Chapter Three: The Hardest Matter

Crickhollow, Astron, 1427

Pippin was just finishing up tying the last of the straps on the cart when he heard the clatter of another pony’s hooves at Crickhollow’s gate.

“Such timing, old girl,” he muttered to Sorrel, and scratched behind the mare’s ears.

Merry was hailing him already as he drove the Brandybucks’ trap into the barn and swung his legs over the side to dismount before it had come to a full stop. “So, did you miss -- Pip?” he began jovially, but then broke off as he saw the laden cart.

“Hullo, Merry,” Pippin responded with a strained smile, keeping his hands upon the pony’s head. “Welcome home.”

Merry had left his own trap where the pony stopped, reins still trailing, and walked toward Pippin’s cart. “What’s -- why, this is all your things from the smial, Pip!” Merry gaped as he faced his cousin.

“Not quite all, I daresay,” Pippin responded wryly, bending his head to stroke his pony’s ears once more. “I’m sure you’ll find I’ve left something or other ‘strewn about’, as Estella likes to say.”

“But you didn’t mean to leave anything,” Merry said, now gaping openly at Pippin. “You -- you’re leaving!” he accused.

“Well, you dinna expect me to live in Buckland forever,” Pippin replied resentfully from his place by the pony.

“No, but -- Pip!” Merry’s voice was suddenly filled with sympathy and trepidation. “Has -- has something happened to Uncle Paddin? I would have thought for sure Estella’s lass friend would tell us if there were any news in Budgeford.”

“Da’s fine. ‘Tis not about him,” Pippin said shortly and combed his fingers through Sorrel’s mane.

“’Tis not...,” Merry repeated, dumbfounded, then angrily placed his hands on his hips. “You cannot just leave!” he stormed. “You own half the smial!”

Pippin shook his head sadly, still not looking at his cousin. “Not anymore,” he said in a small voice.

“Not -- what do you mean, ‘not anymore’?” Merry demanded. “Have you sold half my home to some Sackville-Baggins of a hobbit?”

A sad smile crossed Pippin’s lowered face. “I doubt Estella would take kindly to hear you call her brother such,” he said.

“Freddy,” Merry stated. He folded his arms across his chest. “You’ve sold your half of the Crickhollow smial to Freddy. And you’re leaving. Were you actually planning on telling me, then, or were you just thinking you’d be gone by the time I got back?”

“I was waiting,” Pippin said sullenly. “I was going to tell you. It’s just -- oh, here!”

He reached into the top of a satchel set upon the cart’s seat and thrust a piece of parchment at Merry.

Merry took the paper slowly, unfolded it, and read. Some level of his mind noted the fine parchment, mottled with soft grey specks that undoubtedly came from feathers of the pigeons kept in the Tooks’ cote. This background contrasted with the fine calligraphy of the black ink, which read:

Peregrin Took
and
Diamond North-Took
will wed upon the 21st Astron, 1427, at the Great Smials, Tuckborough.
Thain Paladin II and Eglantine Took
with
Gerin and Honeysuckle North-Took
cordially request your presence at this event.

Merry opened and closed his mouth several times after lifting his eyes to his cousin, who was fidgeting needlessly with the reins and bridle of his pony. “Who -- who in the Shire is Diamond North-Took?” he finally managed to ask.

When Pippin gave only a small shrug and did not answer, continuing his hands’ restless motions, Merry continued, “Have you even met this lass?”

“’Course I’ve met her!” retorted Pippin.

“Oh? And when was that?”

“1420,” Pippin muttered toward the pony, but Merry’s hobbit ears caught it nonetheless.

“1420!” he exclaimed. That’s -- that’s seven years, Pip! You’ve been betrothed all this time?!”

Pippin nodded, head down, and began tracing a line in the dirt of the stable floor with his heel.

Merry was thinking out loud, now. “And have you seen her since then?”

Pippin shook his head no, staring now at the patterns his foot was tracing.

“Well, surely, Pip, you can find your own hobbitess. I know there’s lots would be sweet on you if you gave them half a chance.” He placed a placating hand on Pippin’s arm and added, in a truly bewildered tone, “I don’t understand how Uncle Paddin can do this to you.”

