Chapter 45. Starving, as unto Death

They lingered long at table, and young Pippin fell asleep in his plate, it must be told, and was tenderly borne off to bed by his father, who was still none the wiser of his son's wanderings. Paladin's embrace tightened as he passed the guestroom with its silent watchers: Ferdinand, Stelliana, "Old Ferdi", and young Rosemary. How he pitied his old friend, to lose his only son!

Merry sat through it all like a stone, not responding to anything anyone said to him, and Frodo stared at him, troubled, remembering to eat his own bread and jam, or sip at his cup, only when Bilbo nudged his elbow. When at last Eglantine rose from her place, and Esmeralda joined her and her daughters in carrying away the plates and cups, saucers and spoons, knives and serving dishes, Bilbo gave Frodo a final nudge. 'Take Merry out for a breath of air,' he whispered in the tween's ear. 'It's too close in here...'

Frodo nodded and practically jumped to his feet, hurrying round the table to Merry. 'Come along, Cousin,' he said, pulling at the teen's arm. 'It's been ever so long...' The words died on his lips as Merry turned his sorrow-filled gaze upwards. Frodo swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and persisted. 'Come along, Merry,' he said, more gently, and something in his tone, some sympathy, moved the younger cousin to rise and follow. They walked out together into the gathering twilight, Frodo's arm about Merry's shoulders, away from the bustle of clearing away and washing up.

Bilbo made his way along the hallway to the guest room, where he stood hesitating in the doorway. Ferdinand looked up and nodded. Bilbo stepped in, treading as lightly as if he were walking over nests full of eggs. 'How is he?' he asked softly.

'Please, Da,' young Ferdi's voice came in a piteous moan. 'Please... it hurts so... please...'

Stelliana sobbed softly into her handkerchief, and "Old Ferdi" gave a shuddering breath and drew his hand across his eyes.

'Can we not give him something?' Ferdinand said, turning his eyes to the healer, standing silent near the head of the bed. 'Something to let him sleep, at the least?'

Healer Woodruff's young face was troubled, and Bilbo, from his long years of experience, thought he read uncertainty in her eyes. Still, she shook her head firmly enough, answering, 'Boiled water only; that's all that's safe to give him.'

'Boiled water only?' Bilbo said, though he'd heard the full tale told at table. 'That's all he's had in two days?'

'It's all that's safe,' Woodruff repeated. She moved forward, lifted the nightshirt, and gently probed the young hobbit's midsection. "Young Ferdi" cried out and feebly tried to push her away.

'Leave him be,' "Old Ferdi" said sharply. 'Haven't you done enough?'

The healer caught her breath, her eyes shining with sudden tears as she looked from nephew to uncle, and she said, her voice trembling, 'No, I haven't... I mean, I wish there were more... I mean...' And suddenly, with a shudder, she stumbled from the room.

Ferdinand put out a half-hearted hand to stop her, but as he took a step toward the door, Stelliana grasped at his sleeve with a gasping sob, and he turned back to encircle her in his embrace, rocking to and fro and murmuring broken comfort.

And Rosemary poured out a cup of plain water from the pitcher, and held it to her brother's lips. 'Here you are, Ferdi, a feast of water to drink,' she said, desperately keeping her voice steady. 'Let us pretend that it's a magic potion, shall we? It can do anything we wish it to do; carry us to faraway lands, or turn itself into a banquet of elven-bread and wine, or...'

Bilbo gave her an approving nod and turned to follow the young healer. Over-young she was, for such responsibility, he thought, but then it seemed to him the longer he lived, the younger hobbits were getting... She wasn't in the kitchen, taking a belated meal, he discovered, and when he asked, Eglantine nodded at the door leading outside.

Bilbo looked all about, seeing the lads walking near the byre, and then he walked around the side of the sprawling smial and saw a shadowy form by the fence that surrounded the kitchen garden. Walking softly, he found the young healer clinging to the fence, her head bowed, tears glistening from her cheeks in the moonlight.

'Healer... Woodruff, isn't it?' he said. 'Sweetbriar's apprentice, I think?'

'I was,' she whispered, wiping hastily at her face.

'O yes?' Bilbo said politely. 'She discharged you, did she? Finished your obligation, and hung out your own shingle and all that?'

