Girl of the North Country By Chip of Dale

I.

Diamond of Long Cleeve. She was three-foot seven, a tall lass for her kind, and that was not the only rare thing about her. She had pale hair, almost straight, that streamed down her back like a fall of winter sunlight. Her eyes were cool blue, like the blue of a frozen pool in a deep winter in the heathered downs of the Northfarthing where she had made her home. Her round face and slim lips were held in a tightness that spoke of pride, unbreakable pride, as brittle as crystal. Her mother named her Diamond and she grew into that name.

When she married the son of the Thain, she was only thirty-two, and the Boffins in particular were vociferous in their disapproval of what was clearly a marriage of politics and not affection. They said so knowing it would reach the ears of the mind behind the match, that of Esmeralda Brandybuck, the Thain’s sister and the most manipulative mind in the Shire since the late unlamented Lalia Took.

Folco Boffin, who had finally settled down into the role of a solicitor in the grand line of Boffin jurisprudence, drew up the marriage contracts, which were signed by the Thain and Sigismond Took, Diamond’s father. Much of it concerned lines of inheritance, both leading up to the married parties, and away from them. It clearly suggested the meaning behind the union: the reassertion, in this new Age of the return of the King, of the power, preeminence, and most of all, the authority, of the Tooks, over the other Great Families and the common hobbitry of the Shire.

When Diamond was presented to her betrothed, at the marriage banquet of Meriadoc Brandybuck and Estella Bolger, it was hoped that affection would grow between them. Esmeralda had engineered the match of the Bolger daughter to her son, but Merry was deeply in love with Stella, and she with him. It was hoped, by Esmeralda, by Lady Eglantine Took, and, secretly, by the Thain himself, that such love, and the bliss it bestowed upon an arranged marriage, would come to flower between Diamond and the Thain’s Heir, Peregrin. And, to Esmeralda’s practiced eye, something did come to light in the sea-green eyes of her tall, dashing nephew, as he bowed to Diamond and led her to dance.

But no such light came to Diamond’s eyes; she knew she was simply a tool for all these elders, and when she looked up into the sweet, sharp face of her future husband and saw no such knowledge in his mind, she thought him a fool, and despised both him and his pity.

They were wed in the great hall of the Tooks, in Great Smials, and all the Families, and the leading figures in every town, was invited. Some of these sniffed secretly behind their handkerchiefs as Samwise Gamgee came to perform the ceremony. It still rankled among some that this son of a gardener had risen to become not only Mayor but also master of Bag End. The Bagginses, represented by Dora’s children, were blamed for this oversight. But Mayor Samwise was a close friend of Peregrin, being a fellow Traveller. And he was duly elected by the people, of course. It wasn’t called suffrage for nothing, Adelard Took would remark.

But the crowd was silenced when Diamond appeared on her father’s arm. She wore a dress of white satin and white lace, holding a bouquet of lilies, and around her neck, a string of her name-jewels, a costly treasure from the horde of the Bullroarer. Like a snowflake come to earth, like a gem, cold and brilliant, she was led to the foot of the staircase, as the Thain’s Heir came to meet her, his deep black mantle and somber foreign livery in black and silver setting off the red in his hair and the green in his eyes.

“My lord Thain,” said Mayor Samwise, “my lady Eglantine; Mistress Esmeralda; ladies and gentlehobbits; esteemed guests. We come to witness the joining in matrimony of Peregrin of Great Smials and Diamond of Long Cleeve. May their union be blessed with joy and fruitfulness for as long as they both shall live.”

With her hand in his, Diamond felt that her husband-to-be was trembling. He was so tall, so frighteningly tall, and unhobbity slim, and his shoulders were like stone; his face was strange though handsome, with its sharp pointed nose, soft curved mouth, the deep lines laughter etched in his cheeks, his set Took chin and his eyes of Tookish green. He looked down at her, as he said, “Thee do I take, my wife and my lady, through days of sun and nights of moon and nights of stars alone,” the words of the ceremony coming through his Tookland burr, and it seemed to everyone there that Peregrin Took meant every word.

But inside, Diamond was screaming.

Their wedding-night, Peregrin came to her, and she could not help pulling the covers up to her neck. She of course knew what was expected of her. This was the whole point of the marriage, after all: a child to unite the Tooks of Great Smials and the Tooks of Long Cleeve. Diamond knew how life was made.

Yet now she watched her husband come to her. He seemed shy. He was wearing a dressing gown and breeches. He looked at her, smiled; she saw his deep dimples flash. “Are you cold?” he asked worriedly. He went to the fire and stoked it.