Pippin raised his head then, and his green eyes snapped as he looked at Merry. “’Twas my doing!” he informed his cousin. “I have a duty to the Shire!”

Merry stepped back. “Fine, then!” he retorted. “It was your doing to betroth yourself to some lass you’d never heard of, when you weren’t even of age to do so, and to keep it a secret from your best friend for seven years!”

Pippin gave a long look at his cousin, then said simply, his chin held high in a regal manner that Aragorn sometimes used, “I’m sorry, Merry,” and swung himself up into the seat of the cart.

“Fine, then. Go!” snorted Merry. “Peregrin!”

Pippin hesitated a moment, then shook the reins and clicked his tongue to start Sorrel out of the barn.

Merry banged through the front door of Crickhollow a few moments later, threw the invitation down on the table in front of a confused Estella, and grabbed a pipe as he slammed the back door on his way out.

He did not see, around the curve in the road, the dejected-looking hobbit driving his cart toward Tookland. Pippin’s feet were propped on the board in front of the seat and his head lowered as he made his way across the Shire. He stoped in Hobbiton to deliver another invitation before the rest were posted.

Upon eventually reaching the Great Smials, Pippin sat up straighter in the cart. He was perfectly capable of taking care of his own pony -- had been doing so for years, now -- but this time, he stopped the cart in the middle of the yard and hailed a stablehobbit to tend to it. Then he slung his satchel over his arm, squared his chin and shoulders, and walked, not to one of the side entrances that would take him closer to his childhood room, but to the Great Door.

“Hullo, Bod,” he nodded to an elderly servant nodding upon the bench on the top step.

“Wha-- why, hullo, there, Mas-- Mister Pippin! Back for another visit so soon, are ye?” came the cheerful greeting.

“Back home, Bod,” Pippin answered seriously. “To stay.”

“To stay, then? Well, that’s good, that’s good,” Bod chortled. “We’ve missed you around here these past few years, with near all your sisters off and gone as well.” He wiped a hand across the knee of his trouser leg, but made no other move until Pippin, still standing there, slightly raised an eyebrow.

“Oh! Oh, blessed me,” muttered Bod as he slowly raised himself from the bench. “You’ll forgive an old hobbit, won’t you, whose joints are creaking and whose brain must be rattling?”

Pippin gave him a tight smile, his own nerves rattling inside.

Bod reached for the door and pushed it open, then took a speaking horn from its place on a shelf nearby. “Mas--” he muttered to himself. “No, that’s not right. Mister Pi--” he began, and Pippin quirked an eyebrow at him again and gave a slight shake of his head.

Finally, heaving a great breath, Bod announced through the horn as Pippin strode inside the Great Smials, “Captain Peregrin Took!”


Diamond sat properly, with her hands folded in her lap, during the ride to the Great Smials. Her family had taken their carriage, the best conveyance in the North Farthing. Of course, Diamond knew, and her mother had assured her, that the best of the North Farthing would likely pale in comparison to what was to be found at the Great Smials.

For no matter how beautiful the land of the North Farthing, with the majestic trees of the Bindbale Wood, it was, for farming, marginal at best. Unlike the other smaller farthing, the South, the North Farthing had no fertile fields of pipeweed. And, indeed, the best farmland in the North Farthing was in its south, and seemed but a stone’s throw from the West Farthing market in Hobbiton.It was easier to load any overabundance and carry it there than to Oatbarton, the principal town of the North Farthing. Much of the scattered quarrying that occurred along the North Farthing’s eastern edges made its way to Brockenborings in the East Farthing, as the stonemasons who could work these riches of the earth were more likely to have settled near Scary Quarry.

For the North Farthing’s roads were rutted with the marks of dragging logs for timber, and getting to Oatbarton itself required passing through the woods. Any commerce that did make its way to Oatbarton passed somehow through the North-Tooks’ hands, though, and Diamond knew her father loved the cool, shadowed beauty of their own “great” smial built near to this town, some of its estate nestled into the woods.

Their isolation from the rest of the Shire and their weaker economic position had made the North Farthing hobbits a proud, independent lot. They clung fiercely to the beauty of their land and to the prideful satisfaction they gained from tracing the ancestry of the gentlehobbit North-Tooks to Bandobras “Bullroarer” Took.

