Chapter 24: Syndicate

Pippin sighed, trailing the fingers of one hand upon the wall as he walked slowly along the Smials’ corridor, the other hand rubbing at the back of his neck.

The carriage was put up after their return from a not-so-joyful holiday in the North Farthing, and Diamond was settling Farry in for a feed and a nap in their quarters, and Pippin really ought to check in with his father. Aye: he really ought.

He sighed again as he came to a stop in the corridor near the office of the Thain.

His mother rounded the corner, just then, carrying a covered mug she’d brought from the kitchens.

“Oh, Pippin! You’re home!” she called out to him softly, and Eg then approached to stand on tiptoe and kiss her son on the cheek as he leant down for it.

“Your father’s not there, dear,” she said gently when she was flat on her feet once more. Eg turned the mug in her hands, looking down at it as she continued.

“He’s had a bad spell, I’m afraid,” she said quietly. “Laid him up in bed for the past couple of days. Your sister’s come, and I think that’s a comfort, but he has nae even been well enough to see her yet.”

“Nay!” she called out, and transferred the mug to one hand to stop Pippin by placing the other upon his arm, when he blew out a breath and would have begun moving farther down the corridor. “Let him rest, please, Pippin,” she continued, again in the dulcet tone. “And get you some, too,” she smiled, and moved her hand up to brush against his curls. “You look as if you needed it.”

“Yes, Mama,” Pippin said, and smiled crookedly at her as he watched her walk away.

When Eg had gone, Pippin pushed open the door to his father’s office. Sick for days, she had said. ‘Twas no telling what might be lying in wait that needed tending to.

Pippin groaned inwardly as he saw the pile stacked high upon the desk, and then sighed aloud, and stepped in.

He hadna even noticed, he realized later, when he’d had to light the lamp. ‘Twas voices and footfalls in the corridor, now, which had drawn his attention as the servants changed things about for the night. Pippin stood from the desk, and stretched his arms above his head. He winced, and caught himself with his palms flat against the desktop as his knees threatened to buckle. Pippin blew out the lamp and headed back to his quarters, and to Diamond.

“Hoy, Pip!” came the strained whisper from behind him as Pippin reached the corridor in his own part of the Smials, and headed toward his and Diamond’s door.

He turned, slowly, his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his unbuttoned weskit flaring out a bit with the motion.

The wall sconce lit his sister’s green eyes and sun browned face as she stepped from the shadows. “I dinna -- did not -- dinna know you had come back,” Pervinca began hesitantly, but finished with a sort of defiance, angling her chin just slightly so that her green eyes met her brother’s.

“Aye,” Pippin replied, and used one hand to cover a wide yawn before bringing that hand farther up to run it backward through his curls. “Just today,” he muttered through the remains of the yawn.

“’Twould,” Pervinca seemed suddenly hesitant again, and cast an almost furtive glance down the corridor Pippin had come from and took a step closer before putting a hand upon his arm and whispering to him, low, “’Twould you like to come and have a cup of tea with Nellie and me, Pip?”

“Nay, thank you, Pervinca,” Pippin answered casually from behind the hand that covered another yawn. “’Twill have to be on the morrow, as I’m sure Diamond is waiting on me to turn in for the night.”

“Diamond?” Pervinca echoed in shock.

Pippin, puzzled, was about to answer when the door to his quarters opened behind him and Diamond stood there carrying a sleepy but grumbling Farry.

“See?” she was whispering to the babe. “There’s your Da come home, so we can all get some rest.”

She smiled softly up at Pippin, who grinned back and stepped away from Pervinca to pat baby Farry’s cheek. “I know you’re tired, lad,” Pippin whispered to him with a smile, “so be good for your mama and go to sleep.”

Farry gave a stubborn scowl in return, then stuck his thumb in his mouth, closed his eyes, and determinedly lay his head back against Diamond’s bosom.

The parents shared a look of amusement over his head, and Pippin turned back then to speak to Pervinca, but she had gone, her feet pattering rapidly away down the corridor.

“Who was that?” Diamond asked as the family entered their quarters.

“Oh, ‘twas just my sister,” Pippin answered with another yawn, rolling his shoulders back as he let go the door and let it swing shut behind them.

