‘His eyes,’ he whispered. ‘When he looked at you, it was enough to chill your bones to the marrow... and that Voice...’ He shuddered. ‘I’d’ve left weeks earlier, were it not for...’ His voice trailed off and he stared into the middle distance, a haunted expression on his face.

 ‘You didn’t enjoy your stint at the Lockholes?’ Merry said, a look of polite interest on his face.

 ‘It was fine enough before... He arrived,’ Ulrich said slowly. ‘I had all I wished to eat...’

 ‘ “Gathered” from Shirefolk,’ Ferdi said aside to Merry.

 ‘...and pleasant conversations with Mayor Will,’ Ulrich continued, not seeming to notice the Halflings’ astonishment. ‘Ah, the stories he could tell! I’d put some pipeweed in my pocket and walk down the row to his cell, and he’d sit and smoke and tell me about someone called Bilbo, and someone else called Bullroarer, and Marcho, I think, and a brother.’ He sighed. ‘Marvellous stories. My children clamoured to hear them at bedtime.’

 ‘Marcho and Blanco,’ Merry said quietly. ‘They set out from Bree on a summer’s day, and found the Shire along the way.’

 ‘Exactly!’ Ulrich said, wiping at his eyes with a hasty hand as if it were no more than smoke that bothered them. ‘That’s just what he’d say to begin that story.’

 ‘So it is told in the Shire, even today,’ Merry said. ‘Children? I saw your family, I think. How many children do you have?’

Somehow Ulrich found himself telling of his pride and joy, his sons and daughters, from the eldest, “half a guardsman already” at the age of ten, down to the baby daughter who loved to bounce upon her father’s knee.

 ‘Your oldest is ten?’ Merry said, for Ferdi was listening in silence.

 ‘Ah, I know, I look more like a grandfather than a father to such little ones,’ Ulrich said, ‘but then, I found my love late in life.’ He told how he’d met his wife, niece of one of the town’s councillors, and stopped off from his journeying to labour in the livery stables of the town of Amon Din, captivated by her smile and gentle ways.

 ‘You rescued her father from ruffians,’ Ferdi said. ‘How ironic.’

Ulrich shook his head. ‘I’d given up the life of a ruffian years before,’ he said. ‘After you granted us our lives,’ he said to Merry, and then turned back to Ferdibrand, ‘I wandered until I came to the shores of a lake, wild and beautiful, and there I made my home. The fish were plentiful, I built myself a little hut, and once a year I walked to Bree to trade dried, smoked fish for what I needed. Little enough were my needs in those days.’

 ‘How did you come to be “Ulrich”?’ Merry asked. ‘I’m told he was a real Man of Gondor who came North after the war.’

 ‘He was,’ Ulrich said. ‘You’ll find it hard to credit...’

Ferdi snorted, and the Man chuckled. The hobbit evidently found it hard to credit anything that a Man might say.

 ‘...but we were friends in our youth, in Minas Tirith. Closer than brothers, we were, and often mistaken for such, so like we looked to each other. My mother was sister to his father.’

 ‘You were cousins!’ Merry exclaimed, with a sidelong glance for Ferdi.

Ulrich nodded and continued, ‘Our families lived near each other, and our grandfathers were guardsmen together. But fever swept the White City,’ his eyes sobered, ‘and my grandfather—my father’s father—died, and my mother took sick from nursing him. My father packed us up and took us to the Westfold, to my mother’s family, for he thought we’d be safer there than in Minas Tirith.’ He shook his head, his expression sad. ‘Once he saw us safely settled he returned to Minas Tirith, promising to come back for us when times were better, but we never saw him again. I think he must have fallen during the siege or at the Black Gate.’

 ‘It was in the Westfold that you met Saruman,’ Merry said thoughtfully, after a silence.

Ulrich’s breathing stilled and he tensed, as he always did at that name. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘He was promising riches and glory if we followed him. He knew of a new land, a fine land where there was peace and plenty.’

 ‘He didn’t happen to mention that it was already occupied, did he?’ Ferdi asked dryly.

Ulrich turned a wry eye upon him. ‘ “Infested” was the word he used,’ he said honestly. ‘Infested by little rat-folk who were a blot on the land, who were too stupid to hold it properly and were like to ruin it if something were not done by wiser heads.’

He shook his head. ‘Truth be told, when I got to the Shire I found it to be a beautiful land, and while Shirefolk were complacent and seemed simple enough, they were pleasant folk.’

 ‘They are,’ Merry nodded. ‘Still are.’

 ‘I know that,’ Ulrich said. ‘But somehow, when Sharkey himself came, everything changed. I began to see them differently, as a trouble and a blight.’

 ‘You saw what he told you to see,’ Merry said quietly.

Ulrich sighed. ‘Isn’t that the truth,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘And did what he told us to do, all without question. Somehow it never occurred to me to question, until afterwards. And then, of course, it was too late to go back and change anything.’ His eyes held a faraway look. ‘I’ve lived with it ever since.’

He seized his cup and drained the contents. ‘But you were asking about Ulrich,’ he said briskly. ‘Imagine my surprise to see him on the shores of that same northern lake! He’d been through fire and battle, his father and brothers killed at the Black Gate, his mother dead of grief soon after, his home burned to ashes in the siege of Minas Tirith. He came to the Northland to forge a new life. We became fishermen together, partners. Ah, the stories he could tell!’

 ‘And you told your stories?’ Ferdi said wryly.

Ulrich shook his head. ‘I had few stories to tell,’ he admitted. ‘Ulrich used to like to tease that I’d cut out my own tongue to use as fish bait! But as he liked to talk, and I liked to listen, it was a good partnership.’

 ‘What happened to him?’ Merry asked.

 ‘We were on the lake when a storm blew up,’ Ulrich said. ‘Our boat capsized, and he struck out for shore though I told him to cling to the boat. I was able to hold to the boat and kick my legs until I reached the shore, but he...’

Merry nodded in understanding. Stay with the boat was the rule all young Brandybucks were taught, when first they ventured upon the River.

 ‘I met Elessar a few weeks later,’ Ulrich continued. ‘Dressed like a common Ranger, he was. I knew no differently. He walked into my clearing and I offered him a meal. We sat and talked, and he asked me whose grave he’d seen bedecked with summer flowers. It occurred to me at that moment that “Reinadan” could be the one who’d died, that Man who had no honour, and that “Ulrich” could live on, and his deeds with him. And so I became Ulrich that day, and never looked back... until now.’

 ‘Ah,’ Merry said. ‘I see.’ He nudged Ferdi, who seemed to be deep in thought. ‘Come, Ferdi, Nell will be waiting.’

 ‘Oh...’ Ferdi said, and then, ‘O yes.’ He rose to his feet, catlike despite the hampering boots, and collected Ulrich’s plate. ‘Good night,’ he said to the Man, and for the first time the note of irony was gone from his voice.

 ‘Good night,’ Ulrich responded pleasantly. He shrugged deeper into his cloak and watched the Halflings walk away.