13. Plots & Devices

One of April’s drizzling showers had caught him out on his way back home from Hobbiton, and Pippin had decided to push on past the last inn on the road despite the cold trickle of rain snaking down his back.   He had almost taken Merry up on his invitation to escort young Posey back to Buckland and then on to Bree, but duty had pulled him westward once more.  Though he did not look forward to a return to Tuckborough, he felt he might as well get it over with early in the day and so make his escape to Whitwell in time for tea.  Little Perdita’s simple joys were all he wished to see today.

Merry had been right of course, as he usually was with this sort of thing.  Playing the part of a stubborn and foolish tween was wearing thin already, after less than six months, and he wasn’t certain how long he could swallow the lie.  His first act in his campaign to set things aright had been one of defiance, and though born of grief and compassion rather than premeditated thought, it had brought down a wall of bewildered hurt and anger between them.  Paladin had wanted his son back, the cherished, engaging young scamp who had been gloriously spoiled by one and all since his first day.  He had not been ready for the self-assurance and grim determination behind the eyes of the tall captain who had led off a contingent of archers to beat back their enemies.  He had not known how to greet the armed stranger that had met him near Sarn Ford, calmly cleaning the blood from his sword as he approached.  This was not his boy, though the features were the same and the laughter still clear as a bell.  Paladin had been glad to turn his anger on the hobbit at Pippin’s side, as unfair and childish as it had seemed even then.  It had simply been easier to blame Merry for those changes than to accept that fate had torn from him two children and only this dark-clad warrior would return.  Regrets had come, of course, but far too late to take back the harsh words spoken.  Pippin had ridden off after Merry and not once looked back.

Paladin had locked Tookland tight around himself, quietly nursing the anger and resentment he had already long harbored against those whom he blamed for the loss of his own.  There had been enough noise made over those casualties the Tooks had suffered to justify the continued guard.  Months later, when admitting he had erred would have brought more relief than shame, the attempted visits from the Mayor and others concerned about the situation had made it impossible to back down without loosing face.  He would not be dictated to or bullied into anything by anyone.  He would maintain at least the authority of the office, as hollow an honor as that might be without an heir to pass it on to.  It had been unfortunate for them both that Pippin had inherited so much of his father’s temper.  Neither had been prepared for the confrontation that had attended his recent return to Great Smials, and though it had ended in tears rather than anger, it had not been the homecoming either had imagined.  Breaking the stop Paladin had put on the Post had publicly set them in opposition and pride would allow no quarter, even for his son.  November had been a dark month, waiting for Pippin’s return, and if the archers ignored their orders in his regard, no one dared to remind them to his father.  No apologies had been given between them, but the grinning mischief-maker had pounced back into their midst, stealing pastries and talking up the maids, and Paladin had buried the dark memory of their last words in the stables.  The son he remembered and missed was back, as if the past two years had been undone.

The Thain would therefore have been entirely surprised to find that a quiet sort of revolution was taking effect under his very nose, in his very own study in fact, and that Pippin was well aware of his thoughts on his account.  Reginard Took, who had been the Thain’s assistant and scribe since he had taken office, would certainly have been the last hobbit most would suspect of anything so bold, but he had approached Pippin to offer his support.  It had been very surprising indeed to find an ally in his father’s most trusted associate.  Unbeknownst to all but a chosen few, Reginard had been the hand behind the last few acts of the previous Thain, who in his dotage had left Tookland’s affairs to the whimsy of fate, and he had been the one to push for Paladin’s selection as heir according to the old customs, though others had felt no such confidence in a farmer born and raised outside of Great Smials.  The quiet hobbit had been a forgotten witness to the clashes between father and son, and was privy to the Thain’s rambling ruminations on Pippin’s behavior, past and present.  He had watched helplessly as grief and paranoia had slowly banished the awkward generosity and open-handed governance that had marked Paladin’s first few years in office.  Where he had been lenient in his adjudications of the matters brought before him, he was now harsh; where he had been generous with the needy, he kept all on tight rations; where his day had turned on the simple joys of his family, he now drove himself late into the night without a moment to spare for any of them.  Eglantine had come to Reginard early in the first months after Pervinca’s death, but there had been little either of them could do.  Quiet counter-orders and late night shuffling of resources had made some small difference for the residents of Great Smials, but it had taken Pippin’s return to shake the Tooks awake.