'She... died,' Woodruff said, and Bilbo stepped back. Somehow he hadn't heard this fact, but then he'd been only distantly related to that branch of the Tooks, and news of Sweetbriar's death had not gone very far outside the bounds of Whitwell, save perhaps to a handful of healers who knew her by her reputation, or who'd had some training at her hands.

'I see,' he said gently. 'Died and left you all on your own, did she? And you're the only healer in Whitwell, and none to ask for advice in a difficult case?'

She drew herself up, stung. 'She told me I had the bulk of her knowledge...'

'No doubt,' Bilbo said, 'though rather lacking in experience, I'd venture.'

'I've enough experience,' Woodruff said, scarcely managing the civil tone due this hobbit who was more than twice her age, nearly three times, in actual fact, though he didn't look much over fifty.

'Experience with just this sort of injury?' Bilbo pressed, and some of the stiffness went out of the young healer; her shoulders slumped.

'Just this sort,' she responded bleakly, and he stopped then, and regarded her thoughtfully by the light of the moon.

'There was a lad, a year or so older than Ferdibrand,' she said at last. 'He fell from a roof, and injured his inward parts...'

'And...?' Bilbo said when the silence stretched between them.

'He slept a healing sleep, old Rosie said--she was the healer who first trained me,' Woodruff said. 'She took me on when I was just a worthless teen, she took me in when none other would have me. I came to her door to beg a piece of bread, and perhaps to sleep on the dry straw in her byre, and she made me wash my hands and face and sat me down at her table and gave me bread, and soup to go with it, and then a place to sleep and work that even a clumsy, ignorant chit could do...' She put her hands to her mouth to stop the words spilling out, and then she turned away from Bilbo and bowed her head.

'O my word,' Bilbo said softly, for he remembered the encounter with old Rosie at Pippin's naming day, and he'd heard a thing or two after they'd sent the old harridan away with the Sackville-Bagginses... and then his arms went around the young healer, and he was patting her back, and in another moment he felt her rest her head against his shoulder as she shook with silent sobs.

When at last she stilled, he put her away, pulling a clean pocket-handkerchief from his pocket and extending it to her, and when she had herself in hand again, he asked, almost casually, 'a healing sleep, you said... and...?'

'And when he awakened he was that hungered, being a teen.'

'Ah yes,' Bilbo said. 'They're always hungry, teens are, and they cannot go long without eating.'

'And I gave him to eat, and...' Woodruff gulped, but her eyes were hot and swollen and more tears would not come.

Bilbo waited.

'He died, in the most fearful torment you could imagine,' she said. 'His healing wasn't complete, and I gave him food, and... I killed him.'

'The food killed him, you mean,' Bilbo said, trying to imagine a hobbit dying of eating.

She shook her head, and several dry sobs escaped her.

'Rather,' Bilbo said, his voice firming as he took her by the arms, 'his injuries killed him. From what you say, the healing sleep was not enough, and he'd've died whether he'd eaten or not...'

'Rosie said...'

'What would Sweetbriar have done?' Bilbo asked.

Woodruff shook her head. 'I don't know,' she whispered. 'She talked... O she told me about such, but the few times she dealt with hobbits whose insides were injured, either I was attending another case, or the hobbits died. I never saw her pull one through...'

'They all died so?' Bilbo said soberly, but the young healer shook her head.

'A few lived,' she said, 'but I didn't see what she did, or how she did, I only heard her speak of it after.'

'And what's to keep young Ferdi from dying of hunger while you make sure of his healing?' Bilbo said. 'A hobbit who doesn't eat is soon no hobbit at all...'

'Don't I know it?' Woodruff said bitterly. She took a shuddering breath and looked away from him, her expression that of a fox in a snare. 'I don't know what to do,' she admitted. 'I don't know...'

'You cannot keep him on water rations much longer,' Bilbo said.

'But his middle pains him so... I daren't...'

'Hunger will twist a body as well...'

'No!' Woodruff said, stronger, and Bilbo heard the stubbornness growing; he was strengthening her resolve rather than talking her round to what, to him, was a matter of common sense.

'And he's sleeping for longer stretches,' Woodruff added, 'and has to be pressed to drink, now. I'm afraid he's slipping away...'

Bilbo thought of Bombur in Mirkwood, preferring sleep over labour; left to his own devices he'd have slept the remainder of his life away rather than getting up and continuing the disheartening, foodless trek through the dark wood. 'Sleep is probably a comfort to the lad,' he murmured. 'But why not try... surely a little broth would do no harm, if he's been sipping water all this time...?'

