Chapter 15: Lapidarium

The low fire which glowed in the bed chamber’s hearth gave off a faint glow, just enough that Diamond could see Pippin’s rest was again disturbed. Several nights, since their return from Buckland this Solmath, his restlessness had held a different quality. She watched, concerned, as his legs twitched again, reminding her of a description she’d read of a dog pursuing its prey in its dreams.

Her husband, though, seemed not to be the pursuer as he dreamt, but the prey itself. She recalled a tale Mistress Eglantine had once told, as they sat together to stitch, of a younger Pippin brash enough to nick vegetables from time to time from the fields of hobbit farmers who kept dogs on guard. Diamond wondered at both the effrontery and the bravery exhibited in such a tale. The experience he relived in his dreams must have made an indelible impression.

She could predict, this third night in a row his thrashings had awakened her, the course of actions Pippin would follow as he emerged from sleep. She was not wrong.

“Merry!” Pippin cried out as he sat bolt upright after jerking awake, panting heavily from his exertions. “Merry?” he whimpered again. His hands were held straight in front of him, his palms curved in upon themselves as if they clutched something invisible within them. “Merry, are you all right?” he called anxiously into the darkness.

Diamond kept her voice low and well-modulated as she responded to this question. She had sat up slowly, herself, when Pippin rose. “Merry is in Buckland,” she informed him. “He was fine when we left him and Estella, and you have had post from him nearly every day since. If he has mentioned anything untoward in those letters, you have not told me such. Merry should be fine,” she repeated. She surprised herself, also, with a small kindle of anger at the Bucklander. What manner of scrape had he led the younger cousin into, back in their rapscallion days, that still held such power to haunt?

Pippin slowly swiveled his head in Diamond’s direction. She saw, as the light from the fire caught in his green eyes, that he was still not yet quite awake.

“I know you’re hungry, Merry,” Pippin continued in a hoarse whisper. “I’ve got some lembas in my pocket -- we’d better have some. I’ve managed to free my hands,” he added, holding them up before Diamond. “These loops are only for show.”

She watched, stunned at this new development in the nighttime ritual, as Pippin fumbled with the invisible cords that did not bind his wrists, and then began groping clumsily in his half-asleep state at the sides of his nightshirt for pockets that did not exist.

‘Bound!’ Diamond thought. Such cruelty! Who in the Shire could have been so callous?

Blinking back the tears that pricked as she watched Pippin’s awkward movements, Diamond turned quickly to the stand by her side of the bed and withdrew from the top drawer the tin of shortbread biscuits that was her current snack to keep close at hand. She did not know what “lembas” was, but if her husband was a hungry hobbit, he should eat!

Diamond turned back and placed a biscuit on the bedclothes beneath one of Pippin’s flailing hands, where he quickly discovered it and pressed it to his lips for a nibble.

“Merry, you should eat, too!” said Pippin, still whispering, and held the opposite edge of the square biscuit to Diamond’s mouth.

“Yes, Pippin,” she responded softly, tears silently tracking their way down her face, and took a small bite.

Pippin took the biscuit back to himself to chew upon, and Diamond absently raised her hand and ate another she’d withdrawn from the tin for herself. Pippin continued to consume his with desperate eagerness, unnoticing of the crumbs which fell upon the sheets.

When he had finished, he rested for a few moments, then informed Diamond, “We had better start by crawling.”

Her consternation and confusion grew as he lowered himself to his stomach upon the bed, and then began crawling forward, worming his way across it bit by bit, with his hands and elbows doing most of the work of propelling his body and his legs trailing oddly behind him. Pippin crawled in a path that took him directly across Diamond’s knees, and she reached out and grasped to catch him as he crawled forward and began to tumble off the edge of the bed.

“Ah!” Pippin screeched, batting at her hands that clutched his sides as they both landed on their feet upon the floor by the bed.

“Pippin!” Diamond sobbed, her fingers convulsively tightening on his nightshirt as she pleaded--

--and he came fully awake. “Diamond?” Pippin asked in tentative confusion as he saw her standing before him.

Diamond nodded mutely and took his hand to lead him into the sitting room. This night, he made not even a pretense of reaching for the draughts game before which he had sat, nearly stupefied, the last two nights. Instead, when Diamond released his hand as she reached the sofa, Pippin sank immediately down onto it beside her and leaned forward into his wife’s arms so that she could hold him, trembling, against her breast for the next several hours.


