Girl of the North Country,2

II.

When Peregrin left her, disappearing into the far south, she was the only one who wasn’t surprised, although she suspected her father-in-law had also expected it. The reaction of the Families surprised her. They rallied to her side: the Boffins and the Bolgers and Grubbs and the Chubbs and the Hornblowers and the Proudfoots (Proudfeet), not to mention the general hobbitry at large, who rightly considered any fellow who would wed a girl and father a child with her and then leave, as beneath contempt, Thain’s Heir or no. And they began to talk about Pippin never was responsible, Pippin never was trustworthy, if you remember the Battle, why it was Mr. Merry who was in charge, that young Took was just a brigand is what he was, bloodthirsty and liking it. Mr. Peregrin Took tried to change his feathers, but they always grow back the same way, don’t they? That overgrown rascal was always flighty. Never did grasp good hobbit-sense or good, well-ordered living. Poor Miss Diamond. These the selfsame hobbits who had cheered when Peregrin, stopping by an inn for food and the comfort of a lass, would sing in his beautiful voice tales of foreign lands he had known.

And under their breath, the Families whispered, Sigismond will have Paladin for this. So much for the new dynasty of the Tooks!

The Tooks themselves were divided indeed, with the North-tooks demanding an apology for the shabby treatment of Diamond by that good-for-nothing son of the Thain. Diamond’s brother went so far as to say Diamond should ask for a divorce—and custody of the heir-presumptive to the Thainship. Meaning that the North-tooks would then rule under the King, and not the Tooks of Great Smials. That could not be permitted. Reginard Took, Adelard’s eldest son and the hobbit in charge of the Tookland’s farms and flocks, and Pearl, the spinster daughter of Paladin II, suggested that the Thain disinherit Pippin and formally name Faramir as Thain’s Heir—of Great Smials.

If Esmeralda Brandybuck had been in form, she would have ridden on her pony Nightingale right to the Bullroarer’s Keep and smacked Sigismond silly. But she was still weak and bedridden from a bad bout of consumption; as Saradoc had long been in no shape to run anything, it was up to her son Merry to speak for the Brandybucks. And for all his sense and intelligence, he could not be trusted to speak objectively on any of this matters: everyone knew he was closer than a brother to Pippin.

In any case, the news came from Gondor, from the King himself, that Peregrin Took had been on board a merchant vessel that had been raided and sunk by Corsairs, with no known survivors. That was that. Peregrin was presumed dead; and Faramir was Thain’s Heir.

At the meeting of the Tooks at Great Smials, Diamond stayed in her rooms, playing with Faramir and his toys. He was only two but already keenly intelligent. He had his father’s daring, but also a quality of reservation and forethought that, she liked to think, came from her.

“Mama,” said Farrie-lad. He was playing with a small wooden pony, but he wanted his other toy. “Pip?”

Diamond looked where he was pointing. It was a gift from Gondor, more a sculpture than a toy really, a cunningly crafted toy bird whose wings could flap by pressing on its talons. It was a falcon, according to the note sent by Faramir and Eowyn of Ithilien; Farrie called it Pip.

She gave it to him and watched him play with it. He stood on his sturdy little legs and made it fly in his hand. The falcon soared and swerved and dove through the skies in his imagination, over lands only he could see.

And suddenly Diamond felt tears prick her eyes. It stunned her. She didn’t cry. She never cried.

“Mama?”

Farrie had stopped playing. He held the toy bird in one hand, and sucking the finger of the other, looking at her worriedly. “Mama?”

Diamond tried to wipe her cheeks, but this strong strange sadness that had erupted from within her, this lonesome yearning and disappointment, would not let her stop. It was her son, who quickly toddled to her, and wrapped his arms around her neck as she sat there, and kissed her cheek, and said, “Mama.” He handed her the falcon. “Pip?”

And she knew her only answer was yes.

She was waiting at the end of the hall when Merry stalked out of the meeting in the Thain’s Study in a rage. She called out his name.

“Diamond,” said Merry, nodding curtly. “May I be of service?”

She wanted to say what was on her mind, but instead said, “How did the meeting go?”

