Chapter 26: In the Rough

[warning: character death]

“Hoy.” The often raucous greeting fell from Pippin’s lips not in a shout, but in a quiet tone, near a whisper. The hushed voice seemed appropriate to the stillness of this pool, the only sounds the lapping of the Brandywine’s backwaters and the birds in the trees.

“Hoy,” Merry greeted him listlessly from where he sat on the bank beneath a linden tree’s shade, his ankles dangling in the shallows and a carven horn lying in his lap.

“I’ve helped to carry the last lot into the Hall, and Estella’s directing where it shall all go,” Pippin said. He sat next to Merry on the same narrow spit of land among the water, his knees drawn up to his chest to keep his feet firmly planted on dry ground, as he said, “’Tis nearly finished.”

“Aye,” Merry said with a sigh, and looked at the horn in his lap as he began idly turning it back and forth between his hands, the silver shining beneath the slickness of his sweat.

He had blown this horn before: every year at the anniversary of the Battle of Bywater, for one. And though the notes he sounded echoed those from the Horn of Buckland for ages past, Merry thought always that his parting gift from Eowyn brought with its tones not only a clear power that seemed to shimmer from the silver, but also a faint, lingering song that carried with it the melancholy of friends far away.

He began once more to lift the horn to his lips, but Pippin’s hand laid upon his and stopped his movement.

Pippin’s hand squeezed over Merry’s, and did not let go.

“I— how’s the new lad?” Merry chocked out around the tears that fell from his bent head after a few moments of silence.

“Oy, Garry’s a fussier babe than Farry, ‘tis for sure,” Pippin said brightly. “Canna understand why ‘tisn’t mealtime the whole day, I think. He’ll go far as a hobbit.” He chuckled.

“I — I’m sorry to take you away from him so soon,” Merry gasped out as he tried to still his tears and the silent sobs that wracked him.

“Pfft!” Pippin made a noise as he shifted his weight to the side, steadying himself with one hand upon the bank while the other patted Merry’s. “Posh and bother, Merry, you knew I’d come, as you needed me!”

“I -- I know,” Merry sniffed, now trying to wipe the tears from his eyes with one hand, the other still upon his lap. “It’s just -- you’ve missed the Fair this year, too...and you should be helping Diamond...”

“Hoy!” Pippin breathed out in a huff, blowing at the curls above his forehead as he flopped back onto his elbows, his knees still raised before him. “Diamond has aught but to ask for help at the Smials. And I dare say the Fair shall have got on quite well without me, for a year. ‘Twas ne’er a sure thing I ‘twould be goin’, anyway, with Gerier nae decidin’ to have himself born till the midst of Forelithe.”

Merry nodded, then his voice broke and he lowered his head to his hands as he sobbed out, “I -- I was going to go to the Fair. With my da.” He peered through his fingers at Pippin, gray-blue eyes filed with the tears that ran between the digits.

“Hoy, Merry, I know,” Pippin said softly. He sat up and gathered the older cousin’s head to him in a hug,letting Merry cry upon his shoulder.

“It -- hic -- it wasn’t supposed to be like this, Pip,” came the torrent of words and of sobs. “He -- he was fine -- even Sam said how healthy he seemed for a hobbit of his age,” Merry sobbed, not noticing Pippin’s slight tensing, or the minutest of hesitations in the pats the younger cousin was bestowing on his back, as he mentioned Saradoc’s health.

“He -- he was supposed to go peacefully one day, in his sleep,” Merry sobbed on, “and then Estella and I would move to the Hall, and it would be sad, but it would be all right as well, because things would have gone as they ought. Then I would be Master of Buckland, and Estella and I would have children to carry on the line, and all would be as it should be! But it’s not like that, Pip,” Merry suddenly declared angrily, and pushed back and away from Pippin to stare him in the face. “Why?” he demanded to know. “Why is it all wrong?”

“I -- I dinna know, Merry,” Pippin said quietly, looking away from his cousin’s flushed, tearstained face to regard the grassy ground, and trail a finger upon it.

“The -- the pony may ha’e been tired,” he said quietly, and with the near-desperation of someone who has repeated the same speculations countless times, searching within them for a hopelessly elusive answer. “Or -- or the axle may ha’e been off on the cart -- or, or the road may ha’e flooded once’t and its layout changed -- or, or Uncle Sara may ha’e been too tired -- or, or I dinna know, Merry!” he ended finally in a high whine, his lower lip trembling as he blinked at his own tears.

He was able to look his cousin straight in the eyes, though, as he concluded, “’Tisn’t any answer.”