Diamond’s father, Gerin North-Took, felt no less pride than others for his land or his ancestry -- but his was not tempered with bitterness. He had long ached for the tensions between the North Farthing and the Thain to be put aside, and had been heartbroken when word reached him of the further divisions wrought in the Shire under Sharkey’s rule. When the delegation had approached him with the news of hobbits in other farthings offering their services to the Tooks in exchange for a chance at the hand of the Thain’s daughter, and had proposed asking for their own, much grander, alliance, Gerin North-Took had said yes. It was his hope that if this marriage between his eldest daughter and the Thain’s only son came to pass, that the North Farthing hobbits would be appeased, and the families and the Shire would know true unity.

Gerin’s own respect for the position of Thain was immense, and he had passed that on to his family. He had also taken Paladin’s words at their parting to heart -- to make sure the lass was worthy of his son -- and both he and Honeysuckle had tried to instill the proper training in her ever since. He only hoped she would prove satisfactory.

When they reached the Great Smials’ yard, the Thain, his wife, and his son stood there to greet these North-Tooks. Diamond and her family dismounted from their carriage, and all bowed low.

Diamond reminded herself of the proper protocol during the formal introductions as she held her skirts out and her head down in a long curtsy. The message played through her head that she must remember to show respect in just this manner to the Tooks until she became wed, and then she must remember *not* to bow to any hobbit after that, save for the Thain and Mistress, and the Heir, and that even her parents should bow to her. The litany of rules chased themselves around her mind, firmly instilled after these long years.

For Pippin, the rules required only that he slightly lower his head in acknowledgment as the others bowed before him and his father made a short speech of welcome. He wished, in passing, that he was allowed to bow low, too -- it would give him a better view of the lass who was his betrothed. Idly, he wondered if he would spend the rest of his life staring at the top of her head full of dark curls.


The Great Smials was a-bustle with activity. Pad and Eg had assumed -- correctly -- that the short notice would be outweighed by the importance of the event, and hobbits would do their utmost to be present. Some of the first to arrive were Pippin’s sisters Pearl and Pervinca. They were just as stunned as any to learn their little brother was to wed, and took note of the change in his demeanor -- “Did you hear he even had Bod *announce* him at the Great Door?” Pervinca demanded. They also, however, threw themselves into planning the wedding -- particularly Pervinca.

Pippin, remembering that Pervinca had not been able to craft her own wedding, let her fuss as much as she wanted with the flowers and the cakes and the decorations and such. His only qualm was that Diamond North-Took might want a say in her own wedding, but Eglantine’s invitation to the lass and her mother to come early and help with such tasks received a polite decline. It seemed that Honeysuckle North-Took felt that the less time they spent at the Great Smials before the wedding, the less time there was for something to go wrong.

And Pippin was well aware of how much importance there was that nothing go wrong with this match. That was why the hobbits who’d drafted the betrothal agreement had set the wedding to take place this year, shortly after Diamond’s birthday. She’d turned 32 this Astron: old enough to wed, but not to gainsay her parents’ wishes in the matter.

Among the hobbits to arrive a bit early at the Smials were Merry and Estella Brandybuck. Merry sat in one of the folding chairs set upon a garden’s hillock, his arms crossed across his chest, watching the preparations near the arbor below.

Estella plopped down on the chair next to him, a recently arrived Sam Gamgee in tow. “So?” she asked brightly as Sam sat on Merry’s other side, “how goes the supervising, then? Are you enjoying yourself?”

Merry grunted, watching Pippin walk across the far side of the garden. Aunt Eg had evidently had to remind him to stand up straight, for he raised slumped shoulders to his full height, and the servants then began disassembling the arbor to remount it with a higher arch.

“Rosie’s stayin’ in Hobbiton with the little ones until early the morning of,” Sam said. “Then she’ll ride over with a gang of them what’s coming. She thought mebbe I’d be needed beforehand. You know, to help with supervisin’ and all.” He nodded his head in the direction of Merry’s gaze.

Merry grunted again.

There was silence a moment, then Estella asked, “So, Sam, are you still thinking of going for Mayor after Will Whitfoot resigns this summer?”

“Thinkin’ on’t,” Sam answered. “Mr. Pippin seemed right keen to encourage the idea when he delivered his note to Bag End.”