Pippin looked guiltily from the corner of his eye at his wife, while his fork picked at the squab she had chosen for elevenses. She had tried to conceal them with powder, but he could still see the outlines of shadows beneath her eyes, and he had seen her stifle a yawn as she spoke with Geranium at the dining hall’s doorway.

‘Twasna fair! he thought, that such horrors as he’d known Outside should make their way in to still cause discomfort in the Shire. The Shire had had its own Troubles, true, but they had ended with the routing of the ruffians, he thought. Now it was he and Merry, and Sam, who brought their dark memories within the borders.

Pippin sighed and rested his chin in one hand, the elbow propped upon the table, as he twirled the fork through his potatoes with the other hand.

A low buzz sounded through the dining hall, and he looked up to see Diamond place her hand upon his arm and lean forward to ask, “Husband? Are you well?”

Pippin looked a long moment into her eyes before he straightened and responded with forced cheer, “O’ course I am. Just taking a bit of a rest, ‘tis all,” and reapplied himself to his food with gusto.

‘Twas no reason to make the dear lass suffer more on account of him, Pip thought as he swallowed and the comments of the hobbits at the other tables found a new topic. He frowned slightly at one hobbit he could see at a table end who was waving his arms about to illustrate a point and letting the squab and potatoes on Diamond’s menu grow cold. Catching Pippin’s eye upon him, that other hobbit quickly wrapped up his story and renewed his own attentions to his plate.

‘Twas strange, this. The fast-approaching month of Rethe ‘twas the first since the Quest that Pippin had not a cousin nearby. Well, he thought balefully, his eyes sweeping the room as he held his full fork poised midway to his mouth, that wasna exactly true. Plenty of Tooks and Took relations filled the Great Smials -- he could be surrounded by these cousins if he so wished -- but nane among them was a fellow Traveller. They wouldna understand.

Pippin sighed again, and looked down at his plate as he swallowed. He felt Diamond’s hand upon his own once more. As he glanced in her direction, a sudden memory assailed him of what he’d seen upon waking the night before. Diamond’s tear-stained face rose before him, her hands clenched upon his nightshirt as she pleaded.

Pippin gasped and had stood to his full height, his fork clattering onto the now-empty plate, before he realized what he was doing. “I -- I’m sorry,” he said in a strangled voice to his wife, and waved a hand vaguely toward the rest of the dining hall before hurriedly walking out.

Had he hurt her? Pippin’s thoughts reeled as he strode quickly through the corridor. Thought she was an orc, perhaps, and lashed out against her? He swiped the back of his hand hastily across his eyes as he walked. Or had he merely frightened her with his nighttime antics, and wasna that bad enough?

“Husband!” Diamond had whispered back in the same strained tone to Pippin’s strange apology at the dining table. At his abrupt departure, she crumpled her napkin into a ball and dropped it, the end trailing into the small pile of potatoes still on her plate, while in the same fluid motion she stood and curtsied to Paladin and Eglantine before following him. “Pippin?” Diamond cried out softly as she took her own first few steps into the corridor. Tears again pricked her eyelids.

Frightened her, indeed! Pippin thought with a snort that was wet from the running of his nose and his eyes. Why should such a lass of the Shire know of wickedness and orcs and other such fell creatures? What need had she to know of--? He stopped abruptly and gasped again, steadying himself with one hand upon the wall of the corridor. The next dream. The next anniversary, he knew of a certainty.

‘Twould occur in a few nights’ time. And if he had nae yet physically harmed his wife, ‘twas a great likelihood that ‘twould happen as his nightmares returned him to the fierce desire to fight off the Dark Lord’s menace. Sauron. Pippin shuddered and closed his eyes as he braced more heavily against the wall. Diamond shouldna -- shouldn’t she? -- know of that.

“Pippin?”

The soft tread had gone unheard, and he jumped at the warm hand upon his shoulder.

“Are you all right?” Diamond asked again, reaching her other hand toward his forehead as the green eyes flew open to look at her from behind a film of tears.

Pippin straightened away from the wall and caught her hand in his before it reached his forehead. He held firmly but not tightly to her palm as he placed his other hand upon Diamond’s shoulder in turn.

She did not speak, but merely stared with troubled gray eyes in her pale face as Pippin’s features became resolute and his piercing green eyes studied her with keen intensity for a long moment.

