Chapter 25: Carbon

“Aye?” Pippin looked up from the desk in his office at the knock on his door, which opened to display Bert. Huffing sightly, the hobbitservant puffed out, “Sir!” to Pippin’s quizzical look, droplets of water plinking softly to the floor as the dusting of snow melted from Bert’s coat.

“What ‘tis--” Pippin began, half-rising from his chair just as another hobbit’s hand grabbed Bert’s shoulder from behind and pushed him carelessly aside.

“Thank you for the service,” the hobbit said as he strode forward into the office, the hood from his cloak flung back as he drew off one glove. “You may go now.”

Bert looked to Pippin for direction. Now standing, Pippin nodded once at him. Bert flashed him a quick grin before withdrawing, pulling the door shut behind him with a whistle.

“Now then, Duro,” Pippin said as he walked to the front of his desk and hitched himself up to to sit perched upon it, “this seems a hasty visit.”

“Hastier than I’d planned, I’ll warrant,” Duro said, slapping both of his now-removed gloves into hand to produce a smacking sound. “I had thought to see the Thain,” he announced confidently and then made just the slightest hesitation before striding across the room to seat himself in a chair facing Pippin’s desk, his well-muscled legs with the sable foot-fur spread out, ankles crossed, before him.

“He doesna wish to be bothered for routine matters,” Pippin said easily, reaching behind himself on the desk to pick up a cooling mug of tea.

“Aye, but surely on a family matter--” Duro answered just as easily, but left the rest of his sentence hang midair, dangling like the gloves now loosely clasped in his fingers.

“A family matter?” Pippin echoed. He took a swallow of the cold tea and schooled his face against the natural grimace at the taste.

“Aye,” Duro answered and leaned forward, hands resting on his knees, to give Pippin a cool stare. “I had wanted to question his decision in the matter of my wife.”

Pippin took another sip of the cold tea and licked the drops from his upper lip. Inside, he wasna still a’tall, but could feel his heart tripping a faster pitter-pat. Aloud, he asked with calm, “And what decision ‘twould that be?”

“The decision to send her to Bree or some-such!” Duro exploded, rapping the gloves sharply against his knees immediately before he burst from the chair to pace about the room.

“I do not know what reason the Thain could have had for it, although of course I’m sure there was one,” he nodded slightly to Pippin as he spoke during the rapid pacing. “But surely he cannot have meant for her to be gone this long. Why, it is nearly Yule!”

Pippin stilled his foot from fidgeting and looked into the china teacup as he responded to Duro’s ravings. “Aye. ‘Tis nearly Yule.”

“And I do not know why a hobbit should be expected to spend Yule without his wife and children,” Duro continued, gaining speed in both his words and and his pacing as he spoke, slapping the gloves absently against his thighs. “Why, my sisters do not know how they shall ever manage, without Pervinca there to see to their youngsters and Viola’s grandchildren whilst they finish the baking and to assist in hanging the greenery -- she’s quite tall, you know, for a lass,” Duro threw in as a careless aside during his pacing, unnoticing of Pippin’s slight frown beginning above his teacup, nor the slight stiffness of the Took’s shoulders.

“Really,” Duro went on heedlessly, “I’ve heard quite a bit from my sisters about how busy they are, as I’ve been staying with them these past few months, of course. Why, from first breakfast until I come home for a pipe at night, it seems it’s all they can speak of, and I’ve never heard Pervinca complain.”

Back turned in his pacings, Duro missed again Pippin’s raised eyebrows and his deliberate setting down of the teacup upon the desk as a prelude to crossing his arms in front of him.

“So, really, oughtn’t she be around to help at Yule?” Duro asked and plowed ahead without waiting for an answer. “And as for the children, well, of course it is fine and proper that they should have visits with their Tookish relations” -- he nodded briefly in Pippin’s direction again -- “but, after all, they are Proudfeet, of course, and they should be with the Proudfeet for Yule,” he said confidently and stopped at last to face Pippin as he concluded. “I am certain the Thain must realize all this, so I should like to speak to him about his decision to send my wife away and when she might be fetched back,” Duro said in a very reasonable tone, the gloves once more hanging limply from one hand.