“His invitation, you mean,” Merry muttered.

“Aye, the weddin’ invitation,” Sam agreed, letting his gaze wander over the spring flowers in bloom in the garden: crocuses, tulips, hyacinth, sweet pea...

“Well, I’m sure you’ll have Merry’s support as well,” Estella said after another long moment of silence, and pinched Merry’s knee, hard.

“Fine” Merry responded absently, his eyes still tracing Pippin’s movements across the garden.

“So,” Sam began hesitantly, his hand grasping awkwardly at the button of his braces as he talked. “Do you not like Mister Pippin’s lass, Merry?”

Merry snorted and looked at Sam, stating deliberately, “I, Samwise, have never met Miss Diamond North-Took.”

“You’ve never...” Sam rocked back in his chair. “Well, bless my stars, Mr. Merry! I’d thought you would’ve known -- and here it must have struck you as sudden as it struck Rosie ‘n me!”

Merry was watching Pippin again, his face smug but unhappy. “It seems, Sam, that the only hobbits not ‘struck sudden’ by this news were the very, *very* select few who were privy to the information that Peregrin has been betrothed for the past seven years. To a lass he has met once,” he added.

“Seven years!” Sam and Estella exclaimed nearly together as Merry nodded grimly.

There was silence for a moment until Estella added, “Well, that explains why he would never take up for long with any of the lasses we sent his way.”

“Aye,” Merry sighed unhappily, shifting slightly in his chair. It was true that the two of them, handsome and young hobbits that they were, had attended and hosted a multitude of grand parties during their years at Crickhollow. Eventually, Merry had settled upon one lass from this party circuit, courting and wooing Estella Bolger until she became his wife. Pippin, on the other foot, had never seemed to settle on any one lass. He had flitted about from dance to dance, or party to party, with a different one on his arm each time, meeting with laughter his friends’ encouragement to become a bit more serious in his pursuits.

Pip was certainly more serious now, thought Merry. All dutiful and son-of-the-Thain, and he didn’t think he’d seen him smile once since he arrived at the Smials.

“Met her once!” Sam breathed in astonishment.

“At the betrothal,” Merry supplied the information in another mutter.

“Oh, why, then, poor Mr. Pippin!” Sam exclaimed. “I thought he looked a might odd for a hobbit goin’ to his weddin’ and all -- not like Rosie, nor me, I should suppose, nor you and Miss Estella, beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Merry!”

“He is miserable,” Merry stated flatly, his eyes taking in Pippin having another go at standing beneath the hastily reconstructed arch.

“Then why’s he doing it?” Sam asked. He dropped his voice. “Surely Thain Paladin--”

“Ha!” Merry choked out. “Pip won’t have a word of placing any of this on Uncle Paddin’s shoulders.” He gave a glare off in the direction of the Smials, toward the approximate location of the Thain’s study. “He says it was all his doing, as a lad of 30, and that this marriage is his duty to the Shire.”

“Oh. Well, then.” Sam slumped in his chair. He knew to what lengths a hobbit could take his duty to the Shire. “I guess we’ll all just have to make the best of a bad situation, then.”

“Humph!” Merry responded.

“Mr. Merry?” Sam asked tentatively. “Are you -- are you angry at Mr. Pippin?”

“I’m angry at him for making himself miserable,” Merry burst out, glowering in Pippin’s direction.

Sam’s mind tried to work through this. One of the reasons Rosie thought he should run for mayor was that she said he was one of the few regular hobbits who understood the gentry. But this...

“I see,” Estella had her own arms folded across her chest now, and was chastising Merry from the other side. “And having his best friend be angry at him for being miserable is supposed to make him feel better?”

“I--” Merry began, then stopped as he watched Pippin walk back up the hillock toward the Smials, throwing a melancholy glance his way. “Oh, fine!” he said and threw his hands up. “What did I ever do to deserve being surrounded by hobbits of such common sense?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, dear,” Estella answered, patting his knee as Merry rose out of his chair.

He caught up with Pippin near where long tables were being arranged that would hold the party food. Approaching his cousin from behind and wrapping his arms around Pippin’s waist in a hug, Merry whispered into a pointed ear, “I’m sorry.”

