Chapter Seven: Brilliant

Pippin dragged his feet slowly through the corridors, heedless of the bits of caked mud which fell from their fur. The early morning’s shower had dried into a clear day, but not before soaking him through. It briefly raised the waters of the stream the errant cattle had wandered across after knocking open their fence and going in search, literally, of greener pastures.

Pippin had been sorely tempted, as he forded the stream and slipped in the mud of its banks, to wait until the cows’ full udders led them to find their own path back to the Great Smials’ stables later that day. He supposed, though, that the animals should not be punished for a stablehobbit’s inattentiveness to the gate. Whoever that hobbit was, Pippin was quite certain that he would soon be intimately acquainted with each of these cows as he spent the rest of the summer mucking out their stalls twice daily.

It was entirely possible that this unknown culprit was among the hobbits called out with him, away from their tables of first breakfast, to chase the bossies down before they could drown, or decide that the clover fields where the honeybees swarmed would make good grazing, or do themselves or the crops any other damage. Pippin’s father had not yet been dressed when the call for help went out, so it had fallen to the son to lead the bovine search and rescue.

And a dirty, messy, smelly, exhausting business it had been. The rain and the stream meant that he had begun the day cold and wet, the slips and the slides along its banks meant that his leg was bothering him again, and the slow pace of the cattle back to the Smials meant that he had missed both second breakfast and elevenses. At the moment, though, his snuffly, weary self felt too tired to care.

He pushed open the door to his quarters and stumbled inside.

“Husband?” Diamond asked, and looked up from the letter she wrote at the dining table.

“Hu-- choo!” Pippin stood miserably just inside the door after his sneeze, blinking dumbly and trying to will his mind to work.

“Oh, dear,” Diamond thought on one level, filled with concern as she got up and went toward him. On another level, though, she felt secretly thrilled: here was a chance to prove her worth!

“Come, then, husband,” Diamond said, taking his arm in their familiar posture of escort, but it was she who both supported and led. “Let’s you to bed.”

Pippin let her lead him into the bedchamber, but he stopped as she reached down with her free arm to pull down the bedcovers. “Dirt,” he grunted out. “L -- l -- hachoo! --laundering,” he snuffled as he concluded.

Diamond looked around and then pulled from a wardrobe an extra blanket, which she threw over the coverlet. It was still a fine blanket, of course, as were almost all things at the Smials, but it was of a darker color and would not show a stain so much as the lighter summer coverlet. Besides, she thought, it would be the maids’ duties to scrub at any such stains, or to properly discard the blanket if they did not come out.

Captain Peregrin indeed seemed satisfied by the arrangement, as after she had placed the blanket upon the bed, he followed the slight tug of her arm and collapsed upon it, falling asleep within moments.

Diamond quietly gathered supplies from the storage drawers on her side of the bed as he slept, his breathing punctuated with an occasional small cough. She removed two small squares of cloth and tipped her bottle of lavender oil so that a drop fell upon each.

Then, sliding across as she sat on the bed -- Captain Peregrin was sleeping sprawled in the middle -- she twisted one square and inserted it into the ear that was visible. Diamond considered, for a moment, how she might go about placing the other square, as she did not want to wake him. Patiently, she sat waiting upon the bed until the clock had ticked past a quarter hour, but he did not move from his position in slumber.

At last, Diamond set the square she held aside and prepared another, then drew her fingers once lightly along the curls on the back of his neck. He sighed and shifted slightly, just enough that she was able to reach beneath his head and position the newly prepared lavender cloth into the second ear.

Diamond then sat for a moment and contemplated before reaching for the footbrush that lay atop his bureau. She brushed it forth across the curls on each foot but once, knocking aside some of the largest chunks of mud into a waste receptacle. To do more, however, would require tugging and pulling that would awaken him, and so she set the brush aside.

She set out, instead, her supplies for a tea, and then stoked a small fire in the room’s hearth, just enough to remove any dampness from the air. She then settled herself into a sitting room chair pulled close to the bedchamber door and prepared, her letter in her lap, to wait and to listen.

Her quill scratched desultorily upon occasion during the afternoon, but, for the most part, her ears were perked toward the sound of Captain Peregrin’s breaths. She heard him stirring toward late afternoon and had time to brew a fresh cup of tea filled with rose hips and laced with honey, which he drank groggily before falling back asleep.

It was while she was putting the empty cup upon a tray to return to the kitchens that she heard a knock at the door. “Captain Peregrin is not to be disturb--” she was saying to whatever servant awaited her as she opened the door, only to falter as she found Mistress Eglantine upon the other side.