“Oh, Pip,” Merry said, and his defiant stance crumpled, his body folding in on itself so he hugged himself behind the knees, rocking back and forth and sobbing quietly anew as Pippin rubbed his back in comfort from behind, the other hand resting lightly on Merry’s knee.

“My mum’s a widow, now, and I’m Master of Buckland, and Estella’s got her wish to move to the Hall; but it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Aye, Merry. Aye,” Pippin muttered behind him as he went on in this vein. “Aye. Well I know.”

Merry’s weeping at last last subsided into sniffles, and he wiped again at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I suppose I haven’t been a very good Master these past few days,” he said ruefully, and played once again with the horn in his lap. “Sneaking off down here to let this sound its mourning tunes.”

Pippin shrugged, his hand still on Merry’s back. “”Tis what you needed,” he said simply.

“But, Master Meriadoc,” he said gently after a moment, his fingers closing over Merry’s upon the tip of the horn, “your household needs you, now. Speed to its defense. You’ve heard enough how the horn laments.”


“Happy birthday, dear,” Diamond murmured, leaning over to kiss Pippin’s curls above the tip of his ear as he sat upon the floor of the sitting room.

“I ‘tour!” Farry chirruped from his own spot on the floor, while in Diamond’s arms Garry squawked and squirmed.

“Nae yet, lad,” Pippin, carefully threading a rounded stick through the structure he was constructing, and Diamond added, to their eldest son,

“You will be four next month, Farry. Today is your Da’s birthday.”

“Da?” Farry repeated, his green eyes growing quizzical beneath his darkened curls.

“Aye,” Pippin laughed again, and set another wooden dowel upright in his game. “And I am forty-four!”

“Da birf’day!” Farry chortled, and toddled to where Pippin sat,his chubby bottom falling upon, and scattering across the floor, the pieces of Pippin’s game.

Pippin grabbed his son to hug and tickle him about the tummy, while the draughts in the game set ready upon a higher shelf jumped slightly at the impact, and a knock came at the door.

“Beg pardon, Mr. Pippin,” Bert said after Diamond and Garry had admitted him, “but Thain Paladin has said as he’d like to see you.”


“Aye, Da?” Pippin asked after a few moments of awkward silence, shifting his chair a bit closer to the desk with one hand, while the other held his mug, the chair seat’s shadow covering the light stain upon the carpet in Paladin’s office. “’Tis the ale all right, then?”

Paladin shrugged, took a sip from his own mug with a smacking sound, then followed it with a grimace and, with a teetering hand, set the mug upon the desk.

“I am nae longer much for ale, Pip,” he said in a roughened, quavery voice, his green eyes fixed upon the mug.

“Nor am I much for anything.”

“Da!” Pippin protested, sitting forward, and would have risen from his chair had not Paladin forestalled him.

“Nae,” the elder hobbit said, lowering the raised hand with its slight tremor back to the desk. “Dinna get up. I -- I had wanted to talk to you, Pip.”

Pippin sat still for a moment in the following moments of quiet, the sounds in the office not those of voices, but the sight rasps of a hobbit’s breaths, the tick-tock of the clock’s hands, and the hiss of the ale’s foam as it evanesced.

“Da?” Pippin then prompted again, jiggling now one foot upon the other knee, his thumb tracing along the side of his mug.

“I should like to turn my office o’er to you, son,” Paladin said finally, abruptly.

“B--but, Da, I already have an office,” Pippin said quietly. His chin jutted out and his eyes stared at the carpet as he added petulantly, “’Tis in the same corridor. ‘Tis fine.”

“Pip. Pippin,” Paladin whispered. His hands trembled on his desk, but his eyes were steady upon his son. “I mean nae only the room” -- he moved his hand in a slight gesture to indicate it -- “but the office as a whole, with all its trappings and duty besides.”

“Oh, Da,” Pippin said, a quiet stream of tears flowing down each cheek, “do you need a rest?”

“Aye,” Paladin answered. “And soon it shall be a long one.”

He lifted his arms with the palms facing outward, and Pippin set his mug down upon the Thain’s desk and walked to stand behind it and hug his father, while Paddin held him, too, and continued,

“Ah, my lad, my Pippin; you’ve always been the apple of my eye...

“I had nae expected a lad when you were born,” Pippin heard him say this Afteryule and had heard before over the years and remembered in Afterlithe when he stood again before his father in Thain Paladin’s office as the bees sipped nectar outside and hobbits gathered in the room.

“’Twas nae for me that I cared,” Paladin’s voice echoed through Pippin’s mind as he stepped forward to receive the book of the Yellowskin from his father’s outstretched hands. “’Twould make no difference to Eg and me whether I were Thain or no.