“’Twas nae his decision,” Pippin said abruptly, his jaw hardened and his green eyes glinting above his crossed arms.

“Pardon?” asked Duro politely.

“’Twas mine,” Pippin said and hopped down from the desk to stand with his eyes mere inches away from Duro’s brow.

Duro laughed and gave a playful shove to his shoulder. “Oh, come now, Pippin,” he said. “I did once overhear Pervinca telling young Bram that some jest was like his uncle’s as a lad. I see that she spoke true,” he laughed.

“I am not jesting,” Pippin said, speaking each word deliberately and moving neither his body nor his eyes, which continued to bore into Duro.

Duro took a step back and laughed nervously, crumpling the gloves within his hand. “Oh, come now, Pippin,” he chided again. “You are naught but Pervinca’s little brother. Why, you can have hardly come of age, to hear her tales!

“And, Pippin,” Duro continued, stepping forward again and putting a hand upon Pippin’s shoulder, ignoring the glare that greeted him, “I should doubt that the Thain would let you make such decisions on your own, after -- after - well, it wasn’t very responsible to run away during the Troubles, now, was it?”

He held up a hand as if to forestall questions from Pippin who, in fact, had not said anything but merely stiffened further.

“Tut, tut!” Duro continued. “Now, I know you did quite well for yourself when you came back, as your cousin helped you at Bywater and all that, but really, my lad, I should think it’s time to tame that bit of flightiness that we see the same in Pearl, hmm?”

Duro’s voice dripped with amused condescension as he ended with his hand still upon Pippin’s shoulder, and Pippin took a deep breath before reaching up to cover it with his own, and plucking it off as if it were an insect.

“Duro Proudfoot,” Pippin said, and began walking back toward his seat behind the desk. “I may be Pervinca’s younger brother. But I am also the son and Heir to the Thain.” He took a deep breath as he rounded the corner of the desk, and thoughts skittered through his brain about flightiness, and hastiness, and Knights of Gondor, and Kings, but he decided not to travel that route just now.

“I am 41 years old. Thain Paladin has complete confidence in me, and in my decisions.” Pippin closed his eyes as he sat, feeling both sick with sadness and an odd sort of pride as his father’s gaunt face with the ever-present grin for him swam behind his eyelids. “And we are nae here to discuss me,” Pippin said as he sat, opening his eyes as his bottom touched the chair and folding his fingers before him on the desk as he had seen King Elessar do. “We are here to discuss you.”

“I?” Duro echoed in surprise.

Pippin nodded at him, and then nodded again, toward the chair where his brother-in-law had sat earlier.

Duro hesitated a moment and then, as Pippin moved one hand slightly toward the bells upon his desk, Duro hastily pulled back the chair and sat again.

Pippin refolded his fingers and asked, as his thumb hidden within his folded hands surreptitiously pulled at a loose thread upon the end of his cuff, “Why did you marry my sister?”

“Beg pardon?” Duro asked, confused.

“I said,” repeated Pippin, drawing the thread out and wrapping it round both thumbs, “why did you marry my sister?”

“Well -- well, of course, the Proudfeet offered to help defend the borders of Tookland during the Troubles,” Duro began.

“Seems as if that could ha’e been done without weddin’ Pervinca,” Pippin answered, lacing the thread now in x’s across his middle fingers.

“Well...aye,” Duro faltered at first, but then spoke truer. “But you were not here, so you cannot know what it was like. Who knew if the Shire should ever be the same again? With those Ruffians turning out gaffers and gammers, and ‘gathering’ and ‘sharing’ the crops, who was to say that the market for hobbit lasses wasn’t to get any tighter than it already was, what with travel being nigh onto impossible!”

“So -- you saw my sister as a bargain, then?” Pippin asked quietly, one finger picking monotonously at the string within his hands.