“Where’s Pippin?” Eg asked agitatedly as she brushed past Diamond and into the room.

Diamond frowned a moment, then answered, with a slight curtsy, “Captain Peregrin is sleeping, Mistress.”

“Is he well?” Eg demanded, rounding upon her daughter-in-law.

“He shall be,” Diamond answered with the merest touch of petulance in her voice. “I have been caring for him.”

“Several of the lads who went to retrieve the cattle were absent from luncheon,” Eg informed her as the older hobbitess paced nervously in a small area of the sitting room. “We assumed that they had not yet all returned from the stables, or that they were bathing before they appeared. Now I have heard that several have missed their tea and declined their suppers as well, and that some have managed to catch colds in the summer. Paladin says he has not seen nor heard from our son all day -- I must know if he is experiencing symptoms of illness!” She stopped her pacing to stand before Diamond with what the lass thought was a strangely anxious expression on her face.

She took a deep breath to calm herself before replying to the Mistress of the Smials. Diamond tried to tamp down the slight resentment she felt at the implication that she could not care for her husband through a simple cold. This was one of the areas her mother had made sure she was well-trained in, and Diamond had excelled in her studies of caring for her husband, or any children they might have, through simple illnesses and of providing relief for times he might feel unwell.

“He sneezed twice and had a slight cough when he returned, and was weary,” she recited in clipped tones. “He has slept most of the afternoon, but I have administered tea and a palliative, and I believe he breathes easier now.”

Eg almost could have felt a stab of pity at the pride she could see in her previously so timid daughter-in-law’s gray eyes, had the subject not been so important as her son’s health. Cared for him herself, indeed! What was the lass thinking, not to send for a healer at the first sign of trouble? And Pip so worn out, these past weeks, from taking on so many of Pad’s duties in addition to his own!

“I must see him,” she informed Diamond. It was not a request.

The lass held her eyes a moment, chin jutting out defiantly in a manner she probably didn’t even realize, before softening her stance and bowing her head to say, “Yes, Mistress. But I would request...he is sleeping,” she trailed off meekly as she led Eglantine through the bedchamber door.

“I know how not to wake my son,” Eg whispered hotly as she brushed past Diamond to lean over Pippin’s sleeping form.

She held her own breath as she listened carefully for any signs of a wheeze, or other distress. She carefully let it out again, though, the thunder of her racing heart slowing within her breast as she heard naught but the deep, even -- and clear -- breaths of sleep. Relieved beyond measure, but confused as well, she leaned closer for further examination. She caught the scent of muck-covered hobbit with something a tad more -- floral? -- mixed in but, other than being covered in dirt, her lad seemed fine. Eg squeezed her eyes shut in thankfulness and ghosted a kiss over his forehead before she rose.

“Well,” she said in a more subdued tone to Diamond as she exited, “see that he eats.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Diamond answered quietly before closing the door behind her. She had indeed been about to place their order for supper.

Pippin awoke fully, blinked slowly, and stretched. ‘Twas evenin’, now, there was no doubt to that, the way the shadows were stretchin’ across the room, but of what day?

He remembered, vaguely, Diamond giving him a cup of tea to drink, and his mother’s murmurings and, before that, feeling sneezy, and a tad cold, and sick.

When he was a lad, and he fell ill, days would pass with only such snatches of memory, of his parents, and sisters, and cousins, and the healers, caring for him, until the time he awoke clear-headed once more.

But tonight, he felt...well, he assessed as he lay still upon the bed, not wanting to get up just yet -- leastwise, he probably wasn’t allowed to, anyway, until a healer gave permission. Strange that no one was watching at his bedside. Well, anyway, he felt...a mite hungry. And tired, still, some, as if he could take a long nap. And, otherwise, well...fine.

He brought a hand up to cover a yawn, and frowned when he saw the dirt upon his arm. Well, really. You would think that someone would have cleaned him off a bit while they’d had him tucked up in this bed. And that was another thing -- he lifted his head and propped himself upon his elbows to look down upon the rest of him -- there was a winter blanket atop the bed, true, but he was lying atop the covers, not under them.

He was puzzling over this when Diamond poked herself around the door. “Husband?” she asked. “I thought I had heard you stirring. Do you wish to rise for supper?”

Pippin stared now at Diamond. She was wearing the same dress she’d had on at the breakfast table when he’d been called away to help with those blasted cows. At least, he was almost certain it was the same dress -- he really had to start paying more attention to these things. Had it come round in the wash again, then?