“Tea with Farry’s auntie will have to wait ‘till the morrow,” he said, and lifted the now dozing child from Diamond’s arms to place him in his cot.


“...and that should be the elevenses menus for the next week, then,” Diamond said conclusively, beginning to gather the cards of receipts from where they lay scattered across the table in front of herself and Second Cook Geranium.

“Aye, Mistress, ‘tis at that,” Gerry responded with her usual smile, but Diamond noticed a slight hesitation in the usually confident hobbitess whose hands remained clutching the quill before her and did not move to help in the gathering.

“What is it, Gerry?” Diamond asked, placing one of her own hands quietly upon Geranium’s. “Is something wrong?”

“’Tis just -- I know you’re likely tired, Mistress, if the little one is aught to go on,” Gerry replied, nodding toward the basket next the table’s leg where Faramir lay, sound asleep, thumb in his mouth and one foot tossed against the basket’s cushioned side.

Diamond’s smile softened further as she, too, looked at the basket, and she nudged her leg against it to gently rock it from side to side before looking up again at Geranium.

“Aye,” she said softly. “But?”

Geranium sighed and braced both her hands against the table, the better to look Diamond square in the face, as she responded in a matter-of-fact tone. “Mistress Eglantine has passed on the request that you take the plannin’ of the rest of the meals for this next week, as well.

“’Tisn’t meet that Mistress Pimpernel should have the task when you’re about and, well, ‘twill give them both a rest,” she concluded.

“Oh,” Diamond responded, and her heart sank as she thought of Pippin’s absenting himself that morn to go toward the offices, and of his hopes to speak to his father the Thain.

“Oh, of course,” Diamond responded, composing her face into neutrality as she began once again to lay the receipt cards out before her.

“Is it very bad, this time?” she asked in a carefully pleasant tone as she brought more cards out of their storage box. Geranium pursed her lips together, set one stack aside, and answered carefully, “I’m sure I wouldn’t be the one to know.”

They began to plan luncheons, and Diamond asked of Gerry, “Will you have enough help for the extra meals?”

Gerry laughed easily and reminded her, “I’m sure ‘tisn’t any extra meals, Mistress. I’ll just be helpin’ First Cook Petunia, as I always do, or she’ll be helpin’ me, and it won’t make much of a difference to us.”

“Oh. Of course,” Diamond said, and smiled at Geranium and covered her distraction by digging once again in the box of receipts.

“And of course I have that Sage lass to help me out,” Gerry chattered happily on. “She’s a fine one, she is. Not too near to comin’ of age even yet, and she’s already told me she looks to be lookin’ to stay on at the Smials.”

“Truly?” Diamond asked, surprised, and Gerry answered cheerfully.

“Oh, aye, Mistress, and like she could be a full Undercook even now, if ‘tweren’t but for her age. Nay, I’ll not be needin’ to worry for quite a while, not like poor Bluebell,” Geranium said with satisfaction.

“’Bluebell’?” Diamond echoed, concerned, her brow furrowing. “Has she reason to be concerned with the maid lasses?”

Geranium sighed and placed her palm flat against the table again. “I suppose ‘tisn’t my place to be telling you, but the poor lass canna get a straight answer from that Trefoil tween. Now, she is close to comin’ of age, that one, but Bluebell canna get her to say yay or nay when she asks if she’d like to stay on. If she’s to find a new tween to train up, it’d be this next comin’ Rethe, already, that she’d need to find one who could start, if the lass was to come from one of the rentin’ farms.”

“Oh,” Diamond said, and pondered, as she held the receipt cards in her hands. “Thank you.”



“Who’s a good lad whilst his mama changes nappies?” Diamond whispered against Farry’s exposed little tummy, earning her a chortle and a wriggle of glee in response as she blew against the belly, then tugged the tiny shirt back down.

Both mother and son continued to smile as she picked him up and turned to face the lass setting the other, freshly laundered, nappies and small shirts away in the drawers of a small bureau, one of the few pieces of furniture yet to reside in the newest room to be opened within Pippin and Diamond’s quarters.

“Thank you, Trefoil,” Diamond said, and the tween smiled and nodded a curtsy as she responded.

