17. Some Thoughts on Child Rearing

Faramir had calmed and was sleeping peacefully when a shadow appeared in the doorway. It was Ferdi.

'What are you doing here?' Merry challenged him.

'I have something to say to Pippin,' Ferdi answered. He held Merry's gaze, and suddenly the Master of Buckland nodded and rose from his chair.

'I'd like to take myself off for a ride, if you can spare me for a while,' he said, laying a hand on Pippin's shoulder.

'Go ahead,' said Pippin. He pointedly ignored Ferdibrand. Merry hesitated, then shrugged and left the room. Ferdi sat down in the chair the Master had vacated without waiting for an invitation.

'Sure of yourself, aren't you?' There was steel in Pippin's tone. 'I don't know what you're thinking...'

'You will in a minute,' Ferdi said equably, 'for I've come to give you a piece of my mind.'

'Sure you can spare any?' Pippin said acidly.

'Just the one piece, Pip, but it is rather large, so if you have no objection…'

'Fire away,' Pippin said, and Ferdi smiled oddly. He didn't think his cousin was going to appreciate the arrows he was about to shoot, sharply tipped with truth and aimed at the heart of the matter.

'Do you want to know where your son was going?' he asked.

'It didn't appear as if he had much choice about it. I'm sure he was going with you, wherever you were headed.'

'He was going to Gondor,' Ferdi said.

'So you say.' Pippin was no longer even half-disposed to believe Ferdibrand. Faramir's frantic pleas for release had shaken him badly. And there was Ferdi's note – he always came back to that note.

'Can you guess why he was going to Gondor?' Ferdi persisted.

'If it was his idea at all, it would be a romantic notion, a fairy-story, nothing more. He's too young to remember much of our stay there, before we returned to the Shire.'

'Before you became Thain,' Ferdi said. 'That's what this is all about, you know.'

Pippin's face was grim. 'In the world of Men, they steal the children of those rich enough to pay for their return. Did you do this for gold, Ferdi? I find it hard to believe that of you.' His fists clenched and unclenched, belying his words.

'It has nothing to do with your treasure as Thain, or your power as Thain.'

'O?' There was a world of challenge in the quiet word.

'It has everything to do with your son. He was running away, you know, and I followed.'

'So you said.'

'So it was,' Ferdi said quietly.

'Why would Farry run away? I can see it as a childish game, running to the next hill, or the little wood, and creeping back again as soon as the food ran out or shadows grew too long for comfort.'

'Very common, that,' Ferdi agreed.

'But forty miles, Ferdi! What am I to think of that?'

'He was twenty-five or thirty miles from the Smials when I caught up with him,' Ferdi said. 'I admit, I took him further, forty miles in all, but I wanted him in a safe place where he could rest and heal and think.'

'And you didn't bother to tell his father, or mother, or anyone else where he was.'

'I sent word to Tolly,' Ferdi said. 'And I would have sent word to you on the morrow, or brought Farry to you, having given him a week to reflect.'

'How convenient,' Pippin said sarcastically. 'Tolly himself will be here on the morrow.'

'I did not want you coming the very next day to swoop Farry up and carry him home. He would only run again when his leg healed, and we might not be so lucky the next time.' Pippin's jaw tightened, and Ferdi knew he was thinking of the fox. He waited.

'What do you mean, "he'd only run again"?' Pippin rapped out at last.

'I mean exactly what I said. Why do you think he was going to Gondor?' he asked again.

'What does that have to do with it?'

'It has everything to do with it.' Ferdi's tone was emphatic. 'He was going because he knew he would be made much of there. Perhaps he even remembers something of the fuss over a tiny hobbit child, the son of the "Ernil i-something", whatever that odd phrase was they use. Showered with loving attention, petted, admired. What does he get at the Smials? Whispers and frowns.'

Ferdi put up a hand and rubbed gently at his forehead, a gesture Pippin had often seen when the weather was changing, though Ferdi never complained and seldom missed a day of work. He lowered his hand after a moment and continued. 'Why did he fall in with those particular cousins, that crowd of troublemakers, a while back? They made much of him, they hung on his words, they laughed at his jokes, "even the lame ones" as one of my lads told me at the time.'

'Diamond and I make much of him,' Pippin protested.

'Do you?' Ferdi asked quietly. 'Do you really? Tell me, when is he sure to spend time with you both?'

Pippin opened his mouth to speak, but Ferdi forestalled him. 'Breakfast, yes, I know you always eat early breakfast together, and then what was it, tea? Breakfast and tea, with mostly adult conversation, I suspect, and often at teatime there are distinguished guests and a young hobbit must be on his best behaviour.'

'I...' Pippin said.

'He spends more time with a minder, or an escort, or any number of folk who are not his mum and his da,' Ferdi went on inexorably. Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb, as he’d heard Pippin say, though he had no idea why you’d hang a sheep unless to butcher it. 'He's being raised by everyone in the Smials, except for his own parents.'