“Merry!” Pippin whirled around in his arms, to greet him with the grin of sunshine that had graced his features since he was a little lad.

“I--I’m sorry, Pip,” Merry choked out again. “I haven’t let you go off like that, parting with angry words and no hugs for each other, since-- since--”

“Since I looked into the Palantir,” Pippin said somberly, the grin vanishing from his features. A more mature smile replaced it a moment later, though, and he said, “But I am a grown hobbit now, Merry, and I know better than to touch such things. Why, soon I shall be even more responsible!”

“Oh, Pip,” Merry sighed, and reached over to brush a wayward curl away from his cousin’s eye, “I just wanted you to have the kind of love I found. I don’t want you to be miserable.”

Pippin’s chin wavered a little, and a slight sheen was in his eyes, but no tears fell and the grown-up smile was back on his face as he answered, “I shan’t be, Merry. At least, I don’t intend to. I’ve made up my mind to try my very best for Diamond and me to be happy together.”

“Oh, Pip,” Merry said again, holding his cousin close in another hug.



The day of the wedding saw perfect weather: wisps only of a few perfect clouds in a blue sky that threatened not a drop of rain. The spring air was warm enough for the hobbits to find it comfortable in the garden, yet still cool enough that Pippin did not stifle in his Gondorian livery as he stood beneath the arbor.

Diamond, her tresses plaited with flowers hanging down her back, felt strangely calm during the ceremony she had spent years preparing for -- nearly as long as she, her mother and sisters had spent on her lace- and pearl-encrusted dress. She had no trouble stating the appropriate responses when Thain Paladin asked her to promise to love, honor and obey. She had been expecting this, after all.

Diamond did not see the look of surprise and narrowed eyes that passed from Pippin to his father at these words, nor the slight glare that answered him back. Paladin knew that Pippin would not have had the lass say this, just as Pippin knew that his father was deliberately trying to assure himself and protect his son.

Pippin’s own promises were to love and to honor. He was no longer so afraid of the bonds as he had been at the betrothal, but the time of the ceremony seemed to rush by, and he heard his father declaring them “bound together forever, Peregrin and Diamond Took!”

He leaned over and placed his lips to hers in a long, but polite, kiss. Diamond’s lips parted slightly for him, but there was no answering pressure. Still, he noticed as he looked for the first time at his wife, her eyes were a soft gray -- almost the same color as Merry’s -- and her curls were almost as dark as Frodo’s. Perhaps ‘twas a good sign, or at least would be a happy reminder of these beloved cousins who loved him so very much.

Diamond stood next to Captain Peregrin in the receiving line, remembering to herself that all she needed to do in acknowledgment now of the hobbits passing before her was to slightly incline her head, as Peregrin had done.

Peregrin? Captain Peregrin? Diamond was not certain what to call her new husband, to whom she had been reintroduced only the afternoon before. She was, however, quietly proud to be wed to him. Her parents had kept her quite sheltered, even for a North Farthing lass, for the past several years, but the stories had reached even her ears of how he had scoured the Shire of the ruffians who had terrorized it in evil days.

As he introduced her to other quite important hobbits -- his aunt and uncle, the Mistress of Brandy Hall and Master of Buckland; his cousin, Meriadoc Brandybuck, the other captain of the stories and the Heir to Buckland; Samwise Gamgee, a friend Peregrin informed her in a loud whisper was soon to be Mayor of the Shire -- Diamond found her admiration and pride in him increasing. He was quite obviously tall, and strong, and bore himself nobly, and she thought that he must possess more virtues than she would ever be able to describe.

She was certain that her mother had been worrying overmuch, as she sometimes did, when she had tried to tell Diamond something with three false starts that morning. Honeysuckle had at last given up and, taking Diamond’s upper arms in her hands, merely blushed furiously as she looked in Diamond’s eyes and told her, “Whatever he wants to do tonight, you must let him. No matter what!” She shook Diamond a bit.

“Why, yes, of course, Mother,” Diamond answered, bewildered. “I shall be promising to obey.”

“Yes.” Honeysuckle sighed, then released her daughter to wipe her eyes on the edge of her sleeve.

