Chapter Thirteen: River Diggings

Pippin was the one casting occasional glances at his wife as they walked back to their quarters after the party. She had unconsciously raised her shoulder under the arm of his that was linked with hers, supporting him, in defense of the occasional limp, as she had since the day after they wed.

A faint smile played about her face, but her eyes remained focused forward.

“Did you -- did you enjoy your party then, husb--Pippin?” she asked. Unconsciously, she darted her tongue out to quickly trace along her lips in search of lingering sweetness.

“Aye,” Pippin breathed out, watching the tongue’s path so intently that he stumbled as they walked, to be caught by Diamond’s arm.

They had reached the door to their quarters now, and Pippin withdrew his arm to open it and usher Diamond in. Once inside, he turned to face her.

“Dia-- wife,” he began. “Did you -- did you do tha’ deliberate?” Pippin’s own tongue came out to lick his bottom lip.

“What was that?” Diamond asked calmly.

She remained calm as Pippin hesitated a mere second longer, then stepped forward and leaned his head down to be close to hers. His hand cupped the dark curls at the back of her head as he closed his eyes and moved his mouth to meet hers. Even without the aid of confections, this second kiss was a sweet one.

And so was the one after that, and the next one, and the one which followed, and so on.

Sage finally tired of knocking and opened the door to poke her head in of her own accord the morning when the initial goodbye kiss had evolved rapidly into repeated busses interspersed with giggles on both sides. The arrival of the kitchen lass to collect the first breakfast things did finally prompt Pippin to leave, and he walked through the corridors with more of a spring in his step than he had had for weeks.

An evening came when Pippin and Diamond sat with a draught board between them, but Pippin’s mind was not on the game.

“Do you enjoy it, then, this kissing that we’ve been doing?” he asked Diamond, raising his bottom slightly from his chair to lean forward and brush his lips quickly across hers.

He certainly enjoyed it; no wonder Merry had carried on so with all those lasses in their earlier Crickhollow days! In fact, once the weather warmed up again, that spot on the Brandywine would be a fine one to take a lass for some kissing, and perhaps some cuddling, and perhaps a wee bit more.

“Yes,” Diamond answered, her cheeks blushing pink -- but only faintly -- and her head dipping slightly while her smile remained. “I do enjoy it.” It was as those lasses in the books had said: quite a wonderful thing to kiss and be kissed in return.

“I’m glad,” Pippin said with a grin, abandoning his chair to plop beside her on the sofa and take her in his arms. He brought their faces close together and rubbed noses with her, but then laughed and began to sing a silly ditty.

“When I was a wee lad,
My Mama kept me in.
But now I am a great lad,
And fit to serve the king.
Oh, I can wield a sword,”

He closed his eyes briefly and pressed his lips firmly against the center of Diamond’s.

“And I can carry a pipe.”

He kissed her again, parting his lips this time to run his tongue along her mouth.

“And I can kiss a bonny lass--”

Pippin shifted Diamond’s position a bit and cocked an eye over her shoulder to check on the mantel clock.

“--at ten o’clock at night!”*

He closed his eyes again and pulled Diamond tightly into his arms, kissing her deeply. Pippin’s hand began to move along her shoulder blades, then traveled over the top of her shoulder, and moved toward the front of her bodice.

Diamond stiffened. A short, surprised gasp puffed into Pippin’s mouth.

He took both hands away and sat back, staring at the uncertainty he saw in his wife.

Diamond, dismayed, regarded her hobbit take on again a bit of the melancholy mien she had seen around Yule.

“Right,” Pippin said, running a hand backward through his curls. “I suppose we ought to finish this game, then.” He leaned forward to reach for a draught.


Pippin’s brow was creased above the letter he read. He smoothed it out before him on the dining table, then turned it to its side as he held it up again, still staring quizzically.

“Is there bad news?” Diamond ventured to ask quietly from her seat on the sofa.

“Hmph!” Pippin snorted. “I dinna know what ‘tis! You’re welcome tread it and tell me, if you like.”