Pippin tried to speak, but Ferdi held up a hand. 'And what now? A new babe on the way, and there'll be even less time for Farry, or that's how he sees it. He might as well take himself completely out of the way. He's really doing you a kindness, you know, giving you and Diamond more time to spend with the little one.'

Pippin's face was dark with anger, and Ferdi fell silent, the better to let him stew. When his cousin slumped and raised a hand to his face, he knew it was time for another spoonful of the bitter tonic. Hopefully it would do its work and cure the peculiar blindness that afflicted the Thain.

'Does the son of the Thain have to make an appointment to see the Thain?' he asked softly.

'Don't be absurd!' Pippin sat upright with a jerk.

'It might be difficult at that,' Ferdi agreed, maddeningly cheerful. 'I imagine 'tis very difficult to get an appointment, the Thain's that busy, you know.'

It hadn't always been that way. When he'd come back to the Smials to assume the title, Pippin had been a loving, attentive father, but the Thainship had a way of claiming as much time as a Thain was willing to give it, crowding out everything else, even what he held most dear. Pippin was silent, looking down at his sleeping son.

Ferdi continued relentlessly. 'How does Farry win your attention? When do you give him more of your time? When he makes mischief? Or when he makes good?' He let his eyes rest on Farry, the flushed cheek pillowed on one hand, a slight smile on his face. At least the lad's dreams seemed to be pleasant ones now. He took a deep breath. Time for the hardest truth of all.

'You're dying, Pip,' he said sadly. 'You do not know how much time you have left. Well, no one knows, really, but you – you lose a little more ground each year, and one day the Old Gaffer's Friend will come to claim you, sooner rather than later. What will Faramir remember of you? A father too busy to take him fishing, for one thing; a father who gave that job to his special assistant. And what words will you leave him with? A scolding? A reproach?'

Pippin sat rigid, scarcely breathing.

'You think on these things, Pip, and if in the morning you want your Brandybuck cousin to banish me, you tell him to go right ahead. Tell Pimpernel to meet me in Bree, if I must go. Perhaps we'll go on to Gondor, my Nell and myself and our children. I wouldn't want to stay in such a Shire, under such a Thain, who has time for any but his own.'

'You stayed under my father,' Pippin said hoarsely, 'and he treated you unjustly, indeed.'

'I had a duty to my own father. And whatever I might say about Paladin, tyrant though he might have been, at least...' he paused, then looked directly into Pippin's eyes. 'At least he stopped his work at teatime, every day, and spent time with his family. He raised his own children, and while you might not have appreciated it at the time, he helped to make you what you are this day.'

Ferdi bent over Faramir and pulled up the coverlet a bit, cupped his hand for a moment on the lad's cheek, and rose. 'I'm tired,' he said. 'It might be a big day on the morrow; guess I'd better turn in.' He walked out of the room, leaving the Thain staring silently at his son.

Hilly stiffened as Ferdibrand emerged from the bedroom and walked over to his pack, propped against the wall by the door. 'Don't stir yourself, Hilly,' Ferdi said wearily. 'I'm not going anywhere but to bed.' He picked up his neatly-folded blanket from atop the pack, took it over to the hearth - Everard now snored on the bed in the corner – rolled it out with a snap, and stretched himself upon it, his back to the room.

The rest of the family settled themselves uneasily for sleep. Rosemary was the last to retire, blowing out all the lamps but the one that she turned down low and set in the window. She stole over to Ferdi, bent and softly kissed his cheek. He sat up from the blanket and the two, brother and sister, shared a wordless hug for a long while before she rose and walked away.

In the middle night, Hilly stepped, soft-footed, over to where Ferdi lay watching the fire.

'You're not asleep,' he whispered.

'You noticed that,' Ferdi said. 'What gave you the clue? Was it the fact that my eyes were open?'

'Ferdi, be serious,' Hilly said. When Ferdi didn't answer, he went on, 'You can go; your pack's ready, right there by the door. I'll say I fell asleep; it'll only mean water rations for a few days. Go, Ferdi. Please go.'

Ferdi smiled. 'You've been a good friend, Hilly, but do me no favours now, if you please. Why should I run from an unfounded charge?'

'They found you forty miles from the Smials with the son of the Thain and no explanation. You wrote a note to Tolly asking him to keep the secret as long as possible, and he admitted that the two of you conspired. You know what will happen. It will likely be my hand that holds the brand on the morrow.' Hilly held out a trembling hand. 'Please, Ferdi.'

'If your hand holds the brand to my cheek, you had better steady it or you're likely to blind me.'

'Be serious,' Hilly hissed.

'I am being serious.' Ferdi smiled, took the hand and gave it a squeeze. 'It'll all come right in the light of morn,' he said. 'Tolly will set things straight.'

'And if they say Tolly was a part of it all? They'll banish him as well.'

Ferdi took a deep breath and let it out again. 'No matter what happens tomorrow,' he said, 'it'll be the right thing. Whether I'm cleared, or whether I'm banished, I can see my course clear before me.' Astonishingly, he chuckled. 'I wonder how many can say the same.'