The news that the young hobbit was planning to take and deliver to the Bywater post office every letter he was given in the next three days had spread through Tuckborough like a flame through dry tinder.  It had taken him two days to find the opportunity to approach Pippin, but Reginard had finally caught him alone in the gardens at twilight, pale smoke twining about the branches above him.

“Hello, cousin,” Pippin had said, looking down at him from his perch on the tree’s lowest limb.  “Taking the air this fine evening?  I dare say you need it after a day in that stuffy old study.  I don’t know how you stand it…”

“Sometimes I don’t know either, but then I remember that I’d much rather hear news first hand than a week later in the kitchens,” he had replied.  “Nice view from up there I’ll warrant.”

“It is…  Stars in the branches and not another soul in sight.  It’s peaceful.”

Reginard had let the cold quiet stretch out. Two long days of testing out words for this very conversation and he’d merely realized that he had never looked past the joking face of this young cousin and hadn’t the faintest idea of how his advice would be received.

“This thing with the letters, you don’t really think he’ll let you go, do you?”

“When has another’s opinion ever stopped me, or any self-respecting Took, from doing a needful thing?”

“Things are different now…”

“I can see that,” Pippin had interrupted, dropping lightly from the branch.  “I intend to change them back, and you can tell my father that if you wish.”

“I’m not here as his aide, Peregrin.  I came to tell you…  to tell you I agree with you completely.  It’s about time we got things back to normal around here.”

The young hobbit had narrowed his eyes and placed a heavy hand on the portly hobbit’s shoulder.

“I’ll suffer no treasonous words against him, Reginard, not even from you,” he had said, the hard edge in his voice sharp as a knife.  “I love my father and I’ve no intention of pushing him from his rightful place or diminishing his authority in any way.”

“There are some who would welcome that very thing and will view all your actions in that same light.  This could divide the Smials when it most needs to stand united.”

“Then I’ll just have to make sure they don’t see a worthy rival to put forward.”

“That’s a dangerous game to play, Peregrin.  You do intend to take the thainship on his death, do you not?”

“Duty calls me to it, and I will do what I must.”

“Let us hope there is enough time to redeem your foolishness before that time comes.”

“It’ll be complicated no matter what happens.  I’ve no illusions on that matter.”

Reginard had offered Pippin his hand and felt the calluses on the slender fingers that grasped his own, the hard grip of a hobbit grown into his strength, and he had smiled in the moonlit dark.

“You can count on me.”

That conversation had been the first of many, and their secret collaboration was finally bearing fruit.  The exaggerated scale of Pippin’s demands made the milder changes that Reginard proposed easy to accept and, slowly but surely, the Tooks saw their lives return to normal.  The post resumed its services, the guards were withdrawn from the borders and the farming families on the outskirts of Tookland set to making the most of one of the greenest springs seen in the Shire, only surpassed by the previous year.

Yet a gaping maw of angry desperate tension lay between the Thain and his son. 

There had been too many words between them and no truth, until they could barely stand to stare each other in the face.  Pippin was gone for longer and longer periods of time, returning to report to his father as a mere formality before dashing off again, for Whitwell or beyond.

The wide door of Great Smials beckoned across the sodden courtyard as Pippin led his pony towards the stables.  By the time he’d seen her groomed and fed, the drizzle had ceased, and he threaded between the many puddles that lay in his path.  Doffing cloak and coat, both drenched to double their weight with rainwater, he took the time to soak his feet in the basin a pretty young maid set before him, as much to get warm as to rid himself of the mud spring always brought.  Berilac found him there, pensively swishing his toes in the now murky water.