“You’re welcome, Mistress Diamond.”

“Trefoil?” Diamond called inquiringly after her as the lass turned to leave, and Trefoil looked back expectantly.

“I was wondering,” Diamond asked as casually as she might, “if you planned to stay on at Great Smials after your birthday in Rethe. I understand Bluebell has not heard.”

“I -- umm,” the smile vanished from Trefoil’s face, which flushed red instead, and she ran her fingers along the rim of the empty wash basket she held clutched to one hip. “I -- I dinna know, Mistress Diamond,” she began to stammer out when a heavy knock came against the door of the quarters.

“A moment, please,” Diamond called toward it and asked, with a concerned frown, “Is there something amiss with your place at the Smials? Or,” she frowned more deeply and clutched Farry tighter, “or at home?”

“I--” Trefoil began again nervously, only to be interrupted once more by the thumping knock.

“I am sorry,” Diamond said, casting the lass a sympathetic glance, and went to open the door upon a smiling hobbitservant Bert, Trefoil trailing at her heels.

The reason for the thumping knocks was clear when she beheld the trunk Bert carried within both hands, having evidently knocked with his knee.

“I’m sorry to be a bother ‘n all, Mistress Diamond,” he said, “but Mr. Pippin said, after you’d left this in the carriage yest’day when you got back, as this was the best time to bring it by, seein’ as how the babe would like to be finished with his nap ‘n all,” he added, grinning at Farry, still happily swinging his legs in Diamond’s arms, and sweeping his grin across the room to encompass Trefoil as well.

That lass colored further, her blush spreading to the edges of her face and to her ears, and she stammered out as soon as she saw a wire depressed upon the apparatus of servants’ bells, “I -- I’m wanted elsewhere.

“Excuse me, Mistress Diamond,” Trefoil said and ducked her head in another curtsy, clutching the empty wash basket tight against her as she squeezed past Bert in the doorway, her eyes averted from the still smiling hobbit.



“Hoy,” Pippin said that evening as he pulled a nightshirt over his head while Diamond wound a cord upon the end of her long braid of dark curls, loosed from its updo to lie along the back of her nightdress. “I had forgotten we were to take tea with my sister today.”

“Oh?” Diamond asked, surprised and confused, and looked toward him through the lamplight. “I have not seen Nellie,” she said. “I had supposed her busy all day with Mistress Eglantine.”

“Aye,” Pippin said wearily, his shoulders slumped as he bent to retrieve the trousers he’d just shucked upon the floor, and the shirt he’d haphazardly discarded there a few moments before. “Suppose they both were, then.”

“Both?” Diamond asked with trepidation as Pippin approached the corner of the bedchamber which held both the basket for the soiled clothing and the one which had been sent up, late in the evening so they had not wanted the bother of servants putting it away after Pippin at last had returned from his father’s office, with their own newly washed clothes.

“Aye,” he answered, wadding his shirt and trousers into a crumpled mess as he threw them within the basket. “Dinna you hear that Pervinca is here for a visit?”

“No,” Diamond breathed out in a low sigh, and chewed her lip as her back stiffened against the bedpillows where she sat.

She caught sight, nearly at the same time Pippin did, of the neatly folded parchment lying atop the new-washed clothes. The hobbitesses who did the launderings at the Great Smials had learned to search pockets for any treasures the owners might want to keep, and Pervinca’s note now lay atop the frock Diamond had worn into the wood.

“No,” she said again in a strangled voice, and her heart clutched as Pippin reached for the parchment.

“Diamond?” he asked with concern, the green of his eyes catching in the lamplight as he looked toward her on the bed, the note hanging carelessly from the fingertips of one hand. “What ‘tis it?”

She thought, for a fleeting moment, as she unfolded her legs from the bed and walked to his side, of taking the note from him, tearing it into bits or -- or somehow keeping him from knowing.

She knew, herself, however, almost immediately after this thought had crossed her mind, that she could not keep such knowledge from him. That she was his wife, and that it would not be right.

She curled the fingers of one of her hands about his as she reached him and, looking down toward the floor, Diamond nodded toward the note.