“But, ah, for my lad,” Pad’s voice continued to fill his head as Pippin held the book open before him for hobbits to approach and sign in witness

— first Gerin North-Took, with a beam and a flourish, holding in one arm the just-turned two Gerier, whose kick of delight at seeing his Da so close just missed the nearby ink pot; then Fredegar Bolger, with a curlicue upon the end of his name and an unconscious satisfied pat to his tummy after he had handed on the quill, its end slightly gnawed though it had been in his possession only a short time; followed by Everard Took, who signed proudly and stood there beaming, quill still in hand, until it was tentatively removed by Filibert Furryfoot, who had shyly made his way through the crowd in the space between Duro and Pervinca Proudfoot and who held carefully away from himself the quill with ink upon it, lest he spill any upon the new waistcoat that, as Sage the kitchen lass proudly told her friends and family in the crowd, she had stitched herself; next came Mayor Samwise Gamgee, then Meriadoc Brandybuck, Master of Buckland, both of whom held Pippin’s eyes with warmth in their own as they signed, and then clasped his shoulders to lend support and strength, before they each stepped back to stand next to the wives holding their infant children in their arms, Merry’s son just one month old; and finally came the halting, supported steps and the palsied handwriting of Paladin Took

— and Pippin heard the voice continue, “For my lad, ‘twere to be nought but the best the Shire could give: the Great Smials, the best healers, aught that there could be.

“For ‘twere the best of all I could give, and what I had dreamed of since first I held ye, for my lad to be–”

“Thain Peregrin!” shouted the assembled hobbits in acclamation.

In the moment of dulled chatter which followed, Pippin set aside the book, his own signature topping the list, and bent his head to rest a cheek upon his father’s snow-white curls, the old hobbit whispering, from within the circle of his son’s arms, “Thain Peregrin.”


A breeze rustled through the tops of Tookland’s trees, bringing a slight chill to the uncovered heads and clasped hands among the hobbits who stood gathered on a hillside near the Great Smials.

Pippin’s curls ruffled in the breeze as he faced the group. Loosely, in one hand, Thain Peregrin held a sheaf of papers, but he did not need to read them as his eyes sought the twilight of the western horizon. “He goes, now, to a far country, with cool sunlight and green grass,” Pippin murmured quietly at last, then crouched and took up a handful of loose dirt, letting it fall through his fingers to land upon the box which held what had once been Paladin Took.

Pippin’s eyes were moist, and a single tear glistened upon each cheek, but his heart was eased as he rose from his father’s side and stepped back to stand at his wife’s. Paladin, Pippin knew from his own memories, had been free at last to cast off not only all doubt and care and fear, but also all pain.

He smiled tightly at Diamond, and lay a hand upon hers that rested on his arm, as the other hobbits moved forward with their own contributions to the earth.

Pearl and her husband, and Pimpernel and Everard, and Aster and Farry and Clover and Ivy and Harcourt and Bramimond and all the other grandchildren old enough to walk unaided threw down their handfuls of soil and whispered their own words of departure. The Proudfoot children, cowed by the occasion, hovered quietly, flitting between clutching at the skirts of their mother and at those of her sisters their aunts.

First, though, to approach the open grave after Pippin had concluded his speech, was Eglantine, supported under one arm by Pervinca.

The always small hobbitess now seemed tinier than ever, lines sagging her face with grief as her tall daughter brought her forward. From amongst the crowd, Duro Proudfoot made a hesitant motion of approach, which caught Pervinca’s eyes. She hesitated a moment, then nodded, and he came forward to support Eglantine’s other side as she walked and then knelt at the grave.

“No day will dawn,” she whispered as the soil fell from her hands, “that I don’t mourn and weep.”


“So, that shall be the menu for the first of the Yule feasts, then,” First Cook Geranium said, setting the receipt cards back into their box as she and Diamond sat at table. “There’ll be a lot of baking to do this month, there will.”

“Aye,” Diamond said, lunging deftly to catch little Garry, determined to reach the floor, before he tumbled out of her arms. “But you need not wear yourself down, so,” she commented, glancing at Gerry’s extensive notes as she set Garry down to toddle toward his toys.

“Ach!” Gerry answered lightly. “’Tisn’t a bit more than what Petunia was used to do, and I’ll have help besides.

“I’ll not give that old hobbitess reason to regret that she’s rocking by the fire this year, instead of slammin’ pots about in the kitchen.”

“Aye,” Diamond laughed softly. “Though I do believe Mistress Eglantine quite appreciated the gingerbread Petunia shared with her after she threw you from your own kitchen the other day.”

