14. Brothers

June 14, 1421

For the first time in two years, every window in the Great Smials in Tuckborough was open and pouring music and light into the summer night.  The few in the surrounding area who were too ill to attend or had the misfortune of being otherwise occupied had no difficulty in imagining the crowded feast hall that occupied a large portion of the green hill, likely crammed with hobbits, tables groaning under the weight of food and drink.  Some had already spilled out into the courtyard and gardens, and inside, the small parlors and front rooms had been claimed by the more timid who sought to escape the noise and tension in the hall.  More than merriment was in attendance at young Peregrin Took’s birthday party, and speculation ran wild as to what would come of his latest act of defiance.

Though the near-sacred rules of hospitality had forced Paladin Took to grant welcome to all of his son’s guests, including the Brandybucks, nothing could make him enjoy it.  The chilly courtesy exchanged between Master and Thain had left those seated closest to the head table unusually subdued until they had found excuses to drift to other parts of the room.  Mingling happily at the loaded tables and at various points throughout the hall the Bolgers, Banks and other visitors found themselves convenient conversational covers for the assembled Tooks and Brandybucks to trade discreet greetings under the Thain’s disapproving eye.

“Well, everyone else seems to be having a good time,” Merry murmured to Pippin as they carried back brimming mugs of dark ale to the fireside corner where Frodo, Estella, Rosie and Sam had settled themselves.

“Now that I think about it, forcing those two back into the same room may not have been the smartest thing…” his cousin replied, nodding back at their fathers who were studiously ignoring each other, to the great and obvious annoyance of their respective spouses.

“Mother won’t stand it for long,” Merry chuckled, glancing back.  “She’ll dunk them both, family heads or no, if something doesn’t happen soon.”

Esmeralda Brandybuck, seated between her brother and her husband, certainly looked less than pleased with her silent dinner companions.  The way her fist tightened periodically about the wine cup clenched in her hand, she looked likely to prove Merry’s prediction correct before evening’s end.  Saradoc, who could usually be counted on to make small talk with the dullest of gaffers as well as with his closest friends, was paying a ridiculous amount of attention to the food on his plate.  Her attempts to draw him into conversation with her brother merely garnered wordless assent and the occasional derisive snort.  During a short break while Paladin had left the table, she’d hissed her discontent in her husband’s ear, fingers pinching into his arm to press her point.

“Must you both continue behaving like sullen schoolboys the night through?  This is a birthday party!”

“You know my mind on this, Esmeralda.  It’ll be a fine snow in July before I apologize for my existence and for my son’s.  Let your pig-headed brother come to his senses and I’ll be waiting open-armed.”

“We’re here, aren’t we?  We were invited, we came…”

“For Peregrin.  You saw Paladin’s face when we arrived.  He’d rather see us shot than drinking his ale.”

“Saradoc Brandybuck, that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say!  Shot indeed!  You two are hopeless!” she finished loudly and turned to her sister-in-law with a rueful smile.  “Dear Eglantine, what are we to do with these stubborn old hobbits?”

“I dare say we’d find life too quiet by half without their fussing,” the small Mistress answered softly.

“You’re probably right,” Esmeralda replied, shaking her head and squeezing the other’s hand.

Their murmured conversation was cut short a few moments later by the Thain’s return, his stern presence breaking the pleasant contact between them.  Staring hard at her brother’s frowning profile, she again wished for the lively girl he had married, a sometime companion of her own youth, who seemed to peek out from time to time from behind the pale face of the melancholy woman Eglantine had become.  Esmeralda looked back out over the room, packed wall to wall with hobbits, young and old, enjoying the fruits of her nephew’s thankless work.  Merry had been increasingly fretful on his cousin’s account and Pippin’s fraying temper showed more with every passing week.  The thought of legitimately confronting her brother for what his pride and inflexibility were doing to their children had been too tempting to pass up.  Now she wondered whether anyone could get through to him at all.  She shook her head and caught sight of her son, literally head and shoulders above the rest, making his way towards his friends at the other end of the hall, Pippin trailing in his wake.

As they passed a small crowd of young hobbits, they were grabbed up with a whoop and drawn to the center of the hall, the assembled youths chanting, “Give us a song!  Give us a tale!  We’re happy and merry, now earn your ale!”  No few of their elders joined the cry, glad for a break from the tension that radiated from the head table.  Relieved of their mugs and thrust into the spotlight, Merry and Pippin shrugged and grinned, and launched into one of their favorite old drinking songs.  One followed another, loud songs, short tales, all so well known the hall burst in with each chorus and snickered well in advance of each comic turn told.