“Diamond?” Pippin asked with a deceptively simple question in his voice, and then he turned from looking at her to shake the note open within his other hand and slow, carefully, read its words and grasp their meaning.

“Diamond,” he said in a choked voice when he had finished reading, his eyes still turned toward the parchment, “why did you go into the wood in the North Farthing that day?”

“I--” Diamond gasped softly at the fierce grip to which Pippin’s fingers on her hand had increased and thought, briefly, of the wonder it was that the wavering parchment he held could withstand such force. She raised her widened and sad grey eyes to meet his and she said, “It was because of Pervinca’s note.”

“Aah!” Pippin cried out inarticulately, and his knees buckled, and Diamond was hard-pressed to half drag him to sit upon the nearest end of the bed.

“Husb-- I -- I am sure she meant me no harm,” Diamond babbled as Pippin clung to her. “Even Ganelon,” she quailed and trembled as Pippin growled, from where his face was buried in her neck, at the mere mention of the name, “e--even he,” Diamond stuttered on, “meant me no harm, for he had left a basket of food, and he could not have know that the s--snakes should be there,” she said, and she sobbed, and she trailed off, holding only to Pippin, who gripped her so, so tightly that he lifted her a tiny bit off the bed as he pulled back his face to look into hers.

“Dinna want to harm you?” he asked harshly, then repeated, louder, so that Diamond felt she might cower, hearing that tone directed at her, “Dinna want to harm you?”

“Nay. Nay,” Pippin answered his own question with bitter vehemence. “They wanted only to take you from me, and you canna deny e’en my own sister would ha’e known ‘twould come to that, this plan to tie you away. ‘Twould -- ‘twould mayhap ha’e meant no harm to you, Diamond,” he said, the first shock and anger beginning to dissolve into sobs as his head slowly lowered again onto her shoulder. “’Twas meant as harm for me!”

“Darling!” Diamond cried out, clutching her fingers within the curls on the back of his head to press him tight against her, “it would do me grievous harm to lose you,” she sobbed in counterpoint to his repeated desperate cries of her name.

“I love you, Peregrin, Pippin, Took,” she stated deliberately into his ear, “and you shall not come to such harm, nor to any other, whilst I can have a say in it.”

Pippin lifted his eyes to look at her, and the lamplight flickered as he pulled his wife with him across and over the bed to blow it out, whispering all the while his litany of, “Diamond. Diamond. Diamond.”


“At Pippin’s latest toss and turn upon his side of the bed that night, Diamond pulled herself up and was about to ask if she should set up the draughts when he spoke and forestalled her.

“Nay, dinna get up,” he said. “’Tis nae a nightmare -- I just canna sleep.

“’Tis all right,” he added with the brush of a soft kiss against her lips as he rose from the bed.

Fetching Farry from the adjoining room, Pippin placed the child in the bed with his mother, then pulled a pair of trousers and braces over his nightshirt, casting a doleful glance at the as yet untouched clean clothes as he did so.

He pulled the door to his quarters carefully and quietly shut behind him, then waited, fidgeting, in the corridor until there approached one of the very few servants who worked the night instead of the day through, completing tasks that were easier when no hobbits were about.

“Sir?” startled this hobbit, drawing closer. “Is aught amiss?”

“N--nay, Tiffy,” Pippin responded with a close facsimile of his usual grin. “I just canna sleep and dinna want to disturb Diamond and Farry.

“But would you mind,” he added as Tiffy began to turn away, “would you mind, just keeping a watch before the Mistress’s door?” Pippin asked, steering the hobbit into position in front of it with a hand upon his shoulder. “I daresay the floors’ll look after themselves well enough for one night.”

“Aye, sir,” Tiffy responded, his hand twitching at his side as if he felt for the quiver which had been at his belt in the time of the Troubles. “’Tis there aught I should be watching for, then?” he asked seriously.

Pippin hesitated as he looked quickly down the corridor, then turned back to answer with a sad smile. “Nay. ‘Tis likely only a bit of foolishness, but it shall make me feel better just the same.”