“Husband?” Diamond asked again. “Will you rise?”

“May I?” Pippin asked her in surprise.

“May...?” Diamond’s lips worked in consternation. Perhaps Mistress Eglantine was right, and she ought to have called a healer after all.

“Diamond?” Pippin asked suspiciously. “What day is’t?”

“Why--why it is Sunday, the 19th of Forelithe,” she said, stunned now, and worried.

“But ‘tis -- ‘tis today!” Pippin cried as a grin spread across his face, and he sat up the rest of the way, bouncing a bit on the edge of the bed as he laughed, “and I feel fine!”

Diamond smiled unsurely. “And I am glad to hear it,” she said.

Pippin bounced to a standing position. “Yes, I shall be rising for supper,” he informed her with a grin that quickly turned to a grimace, “but I think I shall have a bath first!” He reached to bat what felt like a clump of dirt, perhaps, away from his ear, but was surprised to withdraw a small piece of cloth instead.

“Oh!” Diamond gasped as she saw what he held in his hand. “You should leave that in for a tenday, at least, so the cold does not return.”

“Is that what the healer said?” Pippin asked, puzzled, never having experienced this remedy before.

“There was no healer,” Diamond blushed and looked at her toes which peeked out from beneath her skirts. “It was what I learned in my studies.”

“You?” Pippin asked in shock, still holding the lavender oil-soaked cloth in front of him. “You cared for me?”

Diamond nodded mutely, then whispered, “Yes, husband,” as she continued to stare at the floor. She therefore missed the grin that spread across Pippin’s features, or any warning movements before he lunged toward her with a whoop, and picked her up to swing her around in a delighted hug.

Pippin’s face was mere inches from Diamond’s, and his momentum was carrying him toward an exuberant kiss when he stopped short at the dumbfounded expression on his wife’s face.

“Well, then,” he said awkwardly as he set her down. “I -- thank you,” he said and grinned again. He returned the cloth to his ear as she said, “I shall listen to you as well as I ever have to any healer. Perhaps better,” he added with a wink, “as they didn’t think to clean out my ears first to improve their chances.”


Pippin did indeed listen to Diamond without question when she suggested he take a small cheesecloth sack filled with leaves of mint along with him to the bathing room. The mint mixed with the warm water to create a steam that left him feeling clear-headed and somewhat invigorated by the time he returned to their quarters, clad now in a clean nightshirt and dressing gown, just as Poplar the kitchen lass arrived with supper.

He ate well, but was yawning again by the time Holly came to clear away, his elbow on the table and head propped in one hand.

“I think,” Diamond said as she snatched an empty bowl from the table before his chest and handed it to Holly, interrupting the servant’s reach, “that perhaps you are tired, husband, and wish to retire.”

“Hmm?” Pippin asked, blinking up at her. “Oh, yes, I suppose you are right, then,” he said as he stood and stretched his arms above his head with another yawn. “And I did promise that I should listen to my new healer,” he said with a smile, then walked toward the bedchamber. Diamond turned her gaze from following him and met Holly’s look in the same direction before the lass hastily dropped her attention back to the table.

“Ho, then-- Pip?” Paladin beamed in pleasant surprise as he looked up from his desk the next morning, for he had been expecting another hobbit. He grinned more broadly as his son swung a chair before the desk, turned it around, and sat astride it backwards, his arms resting atop the chair’s back. “Are you quite well, then, son, after yesterday?

“Your mother was worried, you know,” he added, covering his own concern with bluster.

“Oh, aye, Da,” Pippin said, and reached up to tap a cloth more firmly back into his ear. “It seems a married hobbit is quite well cared for in that regard.”


Diamond ran her thumb across the moonstone in her brooch before shutting it back within the drawer of the bureau. The water in the washbasin atop the furniture pulled back from the side with a small slosh at the movement.

Two months. Two months it had been since she wed.

Diamond had taken her parents’ words, and her studies, to heart, and had tried to perform her duties as best as she was able. She had even received a note from Mistress Eglantine acknowledging that she had cared very well for Captain Peregrin when he had become chilled.

And yet -- and yet something seemed missing.

Diamond did not know what it was, exactly, but she felt perhaps there was something more. Perhaps she should be doing more. Perhaps--oh! She had yet to discover how to perform her most important duty.

To bear an Heir for Captain Peregrin would fulfill not only his responsibilities, but her own. Such an Heir, to be next in line to the Thain, would bear the blood of the North Farthing as well as that of the Tooks’.