“Well, of course, under the circumstances!” Duro responded indignantly. “My brother was already wed, and he was set to inherit most of the lad around the family smial -- if it should be worth aught by the time the Ruffians got done with things!” he said contemptuously. “And here I was, not wet yet at 43 - I had thought I’d have time, you know -- and still, then, an assistant to the leatherworker, but I had the Proudfoot name behind me, and if; well, to speak bluntly, my da and I both knew that if should find the right dam, I could be a fine sire, and what could be finer than the daughter of the Thain?”

Pippin’s fingers tightened within their folds, snapping and breaking off the thread, as bile rose within his throat. “So you bought my sister as breeding stock?” he asked in a deceptively quiet voice.

“No!” Duro responded vehemently, then squirmed. “Well, in a way -- you see, it’s all more complicated than that!” he chattered. “I had seen her before, you know. I knew she was a handsome lass, and I believe she thought the same of me as well. After all,” he said pointedly to Pippin, “I do not believe the Proudfeets were the only family to make such an offer. It was not so easy, then, for a lass to think of finding a lad, either.”

“Is that what you would have wished for your sisters?” Pippin asked, eyes flashing as he began to pull at another thread with his thumbs. “Ha’e you ever asked Pervinca if she weary, or if she needs help? Ha’e you ever asked how your sisters treat her, or if she has aught she should like to do?” Pippin asked, his fingers working furiously with the string now as he thought of Duro’s earlier words, and of the seed portrait on the wall behind him, and of the other image he’d seen at the Fair in Michel Delving, a full two years after he’d known Pervinca to be nearly finished with it.

“Ha’e you taken time to speak with her, and ask if she has aught to complain of, for I assure you,” Pippin said with a quick, grim smile, “’tis like that she does. Is any o’ that what you had thought on when your own sisters were wed?”

“I--” Duro hesitated, flustered. “I was barely a tween when my last sister wed.”

“All right, then,” Pippin said, perfectly willing to suddenly shift tacks. “’Tis the kind of bein’ wed that you found what you should with for your daughters?”

“Bu -- Clover is but eleven!” Duro protested. “It is not something I should have to think of for a while.”

“Aye, but time travels fast as the years wear on,’ Pippin counseled. “Why, seems that young Pippin Took is all grown up now, for one,” he said with a smirk at the edges of his eyes.

“I -- all right,” Duro said, and drew himself to sit with dignity, one hand resting the leather gloves lightly upon his knee. “Yes, of course I should like my daughters to make an advantageous match. Clover might be a bit old, but Ivy would only be three years older than her cousin Faramir.”

Pippin stood stiffly and abruptly, the new thread breaking and falling unnoticed to his desktop. His face boiled, bright spots of red burning upon his cheeks. The venom in his voice had Duro quaking, even as it contrasted with the words he spoke: “I love my son. He shall never be to buy -- or to sell.”

Pippin bent abruptly and rummaged in a desk drawer, rummaging through it before throwing a scroll upon the desk in front of Duro. As it rolled, the scroll partially unfurled, revealing lines that designated a map.

“I have a proposition for you, as you seem a hobbit who knows a bargain,” Pippin said in a voice as steely as his sword. “You may spend Yule with your children, as a guest of the Tooks,” he added, forestalling Duro’s comment. “In Buckland. Which is near to Bree. And you may decide what it means for the Proudfeets to be part of the family of the Thain, where there shall be nae more marketing of hobbits and their happiness.

“Or,” Pippin said, nodding toward the map, “should you return to spend this Yule -- and the next, and the one after -- with the Proudfeet, you may tell them you are the sort of hobbit who was willing to make a trade of his family -- for fiefdoms and land, as much as you desire,” Pippin concluded, pitching his voice into a whisper of temptation.

Duro looked at the map, one hand reaching out hesitantly before he snatched it back, a stricken look crossed his face and he covered his now-red cheeks, the leather gloves delivering a smack. Shamefacedly, he said, “That’s more than I require.”


“Truly, Mistress Birdsong, there is no need--” Diamond trailed off and caught her hand in the waist of Farry’s trousers again to give him a little shove in the direction away from the old hobbitess’s fringed blanket which covered the legs stretched in front of her upon a cushioned footstool while the fire crackled behind the back of her comfortably stuffed chair.