He kept the strained smile upon his face as he moved through the corridors, and out one of the Smials’ doors into the yards. It faded, though, as he stepped around the apple presses set up, and the short beginnings of the year’s leaf piles to be raked later into mulch, and sat himself eventually upon a small rise beneath a still fully green-leafed tree.

The bright stars, pinpricks of diamonds, winked through the sky’s vast blackness which spread above his head. Pippin drew from his pocket a pipe, and lit it so that, for a moment, the red glow added its homely touch to the celestial lights.

Pippin stared about him as he smoked, his cheeks becoming drawn and hollow with each breath he drew, his back braced against the tree trunk and his knees drawn up before him so he could lightly rest his unused hand.

He stared, at the Great Smials with its warrens of rooms holding multitudes of hobbits. At the doors leading to the kitchens where he had nicked, or begged, or been given, food as a lad. At the shadowed lumps in the gardens, vegetables which were not yet quite ripe enough to be harvested and canned for the coming winter to help feed all of those hobbits. At the plot which was Diamond’s small garden, where she grew the valerian -- he shuddered -- the arnica, the roses whose hips she collected to tend to him and to Farry in their minor illnesses.

He stared at the bench, its stone illuminated in the starlight, where his mother had held him within her lap as a lad, cradling and comforting him in his illnesses in much the same way he had seen her hold his father’s head earlier in the day. “Pip,” Paladin had groaned out through a contorted grin on Pippin’s brief visit to his quarters. A grimace of pain took the smile, and the words, away from the Thain for a few moments before he was able to add, “I shallna -- worry o’er things,” he concluded with a gasp, and bent over his middle once more.

Pippin stared, in the night, at the stables which housed an occasionally whickering pony among all those held ready for the vast number of hobbits, and the scythes, used to cut the fields he must oversee, and the nails, used to keep the ponies shod that they might trot along roads like that to Tuckborough which shimmered in the starlight.

Pippin stared, too, past the apple presses where he might have a hand in pressing this year’s cider, toward the Tuckburough road, its coating of gravel worn down and scattered once again since spring, when more should have to be ordered from the quarries and spread upon it. When Pippin, or his Da, should have to travel once again to Tuckborough, and beyond, to take stock of how the hobbits, and their stores, had fared through the winter, and to meet the merchants at markets throughout the Shire, and and to examine their wares and collect any taxes due. ‘Twas the road where, from farther still, might come a summons to him as a messenger of the King.

Pippin stared, then, quite close by to where he sat, at a copse of trees where his sister Pervinca had accidentally pelted him with a stone when he was a child, where he had run beneath the branches during a footrace when she had given no quarter for his younger age and shorter legs, where his Da had once lifted Pippin upon his tall, strong shoulders and given the sagest advice upon bird’s-nesting that he could.

Pippin kept a relaxed grip upon the pipe with one hand, and rested the other elbow upon his upturned knees. He slowly, slowly lowered his head so that his face was held within that palm, the fingers spread so that between them he continued to stare, to stare unsleeping until the night turned ‘round to fall deeper upon the islands far to the west and, in the Shire, the dawn’s streaks joined the fading starlight in the sky.



“Mistress Pervinca Took Proudfoot,” Bert said carefully upon the opening of Pimpernel’s door, where the hobbitesses behind it had expected to find a kitchen lass come to take the first breakfast dishes they had just cleared away. “Captain Peregrin Took summons you to his office.”

The hobbitservant kept his hands clasped behind his back, where he could nervously twist them together, and a schooled expression upon his face as he walked through the Smials at the side of Pervinca, who had lifted her chin defiantly at his announcement, ignoring Nellie’s stunned face turned toward her at the official order so given.

Pervinca’s step did falter a bit as she crossed the threshold to the office where Pippin stood, his back to her, seemingly studying the contents of a frame upon the wall, and Diamond sat, her hands folded neatly in her lap, in a chair to the side of the desk. Bert pulled the door firmly shut behind her, and she heard his footsteps shuffle a bit on the other side of it, but they did not recede.

“Aye,” Pervinca said, chin still lifted, after long moments of tense silence. “What ‘tis it, Pip?”

