Girl of the North Country, 3

III.

Merry then came once a week for tea and stories. And Diamond would bring Farrie and sit him on her knee, and they would listen to the story of a hobbit named Peregrin Took, called Pip. How he was born at suppertime to the dismay of little Pervinca. How he once managed to run three dozen head of sheep into the Woody End. How Frodo Baggins taught him how to climb higher than any hobbit ever dared. “His first word?” Merry offered.

“Yes?” Diamond asked, letting herself smile.

Merry’s eyes gleamed. “‘Breakfast’.”

One afternoon into harvest-time Diamond herself bade goodbye to Merry at the Great Door of the Smials. “Thank you so much,” she said. Merry took her hand and kissed it, before descending the Great Stair to the gravel path where his Rohan pony awaited.

She should have expected it. She should have known that the Shire would notice. It was commonly accepted that Peregrin Took was dead. As his widow, Diamond was entitled to the headship of the family upon the passing of Paladin II and Eglantine; and her son, Thain. The girl from the north country had managed to place herself in the very position Lalia Clayhanger had: to become, in time, The Took herself.

And apparently she was carrying on with Merry Brandybuck.

Now the people who had turned on her husband for abandoning her turned their tongues against her. She had planned this all along. She had driven the young gentlehobbit away. She had driven him to drink. She had driven him mad. She would rule the Tooks, and by extension the Shire, once the Thain and Lady Eglantine were dead; perhaps sooner, for Paladin II was in ill health, and Eglantine Banks had never been the cleverest of souls, poor dear.

And what better way of sealing her future position, than to have the fiendish future Master of Buckland in her petticoats? It wasn’t as if Master Merry had a pristine reputation in that regard. On the contrary: everyone remembered the swath Meriadoc Brandybuck had cut through the lasses of Buckland in his day. Why wouldn’t he be beguiled by the cunning charms of this devious girl? Diamond, after all, had proven herself fertile. What would stop her from then seizing the Eastmarch for the Tooks, without one drop of hobbit blood spilled—except perhaps in childbirth?

Diamond heard the stories. She saw the looks her servants gave her. Her husband’s old nurse gazed upon her with unbridled hostility. She refused to give in to them, but it was so hard.

How she longed for Long Cleeve. The valley was poor, but it was beautiful; she loved it even when it stormed. The howling of the wind across the moors. The flood-light of the Moon across the downs. The taste of dark earth. She even missed the plain hard stone Keep of her family, with her old tower bedroom and its sight of the Hills of Evendim.

She knew it was only a matter of time before she would have to answer to the charges. She was only surprised when it happened at dinner.

She was at her usual seat, next to the Thain, far from Eglantine, across from her husband’s three sisters, along with Pimpernel’s and Pervinca’s husbands. Pearl sat directly before her. Diamond could not befriend Pimpernel, a free-thinking, free-speaking hobbit-woman, who wore trousers and hunted; her husband Odo was a bumbling little mouse of a hobbit who worked for Reginard at the Took holdings’ accounts. Pervinca she hated, for Pervinca hated her, ironically because she was Peregrin’s wife, something Diamond had not wanted to be until now he was absent. Pervinca’s husband was her second cousin Everard, Reginard’s gruff, taciturn brother, who Merry said had bullied Peregrin in their childhood.

But it was Pearl who frightened Diamond. Intimidated, in fact. Pearl Took was unmarried. She was almost fifty, yet still she was acclaimed the beauty of the Shire, surpassing her aunt Esmeralda, rivaling the still-unforgotten beauty of the tragic and unfortunate Primula Brandybuck. She lived most of the year at her father’s old farm at Whitwell, which she had built into one of the foremost concerns in the Shire. She had many lovers, it was said, but no husband. Diamond had not suspected why until Merry told her.