“Ah,” he said, blushing, “is this—I mean to say, are you—I hope you don’t think this completely ill-mannered, but…”

“I am a virgin,” she responded.

He blushed harder. “Oh. Well, then. Thank you for letting me know.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, and started to reach for her hand. She let him take it. His hands were warm as hers were cold. He smiled again, and then said, “I think I should tell you that, well, I’m … not.”

“I expected you weren’t,” she replied. She knew the rules were different for lads.

“Right,” he said. He took a deep breath, and then stood. He took off his robe and she saw his naked chest and back for the first time.

He had a laborer’s muscles and shoulders as hard as stone. His belly was barely rounded and its thin layer of fat could not conceal the frightening clumps of muscle there. It was as if he were a Man.

And then there were his scars. Diamond had heard the tales of the events in the south, and had paid them as much heed as a hobbit would—although from her childhood bedroom she had a view of Lake Evendim, the deep dark glassy lake among the moors, and the ruins thereon. The King had come again; her husband himself was Elessar’s herald; her husband was a warrior. He had scars on his back, and scars on his chest, from some terrible crushing injury. He had scars on his calves, whip-weals, like the scar on his cousin Meriadoc’s forehead. His right hand was callused by gripping a sword: the sword that even now lay next to the bed, always at ready, the sword he called Trollsbane.

He looked at her, and tried to give her a reassuring smile, and then gently removed his breeches. He heard her gasp, and a worried look crossed his face. Diamond realized her husband was utterly guileless in his expressions, and that those farsighted green eyes were incapable of any dissembling. For a moment his innocence touched her, even as he came to her; his innocent face and his hard, scarred body. And quickly the warmth that came to her froze into contempt. He did not even know how to deceive. What a fool.

But he sat down at the edge of the bed again, and leaned close, and looked at her with those guileless eyes, and asked, “Please, my lady, may I lay with you tonight?”

Duty, thought Diamond. Duty to the family. She loosened the covers, and let him approach her. She closed her eyes, and let him place his mouth upon hers. She opened her mouth, and allowed his tongue to taste hers. She did not let him remove her nightgown, though, letting him make do without his chest and the pale traces of battles touching her skin.

Afterward as he lay next to her Diamond turned away and raged with dry eyes. She hated her father. She hated her mother. She hated these condescending Tooks of Great Smials. She loathed Esmeralda Brandybuck. And she was married to a lumbering brute with a child’s mind. She pulled her nightgown down past her knees and curled up and wished she was elsewhere.

When, a few months later, the physician confirmed she was pregnant, she resolved that there would be only one child.

Her pregnancy was surprisingly easy. Diamond expected worse. She had always been told she had not the build for motherhood: her form was almost as slender as a girl before menarche. It had been the cause of much teasing behind her back when she lived in Long Cleeve; now at the Great Smials, of which she was presumptive Lady, she knew it went on even worse. The Tooks of Great Smials thought her a poor relation, rustic and unschooled, from the wild moors and highlands of the Northfarthing. What did they know? She was a girl of the north country indeed. Did they stand amidst the thunder of a sudden moorland storm and raise up their arms to the wuthering wind? Did they know the various shades of purple amidst the heather and gorse and broom? Did they know the beauty of the lilies in spring, the lilies that littered the valley of Long Cleeve? Did they know the whisperings of the tree-women in Bindbole Wood? She was a daughter of the line of Bandobras Took, foremost warrior in Shire memory.

Now she was married to another.

She saw him one morning in one of the small lawns of the Smials’ endless gardens. His shirt was off and he was covered in clean sweat. In his hands he held Trollsbane his sword. He was at practice. The sunlight gleamed on the ancient steel of the blade, gift of the Barrow-downs, work of the Men out of the Sea. It gleamed also on her husband’s chestnut curls, kindling the gold hidden in each feathery lock. He had been the most irrepressible child, she had been told, and the most thoughtless of tweens; yet still, even before his father’s not-so-unexpected accession to the Thainship, he had been the darling baby of all the Families, the fortunate son. She did not see it.

A scarecrow, stuffed hard with hay and bound by leather, stood at one side. With the steps of a student remembering lessons long-taught, Peregrin paced towards the figure, and struck at it. Slash. Cut. He turned, agile if not graceful, his body gleaming with sweat, drops of it dewing on the hair on his chest and the curls beneath his navel trailing into his black breeches. For a moment Diamond’s breath caught, and she felt a stirring of desire. It shocked her. She repressed it deeply.

Suddenly its wielder spun Trollsbane from flat to edge. Three strokes smote the cool, still, sunny day. The scarecrow fell, cut to pieces.

