Chapter Twelve - Waiting Together

“Would you care to picnic under the veranda, Grandmother?” Saradoc set the wheelchair beside the gate then slowly escorted his grandmother with one arm while holding a picnic basket in the other.

“While the sun is still warm?” she asked, holding firmly onto his arm. “No, laddie. I can see a sunny patch yonder near the rose trellis.”

“But that is a long way for you to walk,” he replied.

“I’ll tell you when it’s a long way for me to walk, young hobbit!” Mirabella playfully patted his hand, interlocked with hers.

Saradoc laughed, “Yes, Ma’am!”

“Mira!”

Saradoc turned round to see their friend running up to the gate. “Esmeralda! I’m glad you got word that Grandmother decided to picnic outdoors today.”

“I did, and I am glad; isn’t it a beautiful day outside?” Esmeralda tried to help, taking the basket from Saradoc.

“The basket is quite heavy--why don’t you walk with Grandmother?”

Mirabella cackled. “First he tells me the trellis is too far to walk, and now he tells you the basket is too heavy! Stubborn Brandybucks! Ha!” she tenderly rubbed the new hand clasped in her own, “we Took women have more fiber than you Brandybuck lads like to think.”

“Gracious me, and now I’m outnumbered!” laughed Saradoc, now carrying the basket in both arms.

“Yes you are; now be a good lad and spread the blankets for us by the trellis.”

While Saradoc hurried on ahead, Esmeralda became curious. “I thought Mister Rory forbade Sara from leaving his room?”

“He did,” Mira replied, “but as the lad is my attendant this visit, he is allowed to accompany me to walk in outside in the gardens.”

“Oh.”

“Well, that and I also told Rory that if he made that boy spend one more day indoors without any fresh air, I was going to turn him over my knee.” Mira smiled satisfactorily when her statement garnered a hearty laugh from Esmeralda. “My Rory can never say ‘no’ to me, and I suppose I could never say ‘no’ to him, either.”

After a couple minutes of walking, they reached the large blankets that were spread out on the ground by Saradoc. Both young hobbits helped the old matron to sit down on the ground then set up the picnic meal.

“When do you think they will return?” Saradoc was pouring water into three mugs.

“Whom? My brother and father?” Esmeralda took two mugs, sitting one before Mirabella and one next to her own plate. “I imagine tomorrow, perhaps? I don’t know how far they’ve traveled so I can’t be certain as to when they will return.”

“The Grey Havens lie directly west, about a day and a half’s drive from the Shire.” Both young hobbits looked at the elderly woman.

Esmeralda voiced their questioning gaze, “How did you know that?”

“Isengar told me everything from his first adventure all the way through to his last one at Rivendell.” she looked out westward where she thought the Elf harbor town lay in the far distance. “Everyone laughs at him, calls him unnatural. But they don’t know anything. Gandalf brought him home the first time with a six-inch wound stitched up in his right side. Our brothers tried to pass it off as him falling out of a moving wagon. How absurd! The boy had no bruises, no scrapes or cuts--except for a black eye and the jagged scar, no other wounds were visible. There is no possible way for a hobbit to fall out of a moving wagon and not bear other injuries. And then I’d hear him at night crying about killing…,” Mira trailed off. “No, I don’t believe any of that happened in the Shire. My brother may like to embellish his tales to make them sound grander than they already are, but he has never lied to me about his wanderings.”

“Then why don’t other hobbits just let him be?” asked Saradoc.

Mira took yet another pause from her plate, considering her grandson’s question. “I suppose it’s because people just like to talk. I daresay when it isn’t Isengar they’re jeering its Bilbo Baggins. Fortinbras may overstep his duties in looking after Isengar, but one can’t wholly blame him. When I was eighteen years old and Isengar was sixteen, Hildifons, our older brother, decided one morning to go on a long journey alone. He took his pony and set out for Bree. Isengar begged to go with him,” Mira sighed, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m so glad that he didn’t. It broke mother’s heart when our brother failed to return. I believe Fortinbras is frightened of the prospect of certain young hobbits following in Isengar’s footsteps, and then ending up like Hildifons.”