“Oh, ‘tisn’t any trouble, of course,” Mistress Birdsong answered brightly and rapped a rather long walking stick against the window a few feet from her chair. “Whit!” she hollered after a moment.

Diamond jumped just slightly as the window was pulled up from the outside, rather than in, and she dove a bit awkwardly for Farry’s trousers again as he began eagerly toddling toward the hobbit who stuck a curly head inside. “What do you be needin’?” he asked the old hobbitess without preamble, then started and hastily scrabbled at the snowflakes in his hair as he caught sight of Diamond.

“How-do, Mistress,” he said, one end of the knitted muffler wrapped about his neck swinging into the room as he bowed. “Whit Cooper at your service.”

“And your family’s,” Diamond replied pleasantly, and then lost her well-modulated tone to scold “Faramir!” as he broke free from her grip and made an incredibly quick dash across the room to grab at Whit’s scarf.

“Hoy, ‘tis all right!” laughed Whit, leaning into the smial to pick up the toddler and ease the weight about his neck caused by Farry’s letting himself dangle from the ends of the muffler.

Diamond smiled gratefully at him as she made her way across the smial to fetch back her son. She had just opened her mouth to make her own introduction when Mistress Birdsong spoke.

“Of course ‘tis all right,” she said eagerly, “now hand that lad back to Mistress Diamond and go on and get us a bit of your mum’s spiced cake to share ‘round.” She gave a seated curtsy to Diamond, the white curls upon her head bobbing, as she added, “now I know ‘tisn’t like near so grand as you’re like to have at the Great Smials, but I know for certain-sure,” she emphasized this with a thump of the walking stick upon the floor, although her legs remained stretched upon the cushion, “that Mistress Cooper’s spiced cake is the best as we have in Tooksank, and she had offered me some when she was round yest’day, and ‘twould be a shame, ‘twouldn’t it, for Mistress Diamond to go back to the Great Smials, where my granddaughter’s workin’ out, you know, without havin’ had a chance to et some of’t. So you go on and ask your mum to send some for Mistress Diamond Took whilst she’s at my place, afore she goes on back to the Great Smials,” Mistress Birdsong cheerily instructed her neighbor.

“Er,” Whit responded eloquently, having frozen at the very first mention of “Mistress Diamond” and “Great Smials,” his eyes now traveling in a sort of stunned helplessness toward the babe sitting in the crook of his arm and chewing happily upon the crunch of ice crystals among the yarn.

“Whit!” the young hobbit’s cheeks blushed even redder as another voice called his name.

“Whit, I’m afraid you’ll have to give young Master Faramir back to his mama now,” Trefoil said as she emerged from the kitchen and excused herself past Diamond to take the babe, her own cheeks reddening a bit as she neared the window, and hand him back to his mother’s arms.

“The tea is on, Gran,” she said to Mistress Birdsong, leaning to tuck the fringed blanket more tightly about the unmoving legs as she said lightly, “and I’m not so certain-sure as havin’ the window op’d this long is good for you, nor for the babe.”

Whit looked stricken and apologetic, hastening to pull down the sash with a yes’m and another hasty bow as Trefoil glanced at him out of the corner of her eye from where she bent over her grandmother’s lap.

“Oy, fiddle-faddle!” Mistress Birdsong answered, her torso swaying as she lightly swatted at Trefoil’s hands. “I’ll be fine with a bit o’ fresh air. Unless,” she looked up with a sudden uncertainty at Diamond, “you dinna think it’d hurt the babe, Mistress?” she asked in a voice that was suddenly tremulous and old.

“I-” Diamond squirmed a bit as she reseated herself in the room’s other overstuff chair, Farry once again playing with blocks at her feet. “I am sure he is fine from it,” she said with a smile.