“Aye,” Pippin breathed at last. “’Twill be all right,” he said in a voice rough at the edges, then slid his hand from her shoulder to the small of her back, and pressed Diamond against him. He bent down to capture her lips in a hard, bone-crushing kiss.

Upon releasing her mouth, he stepped back and away from Diamond. “I’m sorry,” he said again, his eyes never leaving her face until the last bit of physical contact faded as the fingertips of their entwined hands trailed across each other, and he turned to go.

Diamond stood still in the corridor, her own silent tears streaming down her face, and watched his retreating back.

She hiccuped a sob, and as she was raising her hands to cover her face, she felt another pair of arms embrace her from behind.

“Do you know,” said Pimpernel into the weeping lass’s curls as she also stared off after her brother’s path, “that for the past seven years, as Pip lived in Buckland, that we never received even but one post from him between the dates of 26 Solmath and the 25th of Rethe?”

She continued as Diamond cautiously peeked her eyes out from behind her hands to look up at her sister-in-law, “And yet, both Pippin and Merry -- from whom we never heard in those times either, mind you -- they both insist that 25th Rethe is some great date, to be commemorated with celebration in the Outlands.”

Pimpernel snorted, sounding much like her brother when she did so. “Such a time for celebration, indeed!” she said dryly.

Pimpernel kept her arms around Diamond as a pensive look came over the younger lass’s face and they both stared speculatively into the direction Pippin had gone.


“Sir? Sir? Ain’t there nothin’ else you’d need tonight? ‘Cause I could do fer you, no problem. I’m not tired at all. In fact, I feel like one o’ them windup toys Miss Aster has, all coiled up and ready to start bustin’ out and doin’ things; beg pardon, sir.

“I hain’t never had that there ‘coffee’ drink afore. Seems like I could do lots more things fer you if I was to drink it regular -- but it feels like I was lyin’ on an ant-hill, and now they’re a-crawlin’ on my insides. ‘Tain’t nothin’ like ale.”

Bert scowled slightly as he reached his arms in front of him and ineffectually scratched at the prickly feeling.

A ghost of a smile at the hobbitservant’s predicament passed fleetingly over Pippin’s face. As soon as it flickered away, his visage was once again as somber as he had ever been.

The moon was shining cold and white down into Tuckborough, illuminating Pippin’s face as he perched on the window seat of the Grub ‘n Grog inn’s room, his knees drawn up to his chest.

“No. No, thank you, ‘Bert,” he said and turned back to look at the pinpricks of stars in the blackened sky. “There’s naught to do for now,” he continued in a low tone, so that the servant had to strain his twitching ears forward to hear him.

“Just watch with me. Watch through the night. You’re a strong hobbit, aren’t you, Bert?” Pippin suddenly turned his face back to the room and confronted Bert with this question.

“Aye. Aye, sir; you know I am,” Bert stuttered in reply, mystified at the direction this conversation was taking, and at the whole night, really.

“Good,” Pippin responded shortly and turned to face the window again. “You’re like to need to be.

“Dinna let me--” he swiveled his head sharply back and spoke harshly, softening his voice again as he repeated, a film of tears now pooling in his eyes as he looked slowly toward the window again, “Dinna let me hurt anyone.”

“No, sir, o’ course I shan’t!” Bert said hotly. ‘Nor yourself, neither,’ he added within his stout heart, for Pippin had ceased to speak for the evening. Bert knew there were no other hobbits staying in the Grub ‘n Grog’s few rooms this night. Those few who had been drinking earlier in the pub had long since departed at a word from the innkeeper, who had sought his own bed at the home of a relative.

Bert knew some coin had changed hands between Mr. Pippin and the innkeeper for these arrangements, but he did not know why. ‘Tweren’t as if anything seemed rightly amiss between him and Mistress Diamond, Bert thought as he moved restlessly about the room, picking up and putting down a cup he found upon a table, or a jacket upon a chair. O’ course, you couldn’t never rightly tell with a lass. Bert shook his head and glanced at Pippin, chewing now upon his lip as he stared out the window and strained to keep awake.

No; Bert resumed his pacing. There were that funny business in the dining hall last week at the end of Solmath, but he hadn’t noticed any change in Mr. Pippin or Mistress Diamond since then. ‘Cept maybe the Cap’n might be spendin’ a wee bit more time with the Thain since he got back from Buckland this last time, and Thain Paladin mebbe not showin’ hisself in the halls as much or as often as he used to. Only natcherel, Bert supposed; now that his lad had been back at the Great Smials for a while, Thain Paladin shouldn’t have to do as much all by hisself no more. Why, gettin’ on in years, he was -- the hobbit must be close to 95, he must!