When they finally paused to drain the frothy mugs a dark haired lass offered up, Esmeralda sensed a shift in her brother’s tense posture and she glanced over to find him drawing a deep breath to speak.  His narrowed eyes were fixed on Merry’s back as the young hobbit chatted easily with the group of lads about him and she felt her heart drop to her toes.  The building storm was about to hit.  She saw that Pippin had caught his father’s mood and stepped purposely across Paladin’s field of vision, drawing the old hobbit’s gaze and letting some of his own anger flash across the gulf between them.

“I’ll have a tale from you, my lads!” Paladin growled, voice stilling the babbling crowd.  “A tale of dutiful, loyal sons, if you know one.”

Setting a calming hand on Merry’s arm, Pippin stepped forward with a short bow, still holding his father’s intense scrutiny.

“I know just the thing,” he said softly, and standing alone before the head table, he began to speak.

“Far to the south and east, past the Misty Mountains and the fair rolling plains of Rohan lay the besieged realm of Gondor.  Its last and strongest fortress, the White City of Minas Tirith, was set against the flanks of Mount Mindolluin, and its seven circling walls, each thicker than the last, led up to the Citadel and Tower where the Stewards ruled while awaiting the return of the King.  Long did these noble Men hold back the Dark Lord’s armies, whose fearsome lands lay near enough to see from the city’s walls.  Only the river Anduin and the brave soldiers holding the bridge in Osgiliath stood between the Enemy and the peaceful West.

“The Lord Steward that I speak of had two sons, both fair and brave and honorable, both loyal to their people and their father in equal measure.  The eldest was a mighty captain and leader of men, and he excelled in all feats of war.  He bought many resounding victories at the head of his troops, heavy cavalry and armored men crushing the orcs against the pale stone of the ruined city of Osgiliath.  The younger waged a different sort of conflict with the Enemy, capturing spies and harrying the Dark Lord’s minions from within the occupied lands of Ithilien.  That fair land, once known as the garden of Gondor, had long fallen under the shadow and none lived there now save the young Captain’s Rangers, who roamed its quiet paths and hidden dells beneath the Enemy’s fearsome eye.

“Over long years, dark years, of growing threat each shining victory brought the eldest higher in his father’s favor and eclipsed the silent successes of his brother, though it should be said that naught but love lay between the two.  When dark and fateful quest led the first from the White City never to return, the Steward turned his face from his youngest in bitterness, that the one he loved best had gone so untimely while this other remained.  And as he raged and mourned inside his Tower, the Dark Lord moved his hand and his armies swept through ruined Osgiliath and took the bridge, forcing the young Captain to withdraw to Minas Tirith’s walls.  Yet the Steward sent him forth again, coldly asking of his son before the council, ‘Is there a captain here who still has the courage to do his lord’s will?’

“‘Since you are robbed of my brother,’ his son answered, ‘I will go and do what I can in his stead, if you command it.’

“‘I do so,’ the old man replied, though it was known to all present that no force that could be gathered in the city this day could hope to retake the bridge against so many.

“‘Then farewell, but if I should return, think better of me,’ the young Captain replied and walked away, back straight and heart broken by his father’s last cold words.

“‘That depends upon the manner of your return.’”

Pippin drew a shaky breath, heart hammering as it had that day, tongue straining to cry out against the injustice playing out before him, yet bound by duty and fear to remain silent.  He closed his eyes and again took up the tale.

“Of those who left, a full third never returned, and fevered by his wounds, the young Captain did not hear his father’s last despairing words as he was laid at the Steward’s feet.  Dismissing his guards and servants, the old man turned from his duty, saying, ‘I have sent my son forth unthanked, unblessed, out into needless peril, and here he lies with poison in his veins.  The House of the Stewards has failed.’

“He left his people to fight alone, even as the city began to burn, and he sat and mourned his sons, the one that had died and the one that yet lingered, each dutiful to the last.”

Silence followed Pippin’s last words, his audience fixed upon the narrow space between father and son, fairly crackling with pent up emotion.  The entire hall waited with bated breath, not daring a word or move lest it should call down the lightning that brewed in their midst.  The rows between Thain Paladin and his son were quickly becoming legendary even outside Great Smials.

The sudden cry of a little child broke the spell, however, and time abruptly resumed its course.  Each turned to their neighbors, digesting this new tale, a few ladies dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs.