“Well. Of course he is,” Mistress Birdsong began again. “I know quite a few hobbitesses who are allus sendin’ their children out to get some air; why, just down the street, there’s--”

Trefoil smiled and squeezed her gran’s hand, rising from her knees at the old hobbitess’s next words: “Oh, but you should get back to the kitchen, Trefoil dear, and finish gettin’ things up nice to bring out for our tea. I’ve sent Whit off for some of Mistress Cooper’s spiced cake, and I know you can red up a nice serving in no time, so it should be near as nice as to the Great Smials!”

Trefoil murmured an “Excuse me, Mistress,” as she maneuvered past Diamond’s chair and back to the kitchen.

“I’m--” Diamond began, just as Mistress Birdsong trilled, “So--”

They both stopped, and then the older hobbitess laughed and touched her hand to a white curl, which gave a little bounce, as she offered, “Guests first, of course.”

Diamond smiled back at her. “I merely wished to sayin person how sorry I am to be keeping Trefoil away for Yule again this year,” she said sincerely. “And, of course, Buckland is rather far...” she trailed off, looking down the side of her skirt to see Farry nudging a block across the floor. “But, of course, it’s quite possible that this should be the last time we would take her from you at the holidays...” Diamond deliberately let the sentence hang, as Mistress Birdsong’s keen ears picked up on it.

“Why?” she asked sharply. “Is there aught amiss with her work?” Her tone changed to one of complete confidence as she went on, “ I never had aught to complain of with that lass, never since I took her in after my son and his wife passed on. Allus done what she’s been told, she has, and done it right well, and wi’ no complaints.”

“Mistress Birdsong,” Diamond interrupted, seeing that the old hobbitess was working herself into an upset, and a long listing of Trefoil’s virtues. “We have no complaints with her work at the Smials, either,” she said comfortingly, and then added, with her own hesitation, “it is just that -- well, she shall come of age in Rethe, of course, and we do not know if she shall be staying at the Smials past that time.”

Diamond reached the tips of her fingers out and scooped up one of Farry’s blocks, holding it before him. Farry gave a short squawk of indignation, but accepted the block and happily placed it in his mouth, continuing to push another one along the floor.

“Is -- is she nae good enough to stay on, then?” Mistress Birdsong said in the tremulous voice again.

“It is not that,” Diamond answered carefully, now trying to convince Farry to remove the block from his mouth through moving another one enticingly before him so that he crawled after it. “It is that we have asked her, and she does not say whether it is her wish to stay on. We -- it had been thought,” Diamond concluded, having traded Farry the block in his mouth for the one in her hand, which was too big to fit within his cheeks, “that perhaps she was needed at home.”

“Bah,” Mistress Birdsong spat out, knocking slightly against her window-rapping stick in its place alongside her chair as she shifted her torso. “I’m not much to take care on. Allus got neighbors runnin’ about to look in on me. Why, one of the Coopers is over here near twice’t a day, a’times, and their Whit--” She stopped, and then continued with a speculative look on her face.

“Their Whit, he’s allus doin’ for me,” she said slowly. “Allus makes a point of comin’ round when Trefoil’s home for visits, too, to see if there’s anything as needs doin’ as requires two sets o’ young hands and legs. Tries to do for Trefoil, too, he does, that lad, allus askin’ her how she’s fixed for rides back to the Great Smials and such.” She finished the speech, delivered at rather a slow pace for her, and continued to look toward the kitchen.

“I see,” Diamond said, smiling. “And Trefoil?” she let the question hang again, and was surprised at the length of the silence which greeted it.

“Trefoil?” repeated her gran again at last, shaking her head. “I dinna know. There’s another lad, as works at the Great Smials as well, and has seen her safe to home on her last two visits, even though ‘tisn’t on his way to his own folks. But Trefoil...Trefoil...”

“Aye, Gran,” the lass called as as she rushed through to the door. “I saw him comin’ from the kitchen!” She opened the smial’s front door to reveal Whit Cooper standing behind a large covered cake dish. “Ma said as she’s pleased you’d be havin’ some, Mistress Diamond,” he said in a rush to get the words out as Trefoil took the cake from him.