Mebbe, Bert thought as he slowly swiveled about, trying to find something else to occupy his hands, mebbe he should ask about the Cap’n and the Mistress with Trefoil the next time he saw her. Hoy! He shook his head. ‘Tweren’t as if he were comin’ any closer to understandin’ lasses with that one. Why couldn’t she carry her own baskets of washin’, all sudden-like, when he knew full well she’d been totin’ ‘em just fine on her own for nigh onto a year now?

He sat down heavily, his chin propped in his hand, to ponder this. Despite the racing of his heart and his blood, Bert slipped into a disquieted sleep. Pippin, meanwhile, as he had known he would, was losing his own valiant struggle to keep his eyes open. His chin fell forward onto his chest as he dropped into slumber.

The hobbitservant awakened at the strangled, piercing cry. Bert squinted his eyes to adjust to the lamplight as he stumbled forward out of the chair and into the direction where he could hear Mr. Pippin making noise.

“Hoy! Sir!” he shouted in horror when he caught sight of Pippin lying rigid where he had fallen onto the floor, his lips moving soundlessly.

“Sir!” Bert cried again as he began to kneel. “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.

Pippin did not answer the question, but gave another bloodcurdling shriek and pushed at Bert’s chest with both hands, sending the younger hobbit toppling backwards onto the floor even as Pippin himself leaped to his feet.

His hands were curled into fists at his sides and his eyes were open, but unseeing, as he shouted in a shrill, toneless voice, “Get away! This dainty is not for you, Saruman!”

Bert shuddered anew at the name he’d heard Sharkey had borne before the Troubles in the Shire. Only a tween of 26 he’d been, himself, and safe within the borders of Tookland, when Captains Peregrin and Meriadoc led the ruffians’ defeat at the Battle of Bywater, but Bert had heard some of the whispered stories in the nights.

“Now, sir, there hain’t none o’ that Sharkey around here no more,” he began as he clambered back to his feet. “You and yer cousin done got rid o’ that bad lot, you did.”

“Back!” Pippin shouted, holding up a hand as if to stop Bert’s advance, and then he himself froze on his feet, his lips working soundlessly again for a moment before he cried in his own voice, yet strangled and pitched high with fright, “A hobbit!”

Bert stopped, confused, in his tracks as he headed toward Pippin. Within that space of hesitation, Pippin’s mercurial demeanor shifted yet again, and he brought his hands together to swing them both with intentional force toward Bert. A steely resolve was in his voice as he followed through and connected with the hobbitservant’s gut.

“No, Sauron!” he shouted. “’Tis not for you!” He kicked at the legs of the gasping Bert, and continued to pummel with his clenched fists against the hobbit who repeatedly clutched at them to try to stop the assault without doing harm. “You shallna have this hobbit! You canna have Frodo! You canna have Sam! The Ring must be destroyed! You canna have Merry! You canna have Diamond! You canna have me!

“Stab me with knives if you must,” Pippin cried and Bert saw that, even as he fought, the Took appeared to be in great pain. “I canna -- I shallna -- let the Dark Lord win!” Pippin screeched in determination and yanked hard, his face grim, on a handful of Bert’s curls.

Slack-jawed, the hobbitservant forgot to protect himself for a moment, and a punch from Pippin’s other fist landed upon his cheek, causing a spreading yellow bruise. The Dark Lord! Great fear plunged through his gut. Mr. Pippin was fighting -- had fought -- the Dark Lord himself. That was even worse than that Sharkey over to Hobbiton-way!

“Sir!” Bert cried out in response, taking even more care now not to cause accidental injury even as he himself was jostled and acquired more bruises. “Mr. -- Pippin! There ain’t no more Dark Lord! He’s gone, I’ve heard tell! Some might say as you’ve said it yerself! He’s gone! The Dark Lord is gone!” Bert shouted as he and Pippin struggled in the odd dance that was their one-sided fight. “There ain’t no more of him! Captain Peregrin! Come back! He’s gone!”

“...he’s gone!” the words penetrated the thick fog in Pippin’s brain, and he could feel the pain as of a thousand knives stabbing at him receding away from his body.