He stood and tossed into Diamond’s lap the letter, which the hobbitess smoothed again before reading.

“Dear Pip,

It seems hard to believe that it’s been nearly a year since you left Crickhollow. I miss having you around (and not only because Estella now always knows who left a dirty dish in the sitting room!)

My father has had me up to Brandy Hall more and more this winter. I’m sure you’ve been quite busy at the Great Smials.

It might be nice if you could get away for a visit during one of these early thaws, though. The river is always quite interesting this time of year, and I recently received some news that I think you’ll find interesting as well.

Love,
Your (older) (wiser) cousin,
Merry”

Diamond chewed her lips together as she stared at the parchment, just as puzzled as her husband.

“Well?” Pippin asked, eyebrows raised, as he stood near her and bounced on the balls of his feet. “What do you think?”

“I think you shall need to go to Buckland,” Diamond said, standing and handing Pippin back the letter. “Would you like me to help you pack?”

“Aren’t--” Pippin began to ask as he followed her toward the bed chamber. “Dinna you want to come along?”

“Do you wish me to?” Diamond asked, turning back from opening a bureau drawer to regard Pippin.

He froze for a moment, then shifted uncomfortably and stared down at the floor, jamming his hands into his pockets.

Diamond smiled back at him. “I was not invited,” she said calmly.


The Brandywine roared through its course near the path Pippin and Merry walked. Heavy, frothing waves crashed into the remaining ice, causing the sheets begrimed with winter’s filth to loudly crack.

“Honestly, Merry, that’s the sort of letter my Da would write. It didn’t tell me anything!” Pippin complained as they strolled. The air was still chill, and their noses were red and running, but the degree of temperature had gone up just enough to promise spring.

Merry shrugged, unperturbed. “I wanted to see you, Pip,” he said, the red apples of his cheeks giving them a healthy flush. “And I knew if I piqued your curiosity, you’d come running.”

Pippin glared at Merry’s back as his cousin walked a couple of paces ahead along the muddy path, itself still covered in places with paper-thin sheets of ice.

Catching quickly up, he asked, “And why couldna you have come to the Smials, then?”

Merry’s bright face grew slightly shadowed as he shuffled a few steps ahead.

“Merry?” Pippin asked, concerned. “Merry? Why not? Is something wrong?”

Merry turned back to confront him then. “I didn’t want to see you with that Diamond-lass hanging about!” he burst forth. “I wanted to see my Pippin all on his own,” Merry stepped toward Pippin in the middle of this sentence and embraced the younger hobbit in a hug, “and to see that he is all right.”

“Of course I’m all right, Merry; why wouldna I be?” Pippin asked from within the circle of Merry’s arms, but his cousin ignored him and continued his speech.

“You said when you married her that you intended to be happy, Pip,” Merry said, pulling back slightly to place his hands on Pippin’s shoulders and look into those green eyes. “Are you happy?”

Pippin hesitated, his thoughts in turmoil at the answer to this question. He was happier than he had been before with Diamond, it seemed, and yet... He shifted his eyes from Merry’s face to stare at the river. A mighty wave chose that moment to cleave ice apart with a resounding crack.

“Oh, Pip,” Merry said in a voice full of resignation and pity as the loud noise faded away.

Pippin shook himself back into the moment and tried to grin at Merry.

“Now, cousin, ‘tisn’t as bad as all that!” he said. “I quite like having her about sometimes, and she’s quite pretty, and she’s really not a bad sort, and we do have some fun together, and...and,” Pippin trailed off as he saw Merry, who had moved back to stand on the other side of the path, shaking his head.

“Really!” Pippin exclaimed, then frowned, although it was mostly to himself. “It’s just -- just -- I dinna know!” He bent to pry out a stone that was lodged in the mud, then hurled it toward the river.

The stone’s arc completed, Pippin turned back to his cousin and attempted to look cheerful again. “Anyway, Merry, this interesting news of yours: what ‘tis it?”