“Pervinca Took Proudfoot!” Pippin said, whirling about and rounding the desk as he addressed her once again with the full formality of her name. Pervinca saw, as he did so, that her brother had strapped on the sword he’d acquired in the Outlands and that he wore this and the black tunic which served as the underpinnings to his Gondorian getup incongruously above a russet pair of hobbit style breeches.

“You have nae been given leave to speak!” Pippin said, slicing a hand through the air in front of him and snapping the fingers closed together in mimicry of a mouth.

Pervinca’s green eyes flashed and her tongue was upon her teeth to respond as Pippin continued, drawing his sword without pause and spearing, before Pervinca could blink, a parchment which lay upon his desk.

The sudden clink and scrape of metal against wood was still ringing its reverberations through her ears as Pippin held steadily before her, upon the tip of his sword, the note she had written, weeks earlier, to Diamond.

“Now,” he said, and his voice, too, was steel and steady as his own green eyes looked down a scant few inches to meet his sister’s, “you may explain why you should conspire to cause harm to fall upon another hobbit.”

Pervinca’s heart skipped a moment at her brother’s sword holding her words before her face, and then she laughed easily and batted a hand toward it as she stepped aside. “’Cause harm’? ‘Tis obviously a mistake. ‘Tis nae a harm to talk of flowers, ‘tis it, with my brother’s wife?”

Diamond, to whom Pervinca had stepped closer in her motions, said softly toward her hands, “I had thought it kind, to offer such a suggestion.”

“Truly,” Pippin said, and wearily pinched the bridge of his nose near the circles which shadowed his eyes. “I suppose ‘twas nae difficult to remember my favorite wildflower from when I was lad?” he asked toward the lasses.

“Oh, aye,” Pervinca said easily, “you were always on about the marsh marigolds in Buckland.”

A silence, then, of a beat, before Pippin answered firmly, “Aye.”

Pervinca quailed, slightly, her written lie exposed, and Diamond’s small, disappointed, “Oh!” coming after it. She rallied quickly, though, and her skirts swished as she turned back to Pippin, her hands upon her hips.

“Wha-- hoy-- hey--,” she blustered, and her eyes flashed. “So what of it? ‘Tis nae a reason for this” -- she waved a hand to encompass the room. “’Tis nae a reason when a hobbit lad” -- she stepped closer, then, to Pippin, and he easily moved the sword aside, her eyes shining with memory and accusation -- “causes a prank to fall.”

Pippin blinked, slowly, closing his eyes a moment to recall days when Pervinca’s ribbons had mysteriously wound themselves into a knotted mess of a ball, or Pimpernel’s lighter colored braids had shown, upon their ends, the telltale marks of a dip in an inkwell. He wavered, a moment, tiredly on his feet as he opened the eyes again and said, “’Tis nae a prank of the harmless kind of which you’ve been accused.”

“Diamond,” he continued before Pervinca could speak, and sheathed his sword as he walked toward his wife to place a hand upon her shoulder. “Diamond was near killed.”

The enormity of that statement filled the room a moment. Its magnitude, though, was sheer incomprehensibility to Pervinca, for no hobbit had ever killed another a-purpose, save mayhap for during the Troubles, in living memory of their long lines.

“Hoy. Piglet,” she snorted finally, uncertainly. “What’re you on about?”

“Your words,” Pippin said, holding Diamond’s warm shoulder beneath his hand as he looked down at her face and the dark curls which framed it, “led Diamond to the wood where her brother would ha’e kept her, and where the adders would ha’e struck.”

Pervinca paled, and gasped, and stepped backward, catching and supporting herself with a hand behind her upon the wall. “I -- I dinna know, Diamond,” she breathed. “For that, I apologize.”

“Aye,” Diamond spoke softly in acknowledgment, still facing the hands folded in her lap. “You did not know.”

“’Tis nae all you must apologize for,” Pippin snarled suddenly, whirling from his wife to face his sister once more. His hands, in loose fists, hung at his sides as he stepped before Pervinca and spat, “You tried to take my wife from my side!”

Pervinca’s jaw tightened, and she turned her attention easily from Diamond to respond defiantly. “Aye. And what if I did?”

“’Tis also an offense,” Pippin said, making an effort to control his anger.

“It canna be,” Pervinca laughed humorlessly, stepping closer to her brother, her face inches from his, “to take from you a wife you dinna want and canna love.”