“Cleaning up or making soup?”

“Ah…  Neither, actually,” Pippin answered, pulling his feet from the cold water with a frown.  “Heading in or out?” he asked, toweling off and setting the basin by the door.

“In.  Will the stars be out tonight do you think?”

“They’re always up there when you need them,” the young hobbit replied with a sigh.  A meeting tonight would mean a day’s delay before returning to his sister’s house.

Reginard nodded and led the way down the hall towards the Thain’s study.

Later that evening, once the majority of those living in the honeycombed tunnels of Great Smials had left the common rooms for their own quarters, Reginard found himself staring up at the stars through the new spring leaves in the ancient oak that marked the center of the garden.  Tucked away in the shadows above, Pippin blew small smoke rings into the cool air to join the high clouds sweeping in feathery wisps across the sky.

“It really is too bad about young Posey Hornblower, or Chubb I guess she is now. 

It must have broken her poor mother’s heart.”

“I worry more about her lad.  Bad enough to grow up without a father, but so far off…”

“Better that than what he’d suffer staying hereabouts, believe me.  Children can be awfully cruel, and often their parents are little better.”

They both stared up at the impartial stars, lost in their own thoughts, until the soft patter of returning rain drove them back indoors.

 “What news from the wider world?” Reginard inquired as they padded quietly past many doors to the small parlor that fronted his little family’s rooms.

“I’m not sure why you ask me, since you seem to know more about every fact and rumor I bring you.”

“I need to know what you noticed, what you chose to remember, Pippin.  That’s the only way I have of predicting just which way you’ll jump next,” he replied with a smile.

He poured them drinks and nodded to the paired chairs before the warm embers in the hearth.  The older hobbit couldn’t help but grin watching his young cousin squirm and twist to find a comfortable position for his too tall frame.

“It isn’t all that funny…” Pippin grumped, fondly remembering the pleasure of curling up in countless other cozy seats that now offered little ease.  “In all honesty, I spend more time at Brandy Hall because they’re rather more fond of overstuffed couches, with plenty of room for all this,” he added, waving down his long legs now sprawled out before him.  “That and a nice wide bed awaits me in Crickhollow, wide enough to stretch out and really sleep…”

“Well, creature comforts aside, how are our cousins fairing this year?”

“Better every day…  Have the wedding invitations arrived yet?”

Reginard hesitated a moment before nodding, all humor fled from his round face.  “I’ve managed to delay his decision, but I don’t know for how long.”

“I can’t believe he’s being so stubborn…  Why hold a grudge so long for so little reason?”

 “Little reason!  Pippin, I don’t think you fully realize what your disappearance did to your father.  It’s every parent’s nightmare, a child lost in the Old Forest!  That your uncle had lost no hobbits to its perils in all his years as Master was the only reason you were allowed to roam about Buckland at all.”

“But we were never in any danger!  The High Hay…”

 “Didn’t keep you in!”  Reginard interrupted.  “Don’t you see?  None lost in decades, and then you.  Not by accident, but led in through the gate.  Not a soul could reproach your father his anger at the Brandybucks.  But it has gone on long enough.  You have returned, despite all expectations, and it is time forgive and forget.”

“But how do we get those two back on speaking terms?  They won’t even write!”

“Well, if we can make him see that tradition requires it, the wedding might be an opportunity…”

“For disaster!  No, we can’t have them snarling at each other over the vows…  It’s Merry and Estella’s day, it shouldn’t be shadowed by stubborn old fools waging war.  But something public, a party or something…  Somewhere they would have to be civil, with plenty of drink…  And Aunt Esmeralda will do the rest!  She can’t abide this thing between them either.”

“The question is, what other event could they not refuse to attend?”

Pippin suddenly grinned, and a dangerous twinkle lit his eyes.  “Yes, I think that could work…  I know just the thing.  Leave the details to me, cousin, we’re going to get this nonsense dealt with by year’s end!”