“Thank you, Whit,” Diamond replied politely, and he gulped and bowed again, muttering, “Mistress Diamond,” and “Mistress Birdsong,” and finally, “Trefoil,” upon which word, and which face, he hung just a moment longer than the other two before the lass whispered back to him, with a blush upon her face, “Whit,” and he took off running from the doorstep.

‘Oh, dear,’ Diamond thought sharply, staring at Trefoil’s face as she watched him run, but hearing in her mind Pippin’s laughter three years ago in a Buckland smial, and his voice saying of Bert, “take a look when you get back to the Smials, why don’t you?” followed closely by Mistress Birdsong’s voice from this afternoon: “Allus done what she’s been told.”


“Shh! Shh!” came the warning as the two hobbits stumbled through the anteroom, a warning rather ruined in its effect by the clatter of the tin water dipper as one bumped against it in the dark, and by the giggle that came from the other one.

“All right, all right, I’m ‘sshing’!” came the second voice as a key turned in the lock and Merry and Pippin stumbled into the kitchen of Crickhollow. “Although -- why I am shushing, Pip?” Merry asked quite reasonably, in a normal tone of voice, lighting both a lamp upon the table and then his pipe as he plopped himself down into a kitchen chair. “There’s no one else here; they’re all back up at the Hall.”

“Because ‘tis night,” Pippin answered, with another giggle, collapsing onto another of the chairs. “Time for ‘sshing’!”

Merry looked beyond his pipestem to where his younger cousin had slouched forward, chin resting upon arms folded on the table.

“How much of that eggnog did you have again?” he asked quizzically, because drat if he could remember...

“Some,” Pippin giggled, and hiccuped, “and jusht some brandy, some. But jusht one snifter. But you gotta have Brandy. Ish Brandy Hall,” he said.

Both cousins waited a breath, then burst into laughter.

“Oy, if I had a penny for every time I’d heard that...,” Merry laughed, wiping tears from his eyes with one hand and balancing his pipe in the other.

“Charge ‘em,” Pippin suggested, from where his head was still pillowed on his arms. “Make ‘em pay to keep the Brandybucks in -- in brandy!” he laughed again, and then began fiddling, glassy-eyed, with the honey pot Estella had left set out upon the table, ready for first breakfast.

Merry, familiar with Pippin’s mess-making skills, and with Estella’s feelings about spilt honey, used his foot to push Pippin’s chair back a few inches from the table.

“Hoy!” Pippin yelped as he scrambled to keep his bottom seated upon the moving platform. “You’re mean, Merry,” he said, folding his arms and pouting once the chair had been moved far enough away that the honey pot was out of reach.

Merry snorted. “Smoke your pipe, Pip,” he said. “That’s where we said we were going, anyway.”

“Oy, they all know we snuck down here,” Pippin answered carelessly as he took a pipe from his pocket and filled it.

“Fine, then,” Merry said comfortably, reaching up to unfasten his cloak. “They’ll know where we are for the night, then.”

“Oy, Merry, I’ve got to go back,” Pippin answered, fidgeting with the clasp on his own cloak with one hand, but leaving it fastened.

“Why, Pip?” Merry asked, and Pippin answered immediately, “Faramir. Diamond.”

“You and Diamond’ve stayed here before, Pip,” Merry reminded him. “You still could, you know.”

“’Tisn’t where all the baby things are, Merry,” Pippin answered easily, then added softly, “We tried, Merry, and ‘tis just -- just so much easier at the Hall.”

Merry shrugged, and tapped at his pipe before putting it back in his mouth and, hands crossed behind his neck as he looked up at the ceiling, said, “Estella’ll probably stay at the Hall for the night, as well. She does that, sometimes, when there’s visitors.”

Pippin nodded, swinging one foot onto the other knee before asking, “And do you ever stay at the Hall?”

Merry shrugged. “Sometimes,” he answered the ceiling.

A few moments of silence, then, “Pip?”

“Aye?”

“What are you trying to do with Duro?”

It was Pippin’s turn to snort, and to find himself staring at the ceiling. “Trying to get him to see lasses as real hobbits. To get him to be part of a family, instead of sticking all his pride in the name at the foot of his family tree. Trying to get him to treat my sister as a hobbitess and not some prize pig.”