Pippin’s hand flexed, and his stayed himself from slapping a lass as he answered, in tones cold and strong, to Pervinca’s face. “I love her now.”

Pervinca had thought herself stunned before, but now her brother’s announcement swept through her a cascade of hope, swiftly doused with the cold, hard stone of what she knew to be truth.

“Tha’--” she laughed, strangled, as she struggled against the tears which had come unbidden to her eyes, “tha’ canna be.”

“Aye,” Pippin said, his voice softening again as he looked to Diamond, and his feet followed his gaze so that he held his wife’s face for a moment, tenderly in a caress. “Aye.”

“Hoy!” Pervinca made a choked noise in her throat, and shifted her feet and looked desperately about the room, including toward the door, firmly shut and, she recalled, with a hobbit on guard outside it.

“And even,” Pippin shuddered as his foot caught wearily as he turned from Diamond once more, his voice filled with aching, “even ‘twere it not the case, you havena the right to go against the wishes of the Thain.”

“I--” Pervinca’s fierceness snapped back into full fervor, and she stepped into the center of the room to declaim, her finger pointed, stabbing, at Pippin’s chest, “I am the daughter of the Thain!”

“Aye!” Pippin snapped back, and his voice calmed but held its conviction as he answered, “and I am the son.”

“Hoy, Piglet!” Pervinca sneered as she shouted. “You know no more of duty than do I!”

“Aye!” Pippin barked back, the tips of his fingers fluttering above the hilt of his sword, his own stubborn face close to hers. “That I do!”

“’Tis duty,” he continued, turning suddenly to rest his hands upon the desk, tension in the back he turned to his sister as his eyes fell once more upon the seed portrait framed on the wall, “duty that has brought me here today, that has had me summon you. Duty that ‘twould have me judge.”

“Piglet--” Pervinca began in a tense tone, with no contrition in it, “’tis nae my duty to listen to aught from you.”

“Aye, but ‘tis!” Pippin slammed his hand down upon the desk, and pushed away from it to turn and her face her once again, small tears beginning to glisten at the edges of his eyes. “Dinna you see?” he cried out, one hand waving expansively out in a gesture that marked the room, and the wall of which his father’s office occupied the other side, before he let it fall limply again to his side.

Pervinca, too, glanced toward Thain Paladin’s office, unoccupied at the moment, and swallowed her throat against the pricks of tears she would deny. “’Tis nae you who are Thain, Pip,” she said with contempt, and stepped close to spit toward him with low contempt. “’Tis one too proud, will recklessly advise. Let’s heed no fools” -- she hardened her voice still further upon the word -- “and keep to what is wise.”

Diamond, nearly forgotten in her chair, made to rise and comfort her husband at the word which she knew still stung, but he, wavering only slightly, had already composed himself well enough to answer his sister, his words and his voice turning her accusation back against her.

“I hear your foolishness and pride.

“Pinabel,” he said wearily, and sighed, eyes closed as he pinched his nose and remembered the nickname Nellie’d created for Pervinca in childhood, “you are brave. You’re tall and strong; your” -- he blushed a slight pink tinge -- “body is well-built. that you are valiant is known to all your peers.

“But ‘tis they who havena helped you all these years.”

“Wha-- what?” Pervinca’s at first accusing, stubborn tone turned to confusion. “What does that mean?”

“The meaning ‘tis,” said Pippin, leaning back now so he sat haunches propped against his desk, and his hands supporting his weight to either side, “that I shall have to send you from the Shire.”

“Wha-- what?” Pervinca cried out again, outraged. “You canna do such--”

Pippin talked over her protests, informing her with forced calm, “You canna seem, else, to learn respect, and I have had request from a friend who wishes help--”

“How is’t,” Pervinca interrupted disdainfully, “that you may defy the wishes of the Thain? Or is’t that the husband for whom I have been set aside,” she asked bitterly, “is to accompany me?”

“Nay,” Pippin sighed tiredly. “Nay, he is not. But mayhap,” he added with exhaustion in his voice which masked any hope, “you shall find in this a chance to be happy, as you have nae seemed for years.”

