Note: A featherie is a golf ball made of leather and stuffed with bird feathers. :)

All the info on masonry comes from About.com. Any mistakes are solely mine.
 
 
 
 

Chapter 7 – Errors and Errands

Legolas, Elrohir and Elladan followed Merry’s progress at a safe distance, their far-reaching eyesight helping them greatly in this endeavor. They were able to stay several buildings away, and Merry helped them by never once looking back. Either he didn’t know he was being followed, or he thought his friends safely occupied elsewhere. They stopped behind the awning of an outdoor café and watched as Merry entered a thrift shop.

“He is merely shopping,” Elladan said. “No harm in that.”

“That depends what he is shopping for, and why,” Legolas corrected. “You don’t know these hobbits as I do. They are not as innocent as they appear.”

“Yes. Father told us about the golf,” Elrohir said, the corners of his mouth creeping upwards despite his best efforts to appear aloof.

Legolas blushed and gritted his teeth. Elrond had sent Legolas with a small group of his House to scout the areas in and around Mirkwood, particularly Dol Guldur on Amon Lanc, to search for the Nazgûl. Finding not even a trace of a footstep or a whisper of discontent in the trees, Legolas and the scouts had returned to Rivendell, parting as they reached the dell. Legolas had wanted to take the long way down the valley so as to fully explore the Last Homely House.

Instead, he had nearly been knocked unconscious by a wayward featherie, which he was obliged to catch so as to prevent permanent damage to his skull – to the outrage of one Meriadoc Brandybuck, and the amusement of his three companions. To add further insult to injury, he had been forced to remain where he stood, not permitted to so much as wriggle a toe, while Merry and Pippin debated over what sort of obstacle he was. They eventually determined that he was to be considered a tree and ordered him to remain in place while they finished their round, which Merry won. Immediately forgiven for his now timely interruption, Merry and the others had recounted the whole, complicated game to Legolas as he tried desperately to outpace them on the trail leading up the cliff wall to the house. Hobbits, he was chagrined to discover, moved rather faster than their little legs would suggest possible.

“Did you really hide the clubs in the tree outside Father’s rooms?” Elrohir asked, as though he didn’t quite believe this part of his father’s tale.

“Is that where that tree was?” Legolas said, preventing himself from groaning in horror at this revelation only by squinting harder at the thrift shop in which Merry had disappeared.

“It was,” Elrohir assured. “Father was quite amused by it all. He said it was the most fun they’d had at home for years.”

“And we missed it, what’s more,” Elladan said with disappointment. “Couldn’t he have sent Arwen to speak with Grandmother and Grandfather?”

Elrohir gave him a look.

“No, I suppose not,” Elladan agreed, then brightened. “But we’re here now and look to be in for our own bit of fun. So the hobbits are planning a prank war. I don’t know why you are trying to prevent it. Seems that the distraction will do them all well, and they wouldn’t do anything to bring harm or embarrassment to the other. I say let them be, but let us be nearby to enjoy it.”

“Perhaps,” Legolas said. “Still, I would like to know what Merry is up to. He’s the planner and not one to let out of your sights.”

“Yet we can’t go in there ourselves. He’ll know what we’re doing,” Elrohir pointed out. “We need an unlikely cohort who we can send in to do some reconnaissance for us.”

He looked about and spotted a young girl of about twelve years haggling with a merchant for a pair of leather slippers. He approached the pair, stepping into their light so they looked up at his shadow. He smiled kindly.

“I will buy the maiden her shoes for your original asking price, if she would but do me one favor,” he announced.

The girl and merchant exchanged looks and shrugged. “What’s the favor?” she asked.

“See that thrift store?” Elrohir said, pointing. “There is a hobbit browsing in there and possibly making a purchase. I want you to go in, observe him and find out what he is doing. Then you are to come back here and inform me. If he sees you or discovers who sent you on your errand, the deal is off.”

The girl’s eyes widened at this. A hobbit? So nearby? But… “Which perian is it?” she asked. She could not in good conscience spy on either of the Ring-bearers, nor would she feel comfortable spying on the Ernil i Pheriannath.

“Sir Meriadoc, Holdwine of Rohan,” Elrohir answered.

“Oh. All right then,” she agreed. She handed the slippers to Elrohir for safekeeping, then twirled around and disappeared into the thrift store.

“Are you sure this is the best idea?” Elladan asked, coming to stand next to his brother, Legolas behind him.

“Decoys are always most effective on the battlefield,” Legolas said.

They chatted with the merchant while they waited for the young maid, who returned some minutes later. “He’s just buying clothes,” she informed them. “A pair of pants, some smallclothes, a shirt and a waistcoat.”

“That’s it?” Legolas asked, disappointed at this news. “Was there anything odd about the clothes?”

The lass shook her head. “Not that I could tell. They couldn’t be for him though. They were too small.”

“Merry is taller and bigger than Frodo,” Elladan said.

“He didn’t see you?” Elrohir asked.

The girl shook her head and held out her hands for the slippers. Elrohir placed a few coins in the merchant’s hands and another in the girl’s along with the slippers. “Your silence in this matter would be appreciated.”