“As I expected,” was his reply. “Reginard and Pearl will have their way. Uncle Pal has no choice. Pippin’s gone. They all think he won’t be coming back.”

His words made her tremble in a way she never expected. It was with effort that she maintained her composure. “And what do you think?”

He looked at her then. She knew him well enough; Estella his wife had befriended her, and came frequently to help with Faramir. Diamond did not want to leave her son with his father’s sisters, the loveless Pearl, the brazen Pimpernel, and the cruel Pervinca. Estella Brandybuck was tender and loving, and her childlessness made her even more adoring of Farrie.

Merry Brandybuck was her husband’s closest friend. They were like brothers, closer than brothers. Merry, too, had gone where her husband had gone, and come back changed. But Merry seemed to have found his stride: he ran the affairs of Brandy Hall now, and when the tenants and landowners of Buckland and the Marish acknowledged the authority of the Master, it was Merry they meant, not Saradoc. Merry even looked like a proper hobbit. He, too, was immensely tall, and wore the colors of his foreign allegiance as often as her husband did; but green and white were hobbity colors, as black and silver never would be. And Merry had a proper hobbit-belly, slight though it was, and his face was hobbit-genuine, and if he, like Peregrin, ever woke in the night from memories of war, Estella never told her.

He looked at her with his keen eyes and not for the first time Diamond felt the cunning behind them, the wheels upon wheels that made up the exacting mind of Meriadoc Brandybuck. Perhaps that was it. That was his secret, to make a place for himself in the Shire, in its closed society and parochial ways: a mind that grasped the entirety of every situation and a confidence that allowed him to pursue his goals over long periods of time. It was Esmeralda’s mind, endlessly calculating, even manipulative when necessary. Fortunately Merry had something Diamond never sensed in his mother: a warm, kind heart.

Her husband, she knew, had such a heart: worn on his sleeve, for anyone to bruise that could. But Peregrin hadn’t his cousin’s mental faculties, the many gears that clicked and whirred and allowed Meriadoc to function as a hobbit of his position and lineage was supposed to function. No; Peregrin had been a lad yet when he went wherever he went, to whatever battle it was where he was broken like a fallen sparrow.

Meriadoc was still looking at her. Eventually he spoke. His face was twisted into a wry smile. He always smiled, even when he was angry, even when he was about to put a plan into motion. Everyone grew into their names.

“What do you hope for, madam?” he asked her. “Your troubles with Pippin were never well-kept secrets.”

“No,” she replied. “I suppose they weren’t.” She hesitated, and he must have noticed it, for he frowned and his smile altered.

“Diamond?” he asked, and his voice was gentler. “What troubles you, my dear?”

What troubled her. She was too young to get married and was forced to by her parents to quell some silly hobbit feud. She was physically frightened by her husband, by his size, his hard body, his skills in violence. She despised his innocence and his guilelessness. She hated his pity. She pushed him away and allowed him to find his comfort elsewhere. He was gone now, somewhere far away, perhaps even dead; and now, seeing his eyes in the eyes of their son, she realized that amid all that, she had fallen in love him, fallen so deep she could not live without him or with him. He had never done a thing to earn her enmity. It had all been on her side; all her resentments and fears and her stubborn pride. What troubled her.

“I never knew my husband,” she said now. She turned to face Merry. “You know him best. Tell me about him.”

“He’s alive,” Merry said first. “Of that I am certain.”

She nodded. She felt that too. “Tell me everything.”

“Where shall I begin?” he asked her.

Diamond thought. Then she asked, “What did he see, on your travels far away, that still makes him cry out in the night?”

And Merry’s smile twisted again. “Come, let’s sit,” he said. “This calls for tea.”

Sauron. The Enemy. Diamond shivered at the revelation. So Peregrin had seen Sauron himself through some magical device, and worse, Sauron had seen him, and spoken with him. Why did he even pick up the thing? Because he was curious. She knew that. Curiosity was her husband’s worst, most unhobbity attribute—and she loved it now.

No wonder he was still haunted. No wonder he still cried out at night for comfort. He had been twenty-eight, a tweenager, not yet full-fledged, when he had been brought into the gaze of the Eye. And she had been frightened of him! Had pulled away from him, when all he sought was the comfort of a friendly touch!