Pervinca, choked, did not respond, as Pippin answered, as well, her other question,

“And aye,” he said with more weariness, his lashes fluttering as his eyes drooped closed, “’tis I who has the duty, and the burden, to put asunder such things for the nonce.”

“But nae for yourself?” Pervinca asked bitterly.

“Nay,” Pippin answered wearily, his chin nodding toward his chest, “nay; I canna do so, e’en should I wish it, for myself.”

“What,” Pervinca swallowed, “what about my children?”

Pippin, with an effort, raised his head to look toward Pervinca as he answered, “they will spend a time with Nellie and with Pearl.”

“And -- and how long is this to be, shall you say?” Pervinca cried out stubbornly.

Pippin did not answer in kind, but only looked calmly at her as he said, heavily, “I dinna yet know.”

“Wha-- what if,” she looked hesitantly at the office wall, and hesitation and fear were in her eyes and in her voice as she whispered, “what if Da--”

“He willna!” Pippin answered with the equivalent of his sister’s fierceness.

“What ‘tis it you think you shall send me to, then?” Pervinca shouted with annoyance, arms crossed upon her chest.

The edges of his lips quirked up but the sadness and weariness remained on his face as he answered, “You shall be Bree’s newest barmaid at The Prancing Pony.”

A -- a barmaid. Pervinca’s mouth gaped in shock at this affront to her dignity. “Hoy,” she said, two red spots burning bright upon her cheeks as she protested.

“Wretched, abandoned, what is my destiny?” she asked bitterly. “If you were kind, you’d make an end to me!”

“Dinna say such!” Pippin shouted, leaping from the desk to stand once more. “Have you nae learned what it means to wish a hobbit harm?”

“Piglet--” Pervinca began with a whine, and a plead, and an annoyance.

“Stop!” Pippin shouted, standing straighter, tall and proud. “You canna call me such,” he informed her with cold reserve, and then he turned his back and rang the bell upon his desk. “You must go.”

The door opened and, when Bert had left with his sister, Pippin let his teary eyes look again upon the Yule gift, framed long ago by a sister who had recreated, as much as her memory could provide in the months of his absence, her brother’s face the stagnant seeds of the Shire’s earth. Small things, like the shape of one ear, were amiss, as the memory could not perfectly recall them, but the corner of the frame held, still, the confident dedication, “to Pippin, from Pervinca.”

Pippin’s knees buckled, slightly, as he felt his wife’s arms come around him from behind, and he used even more the support of the desk against his weight, his eyes seeing first the picture and then the quick-slapping hands of a much younger Pervinca as she had flipped wooden wafers with him in a game they’d played as children.

‘Twas now, as a grown hobbit, that he’d had to send that sister from his sight, and ‘twas his wife who held him as he wept.


“Hoy, then, Bert,” Everard said cheerily, if with a bit of awe as he clambered upon one of the Little People’s stools at the bar of The Prancing Pony. “I never thought I would leave the Shire, or have a pint o’ this stuff” -- he grinned guilelessly at the scowling serving maid who brought him an ale. “I shall be glad to get home to Nellie, even though Pip says it’s safe out here.”

“Aye, sir, Mr. Everard,” Bert muttered nervously into his own mug, carefully averting his eyes from the somehow disgraced Mistress Pervinca -- er, Pervinca, he was to call her, now, although he’d avoid it as much as he might, ‘specially now that Mr. Pippin’s errand was done.

“How ‘bout you, then?” Everard asked, kicking his feet as he sloshed the mug to his lips so that he swayed dangerously on what, to Bert, seemed an uncommonly -- no call for it to be that high off the ground -- high stool. “When’ll you be marryin’ a lass, Bert?” Everard asked, the foam coating his upper lip.

“Er -- well -- I dinna know ‘bout that, Mr. Everard,” Bert said, creasing his thumb along the rim of his own mug and casting a wary eye out for the presence of Mistress Pervinca, the best to avoid her glare. “The one I’ve got -- well, I jist canna tell if she’s keen on the idee,” he said, and then stared deep into his mug for a moment, and then took from it a long draught.

Everard laughed, kicking his feet again happily. “You should ask Pip for advice.”