“Oh,” Merry composed himself into a study of nonchalance as he began to walk the path again. “I’ve heard from Aragorn.”

Pippin whooped, and took a few running steps to catch up with his cousin. “What? You did? When? What did he say? Why didn’t he send me a letter as well? Well?”

Pippin stopped, his hands on his hips as he blocked the path in front of Merry, who was now giggling.

“Oh, Pip,” he guffawed. “I expect he thought it more likely that I would go from Buckland to Bree, as was indeed the case when Da and I rode in earlier this month for some of the Solmath spring merchandise. Old Butterbur gave me the letter then.”

“Butterbur!” exclaimed Pippin, then added wickedly, “So how long had this missive been sitting upon his shelf?”

Merry snickered in return. “Not too long, I think, although Strider did include in it an edict that he drafted up last year.” Merry sobered as he informed Pippin, “He asked me to pass its contents along to you and Sam -- well, to your Da, really, but you’d do just as well, was my thought--”

“What does the edict say?” Pippin asked, his tone reflecting Merry’s somber mood.

“He’s banned Men from the Shire,” Merry stated flatly.

Both he and Pippin gazed for a moment at the river, the comforting Brandywine along the outskirts of the Shire, which flowed to far lands where it became the Baranduin and traversed shores peopled with Big Folk who were both good and evil.

“That’s probably for the best, then,” Pippin said at last. He added cheekily, “Did you make Sam come all the way out here for this message, too?”

“Harrumph!” Merry snorted. “I’ll have you know I wrote him a nice letter and posted it just after I got word you were coming.”

“Oh,” Pippin laughed over his shoulder as he walked ahead. “So it’s just me that’s to be treated to this news in the magnificence of your presence.”

“Indeed,” Merry agreed unflappably as he followed. “Pip,” he called out a moment later, a new concern having crossed his mind. “You know, don’t you, that among you, me and Sam, there’s no way I’d want to let either of you down?”

“Of course,” Pippin turned to grin fondly at Merry as he walked backward on the path. “I’m sure we all feel the same way.”

Turning to face forward again, he asked, “So did Strider have any other news?”

“Actually,” and Merry’s slowness in bringing forth anything more of a response caused Pippin to cast a couple of quick glances over his shoulder, “he extended an invitation.”

“An invitation?” Pippin breathed out, having stopped upon the path.

“To visit him and Queen Arwen in Minas Tirith,” Merry elaborated. “I thought perhaps we could go this summer, as our fathers are still hale and soon, well...” He left the thought unfinished.

Pippin, farther ahead on the path, still had his back toward Merry, so the Brandybuck did not see the shadow pass in turn over the younger cousin’s face at these words.

“Pip?” Merry said into the silence. “What do you think? Is it bringing that Diamond-lass along, or what she’ll say, that you’re worried about? Because--”

“Merry,” Pippin interrupted, glad for the distraction from his thoughts. “You shouldna call her such,” he said, turning to face Merry again. “She is my wife,” he continued as he began walking backward once more along the path.

“She--oof!” he cried out as one ankle slipped into a hole created when the ice on a mud puddle broke. Pippin’s leg twisted away from him, tossing him onto his rump on the cold ground.


“How is he?” Estella asked as Merry reentered the corridor from Pippin’s room. Both Brandybucks looked weary as the first shafts of light streamed through the windows.

“About the same,” Merry shrugged and then yawned. “Won’t let me call a healer down from Brandy Hall, says it’s not as bad as all that, but keeps asking for Diamond. He hasn’t slept much,” Merry added, and yawned again himself.

“You know, Merry--” Estella began, only to have that hobbit cut her off with a groan.

“Please don’t start that again!” he said sharply. “You’ve said it already last evening and again when you brought tea in the night.”

“Well, it’s just that--” Estella started.

“Estella!” Merry snapped loudly, and flushed a guilty look at the door as a groan came from Pippin’s bedroom after the noise. “We’ll talk about it later, all right?” he said in a more subdued tone.