“Gandalf!” he cried out as the remnants of the waking nightmare gathered themselves up in shreds and flew away from him, “Forgive me!” and Pippin collapsed forward into the waiting arms.

He raised his trembling, tear-streaked face a few moments later to see the dawn light from the inn’s window chasing the shadows from the face of...

“Oh! Bert!” Pippin gasped as he reached his fingertips up to gently touch the bruising. “Forgive me!”

“’Tain’t nothin’ to forgive, sir,” Bert said implacably and steadied Pippin with his hands upon the Heir’s shoulders. “I reckon that’s why you asked me to the one as come with you tonight, as you made such a showin’ of askin’ if I was a strong hobbit -- you knowed you hadn’t ought to be afeared of hurtin’ me.” He gave a slight smile and a shrug.

Pippin, in turn, however, sighed deeply. “Still,” he said, “I did hurt you, Bert, and I am deeply sorry. I should understand if you would want to call a shiriff, or to change your place at the Smials for some other position.”

He stepped wearily toward his jacket, still hanging upon the back of a chair.

“Change my place?” Bert repeated, aghast. “Why, sir, I ain’t never been more proud to be in your employ!”

Captain Peregrin -- some day, Thain Peregrin, Bert reminded himself -- some day the Shire would have as its leader a Thain who had confronted the evil of the Dark Lord his very own self. And lived, he added, as the victor to tell the tale.

Pippin stared back uncomfortably at the admiring gaze from the bruised face for a long moment, then sighed heavily and looked down as he shrugged into his jacket. “Come on, then, Bert,” he said in a flat and defeated tone. “Let’s go home.”

He bent to pick up a scarf, and felt only shame. Shame for harming another hobbit with a physical attack -- thank the Valar he hadn’t stayed with Diamond the night before, he thought with a shudder as he closed his eyes and wrapped the scarf around his neck -- and shame for acting as a conduit to bring the worst memory and the worst enemy of Sam, and Merry, and himself, back to life in a way that tainted the Shire. He would be the most unworthy Thain that ever lived.


Throughout the month of Rethe, the dreams of Diamond’s husband remained troubled. He mistook her for Merry again on the night of the 15th, but it was not escape he had on his mind this time. Rather, he reassured her over and over again that she was not dying, and he clutched tightly to Diamond’s arm.

When he arose that morning, Pippin insisted that a servant bank down the fire, and he himself sat as far away from it as possible, even though he shivered. Nearly before he had finished swallowing first breakfast -- and with but a hasty peck on the cheek to Diamond -- Pippin had bolted from the quarters to attend his father in the Thain’s office, almost as if he needed reassurance that the old hobbit was still there.

And, in the days both preceding and following the dreams of Merry, Diamond caught sight several times of Pippin standing somewhere with furrowed brow, looking worriedly off in the direction of Buckland. The post that arrived in those few days came not in Merry’s hand, but in Estella’s. Diamond did not ask to read it.

Upon the evening of the 24th, Pippin picked desultorily at the supper he and Diamond were sharing in their quarters.

“I had thought,” he said, keeping his head bent toward the table but looking up at her through the curls that fell into his face, “of going to spend the night in Tuckborough again, for the morrow.”

Diamond spooned a dollop of custard into her mouth, and the silence stretched out between them as she considered her reply.

Pippin’s eyes were shadowed, and his bent frame bespoke weariness as he leaned his head upon one hand and drew a runnel in his custard with his spoon.

The dream expected on the morrow must again be particularly intense, of the type which had brought him back to the Smials three weeks before in the company of a hobbitservant Bert whose face was bruised but whose eyes shone with new admiration and respect for his young master.

Diamond again felt a keen pang of jealousy stab at her heart. She wished to know her husband as well as the servants did. She was his wife; it should be her right!

Aloud, she said, having swallowed her custard as she continued to stare at Pippin, “I should not like that, I don’t think.”

Pippin raised his own eyes again to meet his wife’s, and saw the strength within them.

One crack of a spark from the hearth, and the breaths of the two hobbits, were the only sounds that filled the darkened room.

Pippin’s breathing came in soft hitches as he slept. Overcome at last with weariness, he had sunk into a slumber full of unease after giving his wife one last regretful and apologetic look. Behind that look, though, Diamond thought she detected a shimmer of hope.

It was she who lay awake in the bed, her hands clasped together over her chest and her chin set in grim determination as she waited for what the night would bring.