And yet, Diamond thought as she sighed, she did not know how to go about fulfilling this duty. She had been wed two months, and as yet she had given him no son, no daughter, and certainly no Heir.

Diamond looked into the face of the healer who sat within her shadowed hole in the recesses of the Smials.

“Is there something I can help you with, Mistress Diamond?” Willow asked, her kindly old features lined with wrinkles and the long curls which hung by her face glinting with white.

“Yes,” Diamond drew a breath, then stated simply, “I wish to know why I am not with child.”

Willow’s smile stayed frozen upon her face, but she rose slowly to her feet and pushed the door to the room until it closed, trapping the scents of her herbs and potions within.

“Why is it that you ask, Mistress?” she queried as she returned to her seat. “Have you and Captain Peregrin not lain together? It shall take time, you know, to see the signs.”

“Yes, I know,” Diamond answered with a small frown. “But I have seen none of the things I thought to look for, and I wondered if there were other signs which I did not know, or -- or if I am doing something wrong,” she concluded in a whisper.

“Well,” Willow said with a small laugh, “if I am to know if you are doing something wrong, you shall have to be willing to tell me what you are doing.”

Diamond looked at her blankly, and a suspicion began to form in the old healer’s mind. “Lass,” she said hesitantly, “have you and Captain Peregrin *not* lain together?” For her earlier question had been rhetorical, a mere presumption of a fact.

“We sleep together each night!” Diamond protested earnestly.

“To sleep,” Willow repeated softly. “And do you do more, then, than sleep?”

Diamond chewed her lip and regarded her clenched hands in her lap. She did not wish to betray Captain Peregrin’s secret nightmares: he spoke never of them.

“’Tis all right, lass,” Willow said, and leaned forward to place a hand upon Diamond’s knee. “Anything a lass or a lassie tells me, stays between she and me, and like as not there’s never a need for a lad to darken my door. Besides,” she added when Diamond remained silent, “you shall be helping your husband as well.”

These words convinced Diamond, and she whispered haltingly, “We -- we play games.”

“Aye, lass,” Willow said with a knowing sigh, “and can you tell me what sort of games these be?”

“He likes,” Diamond said, raising her eyes to meet the kind old healers’, “to play at draughts.”

“Draughts,” Willow echoed, and she sat back in her chair.

Diamond searched her nonplused face for a moment, then asked anxiously, “Is -- is that wrong for a lass? Shall I not have a babe because of it?” She thought fleetingly of the game she had played with Pimpernel, but then, Pimpernel only had the one child... “My parents had not wished me to learn such games,” she concluded in a whisper.

Willow’s thoughts slowly formed, and she asked, “Lass. What did your mother tell you of what you should do upon your wedding night?”

Diamond thought hard a moment, then answered, “She told me I must do whatever Captain Peregrin asked -- no matter what,” she stated simply.

“Aye,” the old healer responded, “and what did he wish to do?”

“To teach me to play at draughts,” Diamond answered, still confused.

“Aye,” Willow was smiling again, now, “so ‘tis quite all right, I’m sure.”

Behind her smile, she felt a new fondness for the young Heir. Willow had been at her place in the Smials since a time when he was a young lad, but her duties had never called her to be one of the healers to tend upon him. She dealt, instead, with the lasses, and with matters of female complaint.

She herself, as she understood the young Mistress’s story, had less complaint against him than she had for many of the lads whose lasses she saw in her care. If he could treat his young wife so, it boded well for the way he would lead the people.

“I think,” Willow said slowly, drawing herself up from her chair and making her way to a basket that sat upon the floor in a far, shadowed corner of the room, “that I may have summat that’ll help you make a babe.

“Now, ‘tis something that shall take time, and you needn’t worry your husband with it,” she said as she carried something back, “but I think these will help.”

She placed upon Diamond’s lap a small collection of books, battered and frayed at the covers.

The following morn, after Captain Peregrin had departed the quarters, the servants had cleared the breakfast things away, and she had consulted with Geranium about elevenses, Diamond withdrew one of the books from her drawer.

Flipping past a flyleaf covered with designs and looping scrawls of girlish handwriting, she began to read:

“Holly Grubbfoot came each week to market along the same path, for she knew she would pass by Cap Hilldown’s smithy shop. There was always a chance the door would be open and she would catch a glimpse of him at the forge, his strong, muscled arms holding the iron in front of him while the fire glowed onto the golden curls on his feet...”