Diamond watched her husband rise from his knees, raise the blade at his breast, and touch its steel to his forehead. And Diamond remembered the Men she had once glimpsed beyond the North Downs, riding on horses, green-clad and grey-cloaked, with swords and bows, ranging through the Lone-lands beyond the Shire.

Who was he? Who was this person whom she had married? The father of her child? She placed her hand on her swollen belly. What child would this be?

He was perfectly formed, and quiet. He had uttered a cry only once, when he emerged from her womb, and then he had settled into a quiet breathing with the occasional wet burble. His hair was that of the portrait of Gerontius as a young hobbit, dark as a raven’s fledging, the hair also of Gerontius’ granddaughter Primula Brandybuck and her son Frodo Baggins. His eyes had been blue at first, like hers. But quickly they turned green, like her husband’s: wide, and farsighted, and perilously curious.

Her husband named him Faramir. She did not object out loud. Tooks were known for peculiar names. They were given nicknames more suited to them soon enough. Like her husband, whom everyone still called Pippin. Pippin—she couldn’t imagine; bright little apple, they called him, as if they had not eyes to see what he was now. She never called him Pippin. He was Peregrin, to her: she felt it suited him perfectly. Faramir, she thought: would it fit her son? Would he grow into it, as she had into her name, as Peregrin had into his? Within days Faramir had been turned into Farrie.

Gifts came. From Merry Brandybuck, a hanging for Faramir’s crib, with running horses and silver trees and birds in flight. From Merry’s wife Estella, a lush blanket of fine wool that she had woven herself; both poignant gifts, as Merry and Estella were still childless, a shadow lying on the nursery in Brandy Hall. From Folco Boffin and his wife Fox, a box of round toys of soft wood. From Fredegar Bolger, jars of minced fruits and nuts, with instructions for the Smials’ cooks on how to make more. And from Samwise Gamgee, an Elvish jewel that shone with its own light, obviating the need to keep a candle burning in the nursery all night.

One pair of gifts came on Faramir’s first birthday, brought by a messenger bearing the tokens of the White Tree and the Winged Crown. It was in a silvered box of black leather, bound by silver ribbon. Her husband opened it as they sat at breakfast, and he crowed: for inside was a tiny suit of black mail, and a wee baldric of black velvet with the White Tree upon it, and a tiny pair of fur-lined, fingerless black mittens. With my deepest joy on the birth of your son. May there always be friendship between the House of Telcontar and the Tooks. The King Elessar (Strider to you.) And another gift: a mantle of grey fabric like the cloak her husband often wore. It is not as fine work as my grandmother’s which you wear, but it is blessed with what grace I have to bestow. My love and happiness for you, dearest Pippin, and to your lady wife. Children are the deepest blessings of Iluvatar. Arwen.

“Look at this, Di!” Her husband was beaming with childlike glee. “Let’s dress him up in it right now!”

“So he can look just like you?” she said before she could stop herself. She saw the look of hurt that flashed in his face before he swallowed it. He was learning how to hide his feelings. She was teaching him. She did not see if Faramir ever wore the livery.

She did see the effect of another missive from the south, where, she now knew better than ever, her husband’s heart turned to more and more. It was a book of letters and runes for when Faramir was older. It came with a letter. She espied her husband reading the letter in his private sitting room, where she seldom entered: a comfortable, shabby hole in the Smials with a large fireplace, a nearby pantry, stacks of books about Westernesse and the Kings, and a great ruined armchair in which her husband, oversized and lanky, would curl up like a lad. The gift, and the letter, came from the Prince of Ithilien, the Steward of Gondor, Faramir’s namesake. Whatever the letter said, she did not know; but she knew it made her husband weep.

Diamond hesitated at the door, seeing him cry. It was not like a hobbit would cry. His face did not contort into the almost comical twists that passed for hobbit sadness. Peregrin’s face was smooth and set as stone, and the tears trickled down his cheeks from unblinking eyes. It was like a statue weeping. He looked so handsome, and at once both vulnerably young and ancient beyond telling. For a moment a thought came to her: you fool. But for once she did not mean him.

Embrace him. You are his wife. It is your duty. And another, deeper thought, deep inside her past the ice she had put there: he needs you. He needs something. Someone. Who will understand.

She almost did it. She almost went inside. But then she thought, But I can’t understand. I never will. There was a gulf between all he had seen, all he had done, the experiences far and away that had set him and Meriadoc and Samwise apart, and all she knew. She could never understand. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know how to love him, even if she wanted to. She was beginning to want to.

She thought then of the long-departed Frodo Baggins, and how, one day, he just left.