‘Twas as the clock in the sitting room approached the bewitching hours of middle night -- those that belonged not clearly to the day just past nor to the one yet to begin -- that it occurred.

Pippin sat suddenly bolt upright, and Diamond half-rose her torso, intending to reach out to him. Before she could move farther, he thrust his arm upward in a powerful stabbing motion. The force of the movement tumbled Diamond back to the bed.

“Aaiee!” Pippin screeched in a horrible voice. His now-trembling hand fell open, the shadow cast by his own body looming in a great patch of thick blackness upon the ceiling above. He teetered backward, landing upon his back in the pillows before Diamond could register the collapse.

In the moments after the impact, his body twitched from head to foot. His breaths came in strangled gasps. And then he lay still.

So still, that Diamond, who had again risen and begun to reach her hands toward his shoulders, froze as well in terror.

“Pippin!” she then cried, and turned to crawl desperately on her knees toward the edge of the bed, planning to race to the bells to summon the servants, most particularly a healer.

The first mewl of a tiny sob stopped her. Diamond turned back to look at her husband. He had rolled to his side, curled his arms and legs in about himself, and was weeping so copiously that his cheeks were already soaked, the tear stains spreading out on the pillows beneath him.

“No. No. No!” he sobbed, so hard that Diamond had to bend her head low over the bed to distinguish his words. “We shan’t have lost!” Pippin cried into his pillow in piteous despair. “Frodo...Frodo!”

He gulped and sniffled heavily, but the tears never ceased. Pippin seemed no more aware of his surroundings in the Great Smials as his arms clenched about himself and he continued to his next words.

“Sam!” he cried out with one sob, and then in the next, “Merry! Merry, where are you?” I canna bury you! Merry! Merry!” His voice rose in pitch with each repetition, until it became a desperate screech. “Merry, it hurts! Dinna leave me! Merry! Mama! Diamond?”

“Pippin,” she whispered in return, her breath stirring a hot breeze across his face from where she lay with her head among the pillows to catch his every anguish-filled word. “I am here.”

She reached one hand over and stroked the curls away from his face. He hiccuped and his sobs stopped. The green eyes cleared for a moment and Pippin knew who and where she was. He slowly, slowly lowered his head until it rested upon Diamond’s chest, the tears starting anew as he began to move but coming silently now. He was once again trembling and weeping as he came to rest at last in his new position, and Diamond gathered her arms about her husband and held him tight in her embrace.

“Darling,” she breathed into his curls. “Tell me about it.”

“Oh, Diamond,” Pippin’s breath hitched again, and his voice was flat, his eyes far away, as he turned his cheek to rest upon the rising and falling of her chest. She continued to hold him and to run her fingers soothingly through his curls as he began to tell her of the horrors of battle.

“If you had been there,” he said dully, his eyes looking not at the familiar shadows of furniture in the bed chamber, but at more evil shadows from years ago, “you would have seen so many in great pain. So many dead--” He choked and tightly closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and going on. Diamond continued her motions. “So many drenched in blood,” Pippin said, the emotion creeping back into his voice and threatening to overwhelm him. “Face up or downward, one on the other they lay.

“If you had been there,” he continued, “when shields were smashed to bits, if you had heard the hauberks meeting steel -- if you had seen those valiant knights go down, screaming in anguish, dying there on the ground -- then you would know what suffering can be! Battle; ‘tis heavy and hard to bear!”

He broke into sobs again, burrowing his head into Diamond’s nightdress before turning his tear-stained face to the ceiling once more and resuming his tale.

“They -- they showed us Frodo’s things,” Pippin gasped out, his breaths coming faster, “his clothes, and his mithril shirt, and I thought the Dark Lord had captured him and he had won and everything would fall into darkness and Strider would never be King and I should never see Merry nor the Shire again and -- and -- all was lost and--”

He stopped, with breaths of quickened, heaving sighs in Diamond’s arms as he tried to clam himself enough to go on.

“And then -- and then the Dark forces attacked. Their blows fell hard and fast.

“I saw Men and Elves fall to hammers, and arrows, and swords. Gimli the Dwarf, with his axe, I knew, would meet each foe with such prodigious blows, the dead would pile up behind him as he goes.

“But I also saw my friends -- the Men of the Company I had marched with from Minas Tirith -- I saw one be hit by an arrow from an orc. The spear landed deep in his back as he had turned to help a friend. His, his hauberk -- ‘twas gleaming, back in the White City! -- it shattered and split away.