She looked to Merry, who sat slouched by a windowsill gazing out over the Green Hill country.

Suddenly she said, “Why did you let him come with you?”

He turned to her. He had considered this question too, she knew. Merry considered everything.

“He should have turned back at Rivendell,” he answered. “We both should have. Elrond was against his going. But he wanted to come with us. To help Frodo, he said. And, I think, to see the world. You know Pippin. Or maybe you don’t. Pippin’s a Took. I know people always say that, when a hobbit acts peculiar. And blood isn’t the whole story; Pippin’s half-Banks just as I’m half-Brandybuck, and the Brandybucks are much stranger than the good Bankses ever will be. Yet by some chance—if you believe in chance, which I don’t—Pip got the full dose of Tookishness. Gandalf, the wizard, do you remember him? He went around awakening the Took in all of us. Well, he got more than he bargained for when he came across Pippin. ‘Not that much, Peregrin my lad!’ he’d say. When Pippin refused to go home, Gandalf supported him. Of course I had to go too, to keep an eye on him.”

He stopped speaking, and gazed north out the window. “Pippin told me you used to see Lake Evendim from your home in the Northfarthing,” he said.

Diamond nodded. “I did.”

“That you’d look upon the grassy mounds and broken stones that once was Annuminas.”

Diamond nodded again. She never knew that was what she was looking at, until her husband told her from one of his books. His endless books about Westernesse and Arnor and Gondor and all these things no hobbit would care about. She wondered what Merry was getting at.

He must have known she was wondering. “Annuminas was the chief city of Arnor, the North-kingdom. The Rangers are a remnant of it. Arnor was destroyed, over hundreds of years, by the Witch-king of Angmar. A Ringwraith of Sauron; the greatest and most terrible of the servants of the Enemy. I killed him. Well, not really; I wounded him, stabbed him in the knee if you can believe it, and my lady Eowyn struck him down.

“But, you see, knifing a Ringwraith isn’t like gutting your common wild boar. Rather not. You are struck by the dark power of the curse that binds them. And their screams sneak into your mind and your heart and you wither under the Black Breath.

“It took all the power of the King to call my lady back from the darkness. And I nearly followed her. Pippin helped me back.”

Diamond stared at him. Estella had never told her this. Merry sat calmly, sipping his tea, gazing north—toward Angmar, she realized; towards the bleak realm of the monster he’d helped slay. This was Merry’s nightmare, then: Merry’s black beast in the mind, that which kept him up at night.

And Sauron was Pippin’s.

Sauron himself. Her husband all these years since the entire affair of the Ring—the War of the Ring, she told herself, now that she’d heard it; the great battle of their time—her husband, everyone’s Pippin, her Peregrin, had been haunted. Haunted by burning pyres and cruel fathers and despondent sons. Haunted by a wizard’s fall and a city’s burning. Haunted by the whips of orcs, and orcs’ terrible groping fingers. Haunted by the hopelessness of a small soldier at the front before an enemy of overwhelming force. Haunted by crushing memories of war heavier than the troll that had fallen upon him, crushing his lungs, breaking his ribs, mangling his arm, the troll he killed. And most of all, by the memory of the laughter of Sauron at the sight of him. And she thought him strange? Altered? Not hobbitlike? How could he have not been altered? How in heaven’s name could any of them, Meriadoc, Samwise, Frodo Baggins, have ever been expected to fit neatly into this Shire again? Peregrin was not the exception. Merry was the exception. Her husband was the rule.

She felt tears slip out of her eyelids and fall down her cheeks. Merry saw and went to her. He brought out a handkerchief and dabbed her cheeks. “I’m sure Pip never had a handkerchief handy for you,” he said. “It’s probably why he left.”

“I never cry,” she answered, self-conscious. “I don’t quite know what’s come over me.”

“I do,” he said. “You have found that, despite your best efforts, he has snuck his way into your heart; and that in his absence you’ve discovered you can’t imagine a life now without him.”

He gave her his best smile, the smile that despite all his wiles and machinations still earned him his name of Merry. “He does that,” he said. “It’s often quite confounding.”