Merry wrinkled his brow. “I thought it was a pony he compared her to?”

“Oy!” Pippin answered, rolling his eyes. “You and your ponies.” A moment, then he continued. “’Tis turnabout. For all those years she called me ‘Piglet.’ ‘Tis only fair.”

“Mmm,” Merry mumbled around his pipe.

“Merry?”

“Aye?”

“I havena the slightest idea what I am doing.”

“I know the feeling well,” came the heartfelt sigh of an answer.

“Pervinca,” Pippin continued after a moment. “When Barliman let her off for Yule, and we met her and Nob with the cart at the bridge...”

“Aye?” Merry prompted.

“She looked as if she dinna know whether to slug me or to kiss me,” Pippin said.

“Another feeling with which I am intimately familiar,” Merry answered.

Pippin stuck his tongue out at him, and they both puffed upon their pipes for a few moments.

“So -- are you sending her back to Bree?” Merry asked at last.

Pippin snorted again. “Mayhap,” he answered. “Least, that’s what we’ll call it, and let me take the blame with Duro and the Proudfeet--”

“Proudfoots,” Merry and Pippin chorused together, taking their pipestems out of their mouths to do so.

“He already thinks I’m half-cracked, anyway,” Pippin said when they had finished with their laughter.

“I know that -- well, I mean, but -- why should a lass want to go back to Bree?” Merry finally asked, brow furrowed.

Pippin stared at him a moment, then shrugged as he fiddled with his pipe again. “She did say aught about pin money,” he muttered to his lap.

“Oh. Aye,” Merry nodded as if he understood, and then moved on to the next question.

“Estella wants to know if it’s still all right for her to be friends with Pervinca, or if she should treat her like one of the servants now.”

Pippin stared at his cousin. “Meriadoc Brandybuck,” he finally said. “Who is your best friend what lives in the Shire, present company excepted?”

“Sam, of course,” Merry answered, wrinkling his nose in confusion.

“And what does Sam do?” Pippin asked in the same tone he used to get Farry to touch his nose, or his ears.

“He’s the Mayor,” Merry answered.

“No, F-- Merry,” Pippin continued in the singsong. “That’s his title. What does Sam do?”

“Well, he’s always been a gardener,” Merry cogitated out loud.

“Very good!” Pippin answered, and clapped his hands together in delight before bringing his pipe back to his mouth, during which process the word “daft” could be heard muttered.

Merry smiled, but couldn’t resist asking, “So, is that your answer?”

Pippin shot him a look. A couple of moments more, and Merry had another question.

“Pip?”

“Aye?”

“Is Uncle Paddin really well enough for this trip?”

Pippin didn’t answer for a moment, taking his pipe from his mouth and turning it from side to side, so that an ash fell upon the floor and he absently rubbed out the spark with his toes, seeming not to notice what he was doing.

Merry refrained from remarking upon it, either.

“He’s in one of his better phases now, again,” Pippin finally said quietly. “But he’s never truly well anymore. I think -- I think he truly wanted to see your mother for Yule this year, and ‘twould be easier for Pervinca, and..” Pippin shrugged.

“So long as one or t’other of us is there to read the post in the servants’ quarters on Second Yule, ‘twas naught could convince him otherwise. He’s a stubborn hobbit when he wants to be.”

“It’ll be a long ride, through the night,” Merry said with sympathy. Pippin shrugged again. “I’ve done it before,” he said quietly, “and Nellie will be fine.”

“Hoy, Merry,” Pippin said in the dark outside Crickhollow again.

“What?” came Merry’s voice.

“Happy Yule.”

“Oh. Happy Yule, Pip.”

“No, no!” Pippin answered crossly. “’Tis a gift!”

“Er...what, Pip?”

“For you and Estella.” A breath. “Diamond told me I was wrong.”


Farry in her arms, Diamond paced the length of the sitting room in their quarters, trying to determine what she should tell Pippin of her visit to Tooksank.