Estella nodded curtly back and headed to the kitchen to begin preparing breakfast. At least she would have more ammunition for her argument. Estella had been contending that they ought to remove to Brandy Hall for a while now. It was too unreliable to count on a healer seeing or hearing a signal from Crickhollow, when at the Hall they could be summoned instantly -- a much better situation from which to start a family, she felt.

Merry, though, was resisting the change. It had taken him quite a few months to adapt to Pippin’s absence from Crickhollow. Estella suspected that, even now, her husband would be happy to see his cousin return to live with them and for things to continue on as they had been.

She sighed as she set Merry’s porridge in front of him on the table, squeezing his shoulder to show she was not angry.

“So, do you expect Diamond to come?” she asked as she sat across from him with her own bowl.

Merry gave her a look above his spoon.

“All right,” Estella answered with exasperation, “when do you expect Diamond to come?”

Merry swallowed and dabbed at his face with a napkin before taking a swallow of his tea and working through the answer.

“Well, the servant who answered my horn-call late yesterday would have had to take the message back to the Hall, and pass it on to someone who was to ride to the Great Smials. Even if that hobbit rode cross-country through the night, and fast, he wouldn’t get there before this morning.

“Then he’d have to relay the message to Diamond, and she’d have to pack something, I’m sure, and then she’d not be likely to travel so swift, either. If she’s on the road in the evening, she’ll probably stop at an inn. No, I don’t think we can reasonably expect her before some time tomorrow.” Merry took a decisive sip of his tea.

“Why do you suppose he wants her here, anyway?” Estella grumbled as she rose to collect her bowl and spoon some porridge into a smaller vessel to be put on a tray for Pippin.

Merry shook his head over his mug of tea. “There’s just no reasoning with him if he gets his mind set on something when he’s ill,” he said.

“But you’ve said yourself that he isn’t hurt that bad!” Estella said, the exasperation reaching her voice again as she turned from the counter, hands on her hips, to stare at Merry. “It’s likely nothing more than a sprained ankle.”

Merry’s eyes grew haunted and he absently rubbed at his right arm, causing Estella to shiver inwardly, as he shook his head.

She thought he wouldn’t answer as he lifted his tea mug and swallowed again, but he put it down and spoke now, glancing once at the paper calendar that hung neatly upon a nail in the kitchen.

“It’s the leg he injured during the War,” Merry said. “It always aggravates Pippin some, and this just made it worse. Plus, it’s brought back other things as well, I think, especially with the dates coming on as they are.”

He looked soberly at his wife, as she stood in their kitchen in the Shire he and Pippin had fought to protect.

“Pippin’s deeds in the War were just as great, and as valorous, as you seem to think my own,” he told her with a touch of irony. In utter seriousness, then, his eyes shifted from her to stare out the window in the direction. “And for such blows, Aragorn’s love was our reward,” Merry whispered.


“Hunh?” Merry started awake from his chair late that evening as he heard the insistent knocking at the door. Estella had sat with Pippin some during the day while he slept, but his nap had not lasted long, and both Brandybucks were anticipating another tiring night.

Pippin was not as ill as he had been at other times during his young life, Merry knew, but he was fretful, restless, and in pain. Those who watched with him did not have a restful time either.

“Coming!” he shouted to the door as he approached it. Estella, who had retired early, poked her head out of their bedroom door and stifled a yawn.

“Yes, who is--Diamond!” Merry exclaimed in surprise as he unlocked and opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

The young Mistress Took, so confident in her knocks a moment before, now looked uncertain. “The message said that Pippin had sent for me?” she answered in a questioning tone.

“Yes, yes of course he did,” Merry shook his curls and stepped back to let Diamond into the smial. He could see, beyond her, the movement of a lantern at the stable. “It’s just that, with the travel involved, we weren’t expecting you until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“My husband required me,” Diamond stated simply as Merry and Estella watched her push back the hood of her cloak. “I came as soon as I heard word.”