“Aye, that she did, I’m sure,” Gerry laughed in return. “And I’m sure there’s another old hobbitess what’ll have no cause regret rocking by a fire this year,” she said, and patted Diamond’s hand.

“Especially,” Gerry said as she stood from the table, stepping carefully over Garry and stopping near where Farry’s rump protruded from underneath the sofa, where his toy hobbit was busy “tunneling,” “as she has such fine grands to share her gingerbread.”

Diamond laughed softly and stood as well, preparing to retrieve Farry from his tunnel, when the door to the quarters burst open and slammed back against the wall.

The noise startled Garry so he began to wail, and surprised Farry, who bumped his head on the underside of the sofa as he scooted out, adding his own cries to his brother’s.

Gerry bent toward Garry, while Diamond stared at what the open door revealed: a disheveled Pervinca, her curls awry, a dressing gown loosely belted over her frock, and a pale face blotched with the redness of tears.

“Pippin!” she choked out in a harsh cry.

Diamond was advancing, hands held out, as she said, “He is not--”

--when her husband’s footfalls sounded through the corridor, running with a gait that heavily placed more weight upon one foot than the other.

He, too, burst into the doorway, running near headlong into his sister so that they both stumbled and caught each other about the arms.

“Pip--” Pervinca choked out while he asked her, his own face pale, “Mama?”

“Aye,” Pervinca whispered, and nodded, then burst again into tears, resting her head upon her brother’s shoulder as he, too, held her and wept.


Pink shadows lengthened, the gray fingers of evening creeping forward with a biting chill as the hobbits stood this time upon the hillside.

“C--cool sunlight and g--green grass,” Pippin choked out the words that belied the sere landscape of the day, then crouched to rain down upon another coffin another handful of dirt: not the loose soil of two months prior, but hard, pebbled dirt which cut into his hands though, fortunately, it had not yet frozen solid.

He sobbed, his head bent, over the grave of she who had not been expected to follow so soon the one she grieved, allowing Diamond to help him to his feet as she, too, threw down a fistful of dirt and Eglantine’s daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren again repeated the ritual as well.

When the last hobbit, save those who would work with shovels in the lantern-light so that no new day would dawn upon an uncovered grave, had finished, Pippin leaned upon the support Diamond’s arm linked in his offered, allowing her to give both the physical strength she had so provided since they were wed and, in his weariness, to lead him onward.

His thoughts were in a fog as the procession reached a side door of the Smials and entered, and he almost did not notice when, as smaller groups began to break off and wend toward the supper, a pair of hobbits in traveling clothes of cloaks and gloves and heavy mufflers attempted to push their way against the traffic.

“Excuse me,” said the older, with an impatient tone, “but we have traveled far to see The Took.”

Pippin gasped and almost stumbled as those words did cut through the air. His eyes flicked in the direction of the hillside outside the Smials where she who, until so recently, had borne this title now lay.

And then he realized that he himself was now both Took and Thain, and he drew a shuddering breath with but a hiccup of a sob in it, and started to straighten himself to his full height.

Diamond’s placing of her free hand upon his arm arrested him, though. Pippin’s wife, feeling in her arms the heaviness which dogged his steps and seeing in his eyes the grief which clouded his thoughts, allowed her voice to cut through the others’ soft murmurs in the corridor, and the louder tone of the visitors.

“Thain Peregrin,” she said, in the tone she had learned since childhood which imbued that title with respect and would brook no contradiction, “is not now to be disturbed.”

She nodded curtly toward a breathless servant who had appeared behind the visitors, and gestured toward them. That servant, and others of the Smials who approached, hastened to draw away the visiting hobbits, and to do the bidding of this year’s new Mistress of the Smials. Some there were who had become acquainted with her seven years ago, and were quite aware that Mistress Diamond Took knew well both her place, and what was proper.

As the servants firmly escorted the visitors away, Diamond again propelled Pippin along, steering him soon into a door that opened onto what had been his parents’ sitting room.

Still and quiet it was, already, with a smattering of suddenly bare spots among the tables and walls where once had been treasures that a daughter, or cousin, or friend, had clasped to a bosom in remembrance, and taken to a new home.

Diamond shut the door behind them and lit but one lamp after she had guided Pippin to sit upon the old couch where he had catnapped since he was a child.

Then she sat next to him, and took his head in her arms, running her fingers through his curls as she let him sniffle and sob.

“There, now,” she said. “Pippin.

“Aye, you are now the Took and the Thain,” she whispered, and kissed the tip of his ear as he sobbed harder against her, “but with me, my darling” -- she brushed the curls back and away from his forehead so that her clear gray eyes could look long into his tear-filled pools of green as she said, “you need be only my husband.”