“Didn’t you know? She loved Frodo Baggins. Adored him. It was a match made in heaven: the heir to Bilbo’s supposedly vast fortune, wedded to the daughter of the presumptive Thain’s Heir. My mother was all for it, as was Uncle Pal. There were only two obstacles. First, Frodo himself, and the way he was. You understand. I think we all understand. He loved Pearl, too, but as a sister only. Remember, he was not only an only child, but an orphan, the only one in Shire memory. He thought her affection for him was that of a sister. She thought otherwise.

“And the second obstacle was Lalia Clayhanger.”

Lalia Clayhanger. The common-born wife of Fortinbras II. Upon his death, she became The Took, head of the clan, and ruled it with a will as hard as her body was fat. Her son was Thain after his father, but Ferumbras III was a sad, dissipated hobbit, overshadowed by his mother’s iron rule. The Tooks, and all the Families, chafed under Lalia’s tyrannical whims. But that ended when one morning her attendant somehow failed to set the brake of her wheelchair, and Lalia Clayhanger, the Great, the Fat, the Took, tumbled down the flights of the Great Stair to the gardens below and there lay, her neck quite broken.

That attendant had been Pearl Took. And it was said ever after that it was no longer true that no hobbit had ever taken the life of another in the Shire.

“Did she do it deliberately?” Merry had mused. “Did she fail to set the brake? There’s a world of difference between that and pushing the chair down the stairs, Lalia with it. In any case, Pearl was banished to Whitwell, and never saw Frodo again. Not that it mattered. By then, you see, Frodo had inherited the Ring, and his own destiny.

“But the fact was, Frodo could have refused a union—he was a Baggins after all, stubborn beyond hope—but Lalia never proposed it. She had the power. She had the authority. She didn’t use it. And she died. And one Yule long after Ferumbras’ accession ceremony, Pearl was presented back to the family, wearing her jeweled necklace.”

Pearl was wearing that necklace now, as she sat across from Diamond at the table, cutting her meat. Heavy with drop-pearls from the sea, an immense treasure even for the Tooks of Great Smials. She saw Diamond looking and smiled.

“Cousin Merry has been visiting frequently, hasn’t he?” she said to Diamond now.

Diamond felt it then: a trap, like a cage closing in around her.

“He comes to visit Faramir,” she answered. “He is his fosterling, after all.”

“Though he spends most of his time in your apartments,” Everard said, at a glance from Pimpernel.

“I hear you’re making him feel quite at home,” said Pervinca down the table.

Diamond’s heart began to beat in her ears. “He tells me stories of Peregrin,” she said, laying down her silverware. “Of when he was young. Of the War, and their travels. Other things.”

Pearl took her cup of wine. “Other things,” she said.

It was a challenge. Diamond flushed. “It is very pleasant to speak about one’s husband with one of his closest friends, sister-in-law,” she said carefully, “especially when he is absent.” She looked up then, directly into Pearl’s vivid green eyes. “If you had a husband, you would know what I mean.”

There. She hoped it stung.

Pearl said nothing, and resumed cutting the meat before her. The rest of the evening passed without incident. But Diamond could feel the fierce regard upon her: the eyes of the Thain of the Shire.

After dinner he stood as was his custom and passed along his thanks to the cook through his wife. He excused his daughters and their husbands. And then Paladin II spoke to Diamond.

“Join me in the Thain’s study, miss, in about half an hour.” It was not a request.

Diamond nodded. “Sir,” she acknowledged. Her heart was in her throat.

She stopped by the nursery to see her son. He was drowsy, sitting with his nurse, playing with his toys again. She saw the toy falcon. He had dropped it, falling asleep, and as she stooped to pick him up she picked it up as well. “You dropped this, sweetling,” she murmured, nuzzling her nose in his dark feathery hair. “You should take care of him. He needs to be taken care of.”

“Pip,” Farrie said, reaching for the falcon in agreement.