Merry led Diamond back to Pippin’s old room, the same where she had stayed on the earlier visit, while Estella quickly re-dressed and set out some tea and biscuits for the maid Trefoil, who had accompanied Diamond from the Smials for propriety’s sake.

Geranium wished she could have gone herself, but both she and Bluebell had given the tweenager stern instructions about knowing her place. Of course, that lass wasn’t a flibbertigibbet like the dismissed kitchen lasses had been, but it paid to be careful. If the visiting Bucklander, headed home to his wife and family, who happened to know the back-country way to Crickhollow and would serve as Diamond’s escort -- if he thought the Tooks had taken a turn for the taciturn in the young Mistress and her servant; well, then, so be it.

“Diamond,” Pippin groaned again as Merry opened the bedroom door.

“Yes, husband,” that lass answered immediately, stepping over the threshold in front of Merry.

Pippin startled in the dim room, surprised at the response.

“Diamond?” he repeated again, this time in wonder.

“Yes, Pippin, I am here,” she answered as she crossed the room to sit upon the edge of the bed and, feeling herself compelled to do so, place a kiss upon his forehead.

Pippin, exhausted from a nearly sleepless past night and day, could hardly think straight. His ankle was swollen; his leg throbbed; and other pains, both present and remembered, shot through his body.

“Diamond,” he whispered as he gritted his teeth and shifted his leg. “Fix it.”

Diamond smoothed Pippin’s curls back from his forehead, then poked gently at the swollen ankle before looking up at Merry, who still stood in the light of the doorway.

“Could you bring me some tea, please?” she asked politely. “And have you any arnica liniment?” she added as he turned to go.

“Aye,” Merry answered shortly, “It’s next to the chair.” Did the lass think they’d been doing nothing for Pippin? “What kind of tea should it be?” he asked aloud.

Diamond nodded in satisfaction as she spotted the liniment. She would not have to wait for her valise to be brought in to apply the arnica to Pippin’s swollen ankle. To the question of the tea, she responded, “It does not particularly matter which kind, so long as it is hot.”

As Merry padded off to fetch the tea, Diamond finished removing her cloak. She then glanced at Pippin, now tossing restlessly in the bed again, and then stepped into the shadows of the room to loosen the stays on her bodice.

She had suspected, when she received Merry’s message that Pippin had injured his leg and was asking for her, that her husband’s sleep might require aid. And, given the interest he had startled by expressing before he left the Smials on this trip -- well, she wanted to make him happy.

Diamond withdrew from the small bag she carried a sachet she had made and filled with dried lavender, rose petals, chamomile and hops. She turned her back to the bed to drop it down her dress into the center of her bosom, adjusting its fit.

Then Diamond turned back and crawled into bed with her husband, gently placing his head onto her chest where the sleep pillow lay.

Merry returned with a steaming mug of tea to find Diamond and Pippin both under the covers, she leaning half-recumbent upon the pillows, while his cousin’s head, in turn, was pillowed upon Diamond’s bosom.

“Er. Here’s the tea,” Merry said from the doorway. He noted that Pippin’s fidgeting seemed to have slowed, and his breath seemed to be calming.

“Thank you,” Diamond said, and reached out so that Merry came closer to put the mug into her hand. She took a swallow and smiled appreciatively. “It was a cold ride.” After a second sip, she added, “You may go now. I believe we shall be fine for the night.”

Merry could not help the mixed emotions he felt as he walked toward his own bedroom. It was no longer him taking care of his Pip; that Diamond-lass had taken his place. The same lass who had made Pippin so miserable when he wed. And yet...

And yet, she had already succeeded in calming him much more than Merry could; in fact, the hobbit looked to be almost peacefully asleep already! Perhaps there was something to Pippin’s stubborn requests for Diamond, and his insistence on her good qualities as the two cousins walked and talked. Perhaps Diamond was indeed good for Pippin. Perhaps.


_________
*Traditional nursery rhyme, adapted.