The girl and merchant nodded, pleased with their luck. The elves slipped back to their original stakeout location.

“So Merry is buying clothes for his cousin. What a dastardly schemer. Clearly, he must be stopped,” Elladan said.

“Scoff now if you wish, but I know that Brandybuck is up to no good,” Legolas said. “Still, it is clear enough we will not discover what that is now.”

“Indeed. Come, Leggy. Let us see what your dwarf friend is doing,” Elrohir said, clapping Legolas on the shoulder.

Legolas narrowed his eyes at his companion. “I told you not to call me that.”

“Did you? I don’t recall,” Elrohir said. He and his brother left their hiding place and headed towards the gate to the third circle.

Legolas watched the door to the thrift store a moment longer. Merry emerged then, bag in hand and a grin lighting up his face. The hobbit looked far too pleased with himself, though Legolas had to admit that his own suspicion was likely distorting a look of pleased satisfaction for a gift well-bought into a look of fiendish ill-intent for some devious machination. He waited until Merry passed him by and followed him to the gate to the fifth circle. Shaking off his sense of impending doom, he trotted up the street and rejoined the twins.  

The masonry kilns were located on the first circle. The textile factory was built against the mountainside and partially into it, with many flights of stairs leading down into the bowels of the earth. There the large, room-sized kilns burned nearly night and day. As the kilns were too hot while lit for any man to enter, the fires were fed from outside. Chutes ran from steel-covered windows and coal was poured down the chutes in regular intervals while the bricks were baking.

While the walls of the Rammas Echor and the city were made of stone carved from the mountains or carted over land from the gravel quarries of Lamedon, many of the destroyed homes of the Pelennor had been made of wood or brick. Every man of the city had been pressed into service during the war and many of the masons now lay in the burial pits alongside their brethren. Only a few older masons now remained, but they could not manage the grunt work of making the bricks needed for rebuilding and repairing the Pelennor. Gimli, along with those soldiers recovered enough from their injuries to be of use, were lending their backs to the necessary work of making the bricks.

The men had easily mastered the making of bricks. The mixture required nothing more than well-ground clay mixed with equal parts water. The masons used a brick-rack, or so Gimli called it: a metal frame of ten identical sections into which the mixture was poured so all the bricks came out the same once baked.

The mortar was another issue. The lime mortar the masons and their assistants had been mixing was not up to Gimli’s standards. They made the mixture well and the result was as good as could be hoped for, but lime mortar would hold only as long as it did not get saturated. It was absolutely no good for fixing the bridges and would not hold up under heavy assault, dry or wet. Gimli had been surprised to discover that none of them knew how to make cement mortar, as several of the homes within the stone city had been held together with the strong bonding agent when they had been built so long ago; it was these building that had the least amount of damage.

“The art is lost to us, milord,” one of the old masons had told him. Gimli supposed it made sense enough. The art of mithril was lost to his own people, but they at least still knew how to make concrete.

“It’s simple really,” Gimli had promised them. “It requires only one extra step.”

Lime mortar was made by mixing well-slacked lime with sand and water into a homogeneous paste. In order to make cement mortar, one obviously needed cement, which was made by heating a mixture of limestone with clay and then grinding the mixture into a find powder before mixing it with sand and water.

While simple in theory, the making of it turned out to be more difficult than expected. The difficulty came in finding the right kind of sand, in remembering the right amounts of each ingredient needed, and in the necessity to heat the limestone-and-clay mixture. The kilns were too big and grew too hot, the ovens were too small and not hot enough. If any one of these considerations was not met, the end result would be questionable at best, outright unusable at worst.

Gimli had immediately set the assistant masons to the task of converting a storage closet to an oven, similar to the kilns but smaller in size. Now that this was completed, they had begun experiments with the cement. Once that was perfected, they could move on to experimenting with the mortar itself.

The master mason, a meticulous fellow with a sharp eye for detail and a well-honed sense of intuition for the process, kept notes on all the cement mixtures made from start to finish, labeling them for Gimli’s final inspection. In this way, they had been able to narrow it down to three different mixtures that were close to satisfactory. They were now tinkering with the formula of those three mixes to come up with the perfect product, each of them lost in the process.

As such, they didn’t notice their visitors until Elladan leaned over to inspect the powder they were grinding from their latest batch. “Looks like wet sand,” he commented, making the men and Gimli jump back. Several of them reached for swords that weren’t there.

“I suppose it would,” Gimli said, frowning at the elf, leaving off the ‘to you’ that was nonetheless implied. He could never tell one twin from the other, but as both of them were here, he supposed it wouldn’t matter. They at least had the decency to dress differently. “Ever seen a kiln lit up, Elrohir?”

“I have not,” Elrohir replied from the corner where the baking oven sat, putting out heat and smoke. He wore a burnt sienna robe. Elladan, then, was the one in silver-blue. Gimli stored this fact away for later reference. “Is this it?” Elrohir asked.

“The kilns are down this way,” Legolas said and gave the twins a tour as Gimli finished up with the masons.

“Mix these last two batches,” Gimli ordered. “I’ll inspect them in the morning.”