'No,' Woodruff said again, standing straighter. 'We'll see how things look in the morning, perhaps, but...' And Bilbo saw again the flash of uncertainty, the torment of remembered suffering, the guilt that had gnawed at old Rosie's assistant for years after her unwitting error.

'You're wrung out,' Bilbo said gently. 'When was the last time you slept? Or had a decent meal yourself?'

The young healer shook her head. 'I don't remember,' she murmured. 'We've been run off our feet, lately, and there's been precious little rest for myself or my assistants...'

'Well then,' Bilbo said, a plan growing in the back of his head, though his face remained sober and solicitous. 'Is there any more you can do for young Ferdi, at the moment? Any ease you can give him? Any sign you need to watch for?'

'I was watching to see if he'd perhaps pass more blood,' Woodruff said, 'though he's passed nothing at all, these past few hours. It's not a good sign; it may be that his body is giving up the fight...'

More than likely he hasn't taken in enough for anything to come out, Bilbo thought to himself, but he said only, 'Then now would be a good time to take your rest. I gather there might well be a crisis on the morrow, considering the lad has had nothing to eat for two days now, and being a teen...'

'Might well...' she echoed in a whisper, and swayed.

'Now then, none of that!' Bilbo said in alarm, and he put an arm around her and walked her back around to the kitchen door and into the smial. 'Do you have a bed?' he said to Eglantine, who having sent the lasses to bed was sitting at the table with Esmeralda--and it wasn't for himself or Frodo that he was meaning.

The two hobbit mums jumped up from their seats and took charge of the exhausted healer, shepherding her off to one of the extra beds. Bilbo, in the meantime, went out to fetch Frodo and Merry, to send them off to bed, for he knew that the farm family were used to seeking their pillows soon after sunset, but that they'd stay up for the sake of politeness so long as their guests were up and about.

Eglantine returned to the kitchen, shaking her head. 'Poor, exhausted young thing,' she said. 'She fights so valiantly on the side of life, gives of herself without stinting, uses herself up until there's nothing left... and yet there's naught she can do for the poor lad, more's the pity.' She dabbed at her eyes.

'If you wouldn't mind... could you, perhaps, stir up a bowl of broth?' Bilbo said, after making the appropriate sympathetic noises. 'I could use a little bite before I take my rest.'

Of course Eglantine was "happy to oblige" and soon Bilbo had a tray with steaming bowl and several slices of bread besides. He wished his hostess good night and carried the meal toward the guest room that Pearl and Pimpernel had readied for him, stopping at Pippin's door to say a few words to Paladin, who sat watching over his son.

'I've missed the lad, the past few days,' Paladin said quietly, smoothing the coverlet over the sleeping lad before he looked up.

'I can set your mind at rest,' Bilbo began, meaning to add that Pippin was never in any real danger, guarded by faithful Lop and taken up by a good and honest Traveller.

'I nearly sent word to you,' Paladin said, scarcely taking note of Bilbo's words, 'to keep the lad a day or two longer. He's too young to understand. Why, even now he has no idea of the gravity of the situation...' Pippin stirred, and his father smoothed the unruly curls and whispered, 'There, now, time to sleep, lad. Tomorrow is another day...'

'Good night to you then,' Bilbo said, and withdrew.

But he did not go to his own room. No, after checking to see that Frodo was abed and already asleep, tired out from the events of the past two days, he went instead to the room where young Ferdi's family watched their lad slipping away.

'No food,' Ferdinand said ponderously, seeing the tray. 'We'll wait with him. It'd be torture for him to waken and smell the goodly aroma...'

'But the healer sent this especially,' Bilbo said.

'Aggie said she stumbled off to bed for a few hours' rest,' Stelliana said softly. 'Poor thing, she looked all in.'

'Yes, but a teen cannot live for too many days without eating,' Bilbo said. 'At the rate they grow...? Why, they're hungry less than an hour after eating a full meal as it is. No, but half a bowl of broth, and if he keeps it down, perhaps soak some bread in the remainder...'

'But...' Stelliana said helplessly, looking from husband to brother-in-love and back to the cousin who hovered in the doorway. She could smell the broth from where she sat, a rich and satisfying smell, and her stomach rumbled involuntarily.

'Healer's orders,' Bilbo said firmly. Of course, he didn't say what healer.