This bit of Took history was interesting to Esmeralda. “How did Hildifons end up?”

“For the most part, we only guessed that he died somehow,” said Mira, “but apparently Gandalf knew who or what killed him and when. After father’s death, he told Isengar about it, and then Isengar told me.”

Esmeralda never considered the dangers that lurked outside of Gandalf’s control. She loved her own brother dearly, and it would be her fault for not saying something sooner to her parents if anything happened to Paladin. Now she understood. Grief filled her heart and she burst into tears.

Mirabella reached over and held the girl in her arms. Saradoc gave her his handkerchief. “There now, lass,” she soothed Esmeralda. “You and I can wait together. We will wait for our brothers’ return, eh?”

Sniffling, Esmeralda nodded, “I’d like that--thank you.”

* * * * * *

Paladin paused in his storytelling; after all these years, the grief his sister felt in the garden now weighed on him. Then he heard sniffling nearby--it was Pearl. He said nothing, merely handing her his handkerchief like young Saradoc of long ago.

“Why don’t we all see if Dahlia is in need of help with supper or getting more firewood?”

“Please don’t stop, Papa,” Pervinca pleaded in a soft voice.

“We have all been sitting for a long time, Sweet Pea,” he said, “Let’s move about for a while then we can meet back here when all is done.”

Quietly, the children got up to see about Dahlia and supper. Merry walked alongside his uncle out to the woodpile in the barn, all bundled up with little Pippin tagging behind them. Pippin was giggling as he stomped in nearly every water puddle.

“Pippin lad, you will get yourself all wet doing that,” said Paladin, lifting the child into the wheelbarrow he then continued on towards the barn to fetch dry wood. “At least the rain has stopped long enough for us to bring fire wood inside.”

“Uncle?” Merry asked.

“Yes, Merry?”

“Was there ever any danger out there? I mean the kind that Gandalf couldn’t put a stop to.”

Paladin thought about it while they stopped and loaded up the barrow, then let out a long breath. “I didn’t think about it then, but I suppose there is always an element of danger when one leaves his home behind. The only danger I remember from that time is the poor unfortunate who was giving us chase--and I still don’t know why he was chasing us. Gandalf never said more than that the creature was following him, and he wasn’t the only one he caught doing so.” Paladin once more picked up the five-year-old and carefully placed him atop the wood, then lifted the wheelbarrow to head back to the smial. “Hold on to the sides, Pippin.”

If his uncle went on one adventure…Merry suddenly had a thought. “You’re not thinking of going on any more adventures, are you Uncle?”

“Absolutely not!” laughed Paladin. “I have too many responsibilities.”

“What if you didn’t have all these responsibilities?”

“Then I suppose I would be like Bilbo; wandering and tramping everywhere and be the talk of the Shire.”

Merry felt the cold November chill seep clear through his jacket. Pulling his cloak closer about him he ventured another question. “What about Gandalf?”

Paladin set the wheelbarrow down near the kitchen door. “Mercy, child!” Paladin chuckled. “How many more questions do you have inside you?” He lifted Pippin up off of the wood and then set him down on the ground.

“One more,” undaunted, Merry went on, “If I went on an adventure like Bilbo to fight dragons and trolls…would you miss me?”

Paladin stood smiling, running his hand through the boy’s curls then pulled him into a hug, “Of course I’d miss you. And like Esmeralda waited for me, I would wait for you.” Merry wrapped both arms around his uncle’s waist.

Not to be outdone by his older “brother”, Pippin asked, “If Merry gets to go on a ‘venture, can I go too, Papa?”

“No, you may not!” Paladin smirked, placing two small pieces of wood in Pippin’s arms to carry inside, “I need someone to stay behind and help me gather firewood!”

“All right, I’ll stay, Papa.”

“Thank you, Pip.”