The wedding feast of the Tooks’ heir saw tables that groaned with a weight of food not seen since Bilbo Baggins’s eleventy-first birthday party. Pippin’s speech was mercifully short, causing Merry to remark, between the many rounds of ale he consumed that night, “If the Tooks went in for titles like the Brandybucks do, they might think first to call him ‘Peregrin the Grand’ for his height, but it should be ‘Pippin the Brief’ for his speeches!”

At long last, the feasting and the partying were well under way. Pippin had danced his obligations with his mother, his sisters, his aunts -- and his wife. Diamond, too, had danced with the appropriate hobbits, glancing over at Pippin for approval before she accepted each offer. During the turn she had taken around the dance floor with Paladin while Pippin danced with Honeysuckle, she had actually trembled with fright to be dancing with the Thain of the Shire.

Pippin set down his latest mug of ale and gave a faint grin in Merry’s direction before approaching Diamond where she stood with her mother fussing over her hair.

“Mistress North-Took,” he bowed slightly and received a flustered curtsy in return. “Diamond,” he said and crooked out an arm toward her, “I believe it is time that we should retire from this party.”

“Yes -- husband,” Diamond said immediately, and placed her hand within his elbow. She gave one last puzzled glance to her mother’s distressed face behind her as the couple walked calmly back to the Smials.


‘Now what?’ Pippin thought after he had shown Diamond into the new quarters, on the opposite side of the Smials from his parents’, they would occupy as hobbit and wife. He stood with his back against the door they’d entered to the sitting room, and the lass stood before him, head slightly bowed and hands folded in front of her, evidently awaiting instruction.

He could hear, very faintly, the sounds of the party’s loud merriment still occurring outside in the gardens. Inside their quarters, it was quiet enough to hear the ticking of the clock upon the mantel.

“Would,” Pippin swallowed to get rid of that annoying squeak in his voice. “Would you like to play a game?” he asked.

“Yes, husband, if you wish,” Diamond responded, her eyes still cast down.

Still in their wedding finery, they sat at the sitting room’s small table, where Pippin discovered that he needed to teach Diamond the game of draughts.

When at length it was time to retire, they moved into the bedroom to the right of the sitting room.

“Which -- which side of the bed do you want?” Pippin asked from where he stood on the room’s far side, next to the changing screen. He clutched his nightshirt in his hand.

“Whatever you wish, husband,” Diamond said demurely from her place near the bedroom’s doorway.

“Fine. I guess I’ll take this side, then,” Pippin said, nodding toward the bed, “and you can have over there.” He went behind the screen to change, but he reemerged a moment later after an exclamation of “Oh, bother!”

“Could -- could you help me get this armor off, please?” he asked Diamond. “I’ll tell you where to pull.”

When, between the two of them, they had managed to undo the clasps and lift his armor over his head, leaving him in his undertunic and breeches, he cast a critical eye at Diamond’s dress. ‘Of course,’ he thought with an inward sigh. ‘Tiny buttons all the way down the back!’

Out loud, he said, “Looks like you’re going to need some help as well,” and began unbuttoning Diamond’s wedding dress. “I used to help my sisters with their party finery on occasion,” he informed her -- and himself, as well, as his fingers trembled slightly.

When all Diamond’s buttons were undone, Pippin quickly ducked back behind the screen to change, muttering, “Your turn next.”

Diamond patiently waited her turn behind the screen, holding in her hands the nightdress of pale pink silk with a smattering of rosebuds embroidered on the bodice that her mother had said was to be saved especially for her wedding night. Diamond wasn’t sure why, but she was glad to have some fine, special clothing to mark this special night -- her first as the wife of Captain Peregrin Took -- just as her beautiful dress had served for the day.

While Diamond was behind the screen changing, Pippin sat on the edge of the bed and hurriedly fumbled with his sword. He drew the tip of it carefully along one of his legs, just above the point where his trousers would cover, just enough that the blood welled up in a slight scratch. Then he hastily shoved the sword away, and swung his legs into the bed, moving to smear the blood along the sheets.

When Diamond came out, she sat down hesitantly at first on “her” side of the bed, then crawled beneath the covers, her head on her pillow. “Good night, husband,” she said in a soft voice.

“Good night, Diamond,” Pippin answered her just as softly. Then he rolled to face his side of the bed, and Diamond, after a moment, to face hers. Both of them, eventually, slept.