“You know, husband, it is not only I who must obey you...” she murmured as practice, jostling Farry up and down while he gnawed on a biscuit held in one hand and tugged some of her curls loose with the other.

Diamond reached up to free her hair from a particularly hard yank, muttering both to Farry, and to Pippin, in her imagination, “No, no. I know you didn’t mean to--”

And then, looking at her son in her arms, who was Heir to the Heir and would be Thain some day in his turn, Diamond was struck with the sadness of it all, and of the overwhelming impossibility that she should be expected to train a lad up right for that responsibility.

When Pippin arrived a few minutes later, he found Farry happily munching upon a biscuit on the floor, but Diamond seated, weeping, upon the settee, one of Healer Willow’s books open beside her.

“Diamond?” he asked, hurrying to kneel before her and take her hands in his. “What ‘tis it? What’s wrong?”

“Oh,” Diamond sobbed as her grey eyes were revealed, “It’s just -- just that that lass is so sad, but feels she must stay, and Bert isn’t Rufus at all; Whit is, and it’s all your fault!” she finished with an offended sniff.

Pippin had been a little stunned at that, but once everything was sorted out later and Diamond, mortified, trying to express contrition for her earlier behavior, he beamed proudly and fondly at her, kissed her with his hands gentle about her waist, and assured her, “Of course, Diamond, ‘tis quite all right.”


“Thank you, Mistress,” Trefoil smiled and accepted a small sack from Diamond as they stood in the yard of the Smials among the bustle of carts and ponies there for the first of Rethe, moving some tweens into and out of the Smials, and their families to and from rented-out farms. “It has been a pleasure working at the Great Smials.”

“Thank you for saying so, Trefoil,” Diamond answered, trying to draw her cloak a bit more snugly across her front in the face of the wind. “Please give my regards to Mistress Birdsong.”

“Oh, I -- we certainly shall,” Trefoil answered, blushing as Whit appeared from around the side of the cart to stammer out another greeting to Diamond and hand Trefoil in.

“Bert?” Pippin asked as he walked by the lee of one of the Smials’ doors after most of the carts had departed.

“...willna ever understand lasses,” the hobbitservant was muttering to himself. “Says she’s back to bein’ strong enough to tote her own washin’ baskets ever since the new year, and then she don’t even lift a finger to help that hobbit what with puttin’ her trunk on a cart. Lasses!” he snorted.

“Bert,” Pippin began, with a hand on the hobbitservant’s sturdy shoulder. “Er. Umm.” He ducked his head, hesitant, and shuffled his feet as he added, “I think I had better buy you an ale.”


“Hoy, there! You, Bert! Help us with this tub, will you?” Sage asked as she and Second Cook Geranium dragged it toward it toward Pippin and Diamond’s quarters, setting it where the healer indicated.

“Honestly,” Sage said lightly to Bert as she pushed him back out to the corridor and into place before the door. “You lads. It’s as if you’d never know what’s what if a lass weren’t to take the time to tell you. Stand,” she pointed at Bert. “Wait. Fetch.” Then she smiled at him, and closed the door behind her.

Pippin smiled cautiously, seating himself gingerly on the bed beside Diamond and reaching out a finger to gently run across the light frizz on the tiny new head.

Diamond smiled, leaning her head on his shoulder.

“It is another lad,” she said. “For you to name.”

“Aye,” Pippin whispered, and took the babe from her arms into his.

“I had thought -- that ‘tis, if ‘twas all right with you--” he looked at Diamond from under the same long lashes which fluttered upon the babe’s cheeks -- “to name him Gerier. After your father,” he explained.

“Oh,” Diamond’s grey eyes filled with tears, which pooled on the sleeve of Pippin’s shirt. “Husband, are -- are you sure?” she asked with a tremble in her voice. “To name him for the North-Tooks?”

“Aye,” Pippin whispered, and nudged her head up with his nose so that he could kiss her, while little Garry protested with a squirm and a wail.

“These tensions must only last as long,” he whispered, “as neither one admits that he is wrong.”