“The shaft went through and opened up his chest and I saw, as he lifted his hands to the sky ere he fell, that his hauberk and both his arms were red.”

Bile rose in Diamond’s throat, and her own heart was skipping pitter-pat at Captain Peregrin’s descriptions as he paused to lay his head against her again. But there was worse to come.

“And then, the t-troll,” Pippin whispered the word, and cried out again in pain as Diamond’s instinctive squeeze of him shifted his leg in just the wrong way, “the troll went after my friend Beregond,” he said in what seemed impossibly an even lower and more despairing whisper than he had used before.

He did not raise his head again, but kept it pillowed against Diamond and spoke into her nightdress as he went on, seeming again to find himself back at the time of the battle.

“T-trolls, Diamond, have hides as hard as any iron, so they care nothing for hauberk or for helm. There are no soldiers more savage in the realm!” he spat out.

“And -- and their cause was evil, and we were in the right,” he was sobbing openly again, now, the words coming through the tears. “And Aragorn, and Legolas, and Gimli, and Imrahil, and the Guards of the Citadel and -- and even Gandalf!” -- he swallowed briefly as he went on -- “they were all fighting for us, and Frodo and Sam, too, in their way, and I think Gandalf, and maybe even Aragorn, too, knew that in such brave knights a Man could place his trust. Only a fool, with such a host, despairs!”

Pippin’s voice on this last sentence was so soft that, even as close as she was, Diamond had to strain herself closer to hear it.

Thus it was that she was close enough for her forehead to bump together with Pippin’s when he at last raised his head, and she looked directly into his green eyes, although he did not seem to see her, as he concluded his story.

“The troll stunned Beregond, and he fell,” Pippin said in that same soft whisper. “Then the troll reached out with its claw for him, to bite his throat, and I -- I couldn’t--” He drew a deep, shuddering breath, but did not close his eyes as he continued. “I stabbed upwards with my sword. And then -- and then--”

Diamond licked her lips, suddenly dry, although soft tears streamed from her own eyes and her husband lay here in her arms.

His monotone continued. “The troll’s hammer swung forward, and my shield was broken and pierced through. And it began to topple forward, and my hauberk’s mail was cracked and split apart.

“I saw just a glimpse of bright blood flowing upon the ground, before all was stench and blackness and crushing pain. And then -- and then,” Pippin’s eyes clicked into the present and he stared at his wife with the full lucidity of the moment. “I died, Diamond. I dinna know why I am here.”

His head sagged forward and his body went limp as he dissolved once more into weeping, all he had left to give from his weariness. Diamond in turn curled herself around Pippin and shared her tears as well.

She it was who stirred first, reaching up a hand to smear the tears across her own cheeks before putting on a soft and completely unmirthful smile. She did not understand all that he had said, nor recognize all the names and the places, but -- “Oh, Pippin. My brave, brave Pippin,” she said as she brought her face close again to his and used a finger to lightly trace through his nightshirt the scars she knew crossed his back.

Pippin stared listlessly back at her, but did not move. Diamond suppressed a shudder at her newfound knowledge of where those scars had in truth come from and how very close it had come to meaning--

“Peregrin Took!” she barked, yet her tone was gentle. “You are here to be my husband,” she said, and she drew him up with her as she moved to lay back against the pillows. “For I love you.”

“Come, sleep, now,” she added, patting her shoulder. If one listened, the early stirring of the servants could be heard in the corridors and, outside, the first lights of dawn were creating a blush in the sky.

But Pippin drowsily let his head fall the last few centimeters to come to rest upon Diamond’s strong shoulder. “Ah!” A soft noise escaped him as he did so and he felt, as the sound left his lips, that with it went some of his burden of doubt and care and fear.

“Sleep,” Diamond whispered again and placed a kiss on his brow as his eyelids fluttered. He heard Diamond add, as his thoughts fled away, “for I shall guard you safe from every dream.”


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*Some dialogue, descriptions and situations in this chapter are owed to the chapters “The Uruk-Hai” and “The Palantir” in The Two Towers, and “The Pyre of Denethor”, “The Houses of Healing” and “The Black Gate Opens” in Return of the King.
**Also, some additional dialogue, descriptions and situations in this chapter are owed to The Song of Rolandbut.. so 6?