The lamps in the hallway to the Thain’s study had already been turned down when Diamond came. She stepped slowly and steadily past the portraits of Tooks of the past. Isengrim. Isembras. Fortinbras. Gerontius as a young hobbit, dark haired, green eyed, unstoppable. Gerontius as the Old Took, formidable still. The Old Took’s three daughters, Belladonna who married Bungo Baggins, Donnamira who married the Bolgers, Mirabella who wed Gorbadoc Brandybuck, mother of Primula, Took grandmother of Frodo. What was it about Tooks and three formidable daughters? Diamond shook her head. There was Fortinbras II. And there she was: Lalia the Great, in brocade and feathers, like a vast talking couch.

She stopped before the portrait. She did not know the artist, but whoever had painted it had both skill and no love for his subject. Lalia’s eyes were perfectly captured: cold black beads, merciless and self-indulgent.

“Admiring her?”

From the direction of the Thain’s study came Pearl. She was taller than Diamond, and even at nearly fifty her body was far more voluptuous. Her fiery red curls, bound ever by their green ribbon away from her face, gave her an avian look, like a hawk with fledglings to feed.

“Not so much, actually,” Diamond replied. “I find her rather hateful.”

“Really.” Pearl joined her before Lalia’s portrait. “I’ve heard that people think you have a lot in common with her.”

And there it was. It took a moment and a deep breath for Diamond to master herself. Pearl was formidable, but she was a girl of the north country with frost in her blood.

“I hope you don’t share that opinion,” she said. “I’d hate to fall down the stairs one morning.”

Pearl raised her hand. Diamond saw it and did not flinch. Her fists tightened and she stared right into her sister-in-law’s eyes, knowing hers were colder. In that cold was her strength.

“My brother was the sweetest soul ever born,” Pearl hissed, her face bloodless, her fine features almost harpish. “All he ever wanted was to be loved. He thought he could win anyone over, given half a chance. You never gave him a chance. You made him miserable. And now he’s gone. My darling little brother. My sweet Pip. And you have his inheritance. And you have his son. I hope you’re satisfied, you cold hard witch.”

She withdrew her hand. “I know you haven’t any designs on cousin Merry,” she said. “He’s much too smart for that.” Then she added, “Be careful when you speak with Father. He’s twice the hobbit I am.”

And Pearl turned to leave—but Diamond had something to say.

“Pearl?”

Pearl walked a few more steps, then stopped. And turned, her green dress softly whispering.

Diamond kept her voice as cool and thoughtless as she knew how. It was the only way she could bare her heart before her sister-in-law.

“You’re right,” she said to her. “Your brother deserved more from me. Much more. He did only want to be worthy of me, and I pushed him away. It was my fault, my mistake, and now he’s flown where I can’t follow. But you’re also wrong, Pearl. I am not satisfied. None of the things you said, is enough. Because I’ve fallen in love with your brother, Pearl. I’ve fallen in love with Peregrin, hopeless though our marriage may be. And I won’t be satisfied until what Merry says to me in his visits comes to pass. I won’t be satisfied until Peregrin … until Pippin … until my husband comes home,” Diamond said, and she could not keep her voice cool any longer, and now she didn’t want to. “And I hope he comes home, Pearl. I won’t give up hope. Even if this will never be my home, it will always be his. And his son will be waiting for him here. That, I promise you.”

She lifted her chin, and she was defiant. “North-tooks do not break our promises.”

Pearl stood there for a moment. Diamond could not read all the things that flashed on her sister-in-law’s sharp face. Then Pearl nodded grimly.

“I believe you,” she said. “Well, then. Go on. Father is waiting.”

Diamond nodded, unable to believe she had won; and won by admitting defeat.

“By the way, you are a lot like her.”

Diamond stopped, but didn’t turn to look at Pearl, or at Lalia.

“Both of you as hard as steel,” explained Pearl. “But don’t worry. You won’t meet her fate.”

Diamond whirled. “Do you mean—you really did—?”

Pearl smiled enigmatically. “Does it matter? I believe you. That’s all that we both need to know.” She beamed so that her dimples showed. On Peregrin it was adorable. On Pearl it was unnerving. “Good night, sister-in-law.”