“Yes, milord,” the men said.

Shortly thereafter, Gimli, Legolas, Elrohir and Elladan were out in the open air of the first circle. The shadows here were already long but they still enjoyed a mild breeze from the distant sea. Gimli pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow of sweat and dust. Even the elves had a sheen of sweat over their skin from their short sojourn underground, but they preferred to let the air dry the sweat, cooling them faster.

“It is a wonder you and the men do not melt away from your days in the kilns,” Elladan said.

“You do get used to it,” Gimli said, “some more readily than others. “The key is to drink a lot of water and to keep fruit near at hand at all times. It is nearly a full time job just to fetch water. A couple of the page boys get the pleasure of that job.”

“You are making progress on your formula,” Legolas said. The last time he had visited the kilns, there had been nothing more than several piles of sand collected from all over Gondor, each being dismissed one after another by Gimli, to the annoyance of the men who had labored to retrieve it. “You have nearly perfected it, I see.”

“Nearly, lad, nearly. We’ll get it right tomorrow if I have to stay there all day to see it done,” Gimli said. “I would have stayed today gladly, except for the feast to welcome the delegation from Harad. Have any of you seen them yet?”

“We have,” the twins answered as one. They did this often, answering at the same time, or finishing each other’s thoughts. “There is much tension in them,” Elrohir went on. “I think they do not quite trust us, nor us them,” Elladan elaborated.

“They met Pippin,” Legolas said. They had heard the story from one of the page boys, who had heard it from a courier, who had heard it from a guard. The tale already had been distorted beyond anything believable, but it was entertaining to listen to all the same. “Apparently, Pippin sang a few ballads and taught them a Shire dance, and they were all but entranced by the time he was finished. The queen even offered to leave her husband for him, but he politely declined.”

“Pippin doesn’t sing anymore,” Gimli said gruffly. If only that part of the story had been true, Gimli would dance himself, but Pippin’s voice seemed incapable of rising in song within the walls of the city.

Pippin had confided in Faramir, and finally the Fellowship, about Denethor’s request for a song, allowing Pippin to put it off for a more convenient time that never came. Now Pippin felt as though Denethor’s ghost was hovering around every crook and corner of the city, waiting for his song. The very thought of it dried Pippin’s throat so he could barely speak, much less sing.

“It would do him well to overcome this fear before leaving the city,” Elrohir said, “lest he carry it with him to the Shire. Fears are not kind enough to allow themselves to be left behind.”

“We have spoken of it at length. There is little we can do to help the lad in this,” Gimli said. And yet… He patted his breeches pocket, where a small bundle was securely wrapped within. He might be able to help Pippin in some small way, at least enough to allow him to face his fear. He needed only the right opportunity to present it.  

Frodo strolled along the fourth circle, taking the back streets and side alleys for privacy. He was long familiar with the smaller streets of the city and could get around without being seen by too many. He found the crowds that gathered when he and his friends went out together to be unsettling, and he longed for wide open spaces and quiet rambles like he used to take in the Shire. Scooting about the back roads was the best he could manage in the meantime, and he meant to make use of it today.

He pulled his cloak around his shoulders, relishing his rare moment of solitude. Everyone was occupied elsewhere today. Even Sam had needed to run errands and for once hadn’t insisted that he come along for the fresh air. He should be concerned about this; he knew that Sam was in league with Merry and Pippin, if not with the prank then with some other scheme. Yet his desire to be by himself for just a few moments had been so overwhelming he actually feigned tiredness in the hopes of being left alone.

Frodo put aside his musings over his friends clandestine activities, at least for now. Plenty of time to sort that all out later. Right now, he had his own errand to run. He slipped through the alleys until he came to the shop he wanted, tucked into the narrow lane and sided by two empty buildings. Still, it was a busy shop and he had to wait several minutes before he could be sure of being alone inside.

The proprietor leapt to his feet when he saw Frodo. “My lord!” he exclaimed, wiping his hands on his shirt tails, which he then hastily tucked into his breeches. He bustled around the counter to stand in front of Frodo. He was an older man, Frodo guessed in his middle years by the greying of his hair. He had a lean frame and bony face, common among those who had not seen enough food during, or even after, the war. The man bowed hastily. “Are you needing assistance, my lord?”

“I am,” Frodo said. “I will need a product made within the next couple of weeks, and you are just the one to make it for me.”

“A product?” the proprietor asked. “I can get you anything you need today, sir. As you can see, I have plenty of supplies. How severe is the problem?”

“There isn’t a problem, which is precisely the problem,” Frodo said and explained his purpose as briefly as he could, to the proprietor’s increasing astonishment. “So, it is possible?” he finished.

“Of—of course, it is, my lord, quite possible. Not a problem, really,” the proprietor assured. “If that is your wish?”

“It is.”

“I shall see it done, then.”

“Excellent. I shall send word when I require the desired product, and will come to pick it up myself,” Frodo said, shaking the man’s hand.

Frodo returned to the alleyways, whistling a jolly tune. The next move belonged to Merry.
 
 

To be continued…
 
 

GF 2/7/09
Published 4/20/09