Pippin snatched a mug from a nearby table and strode quickly from the hall.  Heart still pounding he reached the dark stables and leaned back against his pony’s stall door.  He could still see the pyre behind his closed eyes, the Steward’s grief-maddened face as he railed against Gandalf’s last appeal.  He’d never thought to see that terrible old man again, and now he feared to look too hard or long into his father’s face, lest he should find that lurking bitterness, that seed of madness and fear in the clear gray eyes.

His ear caught soft footsteps approaching in the night, and he considered for a moment ducking back into the shadows.  ‘No…  Let it come,’ he thought, and stood still, gazing blankly at the wall across the way.

“What happened to him?” his father’s voice rumbled from the warm darkness at his shoulder.

“The Steward?  He died by his own hand soon after, mad with grief and the Enemy’s lies.  Faramir lives still.”

“The young captain?”

“Yes, though he is the Steward now…  You read his letter, remember?  You know, I felt very badly for him, that his father fell so far from him…  I never thought…  I never thought I’d see such blind and bitter judgment again.”

Pippin turned to look at his father and found that his words had struck home.  Shock and disbelief altered the spare lines of Paladin’s face.

“How can you think that?  I could never turn my back on you, Peregrin, not for all the mischief in the world!  I’d never….”

“I know…  I was always the favored son,” Pippin said softly and silently walked out.

The murmured words still hanging in the air before him, Paladin felt the world turn on its ear and the cold light of understanding cut past pretense and pride, like a knife through butter.  His son knew he could do no wrong, he’d never doubted his place was safe in his affections.  But if Pippin was the favored son, who stood in his shadow, unthanked, and had been sent away for bitterness and senseless enmity?

“Merry...”

His nephew’s absence had loomed large in the last few months, disturbing even him, though he couldn’t have put into words his unease until this very moment.  He could see it now, that these lads had been inseparable, like brothers.  The simple phrase stuck like a burr to the tattered edges of his heart.  Like brothers, and he had tried to separate them with his anger and fear, and his need to assign blame for the heartache of that dreadful year.  It was fast becoming clear their time away had held more than a pleasant ramble about foreign parts, and that it had drawn them closer than ever.

“Like brothers…” he murmured.

His sister’s son stepped from the shadows, as if called by Paladin’s fresh regrets.

“I did my best to dissuade him from going, you know.  I knew it would be dangerous, and that leaving without a word would hurt you all.  But there was no talking him around.  You know Pippin…” Merry said walking past to where is own little mare waited patiently in her stall.

Paladin watched silently as the young hobbit started to groom his dark mount.

“He held his own, though, even among Men twice his size and age.  He has earned a place of great respect from those he has met, and not always by his charm, as we might be tempted to think…”

He paused a moment and looked back at Paladin.  “I don’t imagine he told you, but he saved that young captain’s life.  He saw the Steward’s madness and countered it, at great risk to himself.  You should know that.”

“Thank you.”

Merry finished saddling the mare in silence and led her towards the open door.

“I don’t need thanks for what I do with a willing heart, and I love my cousin

dearly, but if you wish to do right by him, stop tugging at the loyalties you helped to bind his life with, it’s tearing him apart.  You’ll lose him just as sure as…” he finished, waving vaguely eastward with a sigh.  “Goodnight, uncle,” he added, guiding the mare out into the night.

***    ***   ***

Dark eyes watched from the nearby hedge that bordered the courtyard, following the tall figure that rode through the gate.  Distracted by the slow movements of the aged Thain as he emerged from the stables, the watcher lost sight of the rider and cursed under his breath.  The old hobbit in the courtyard paused, gray head turning this way and that, before finally passing into the well-lit smial.  The watcher let out his fear-held breath.  It would not do to be seen lurking here, particularly not by that hobbit.  The old fool might well remember his face from two summers past, despite the new scars that had altered his features, and he might too recall that he had been among those missing after his daughter’s kidnapping.  It had been a pleasure and a relief to leave that haughty wildcat in the Men’s care, though he’d not been aware of their specific intentions at the time.  It had been a brutal and shocking experience, but thrilling too, to see so many rules broken by these strangers, and he saw that his own master’s words were true:  might made right, and it was best to find oneself at the stronger end of that equation.  He grinned in the dark and slipped over the wall behind him, slipping through the gardens to rejoin his four companions on the edge of town.  Pervinca Took had been easy to take, but his current target would prove to be more challenging by far.  Chuckling low in his throat, he mounted his small pony and signaled his companions eastward.

“Foxhunt, boys.  Pick off the fox tonight and we’ll have a shot at the vixen sooner than expected.”