Chapter 3. Stuff and Nonsense...

‘Why, what’s the matter, Pip? You look terrible!’

Obviously startled, the Thain raised his face from his hands, instantly assuming a bland expression, though he ought to have known by now that Merry knew him too well and would see right through him. ‘Why, Merry!’ he said, all too brightly. ‘You’re already back from your picnic with ‘Stella and the children...?’ His eyes moved to gaze out of the wide, oddly-shaped windows to be found in the dwellings of Men. ‘Did the weather turn? I know Sam was predicting rain on the morrow, but he did say he thought today would remain fair...’

‘Don’t try and put me off with talk of the weather, Cousin,’ Merry said in his sternest tone. 

Ferdi, who’d met the Master of Buckland in the corridor outside the Thain’s guest apartments and entered with him, cleared his throat. ‘He excels at changing the subject,’ he said, almost conversationally. 

Instead of protesting, Pippin ignored his cousins, picked up his cup of obviously cold tea and took a gulp.

The two older cousins exchanged a significant glance, and then Ferdi said, ‘What is it that you don’t want to tell us?’

‘I—’ Pippin said, looking up again, and stopped, looking from one older cousin to the other.

Merry turned to Ferdi and said, ‘It must be worse than I thought.’

‘Much worse,’ Ferdi agreed, then stared down the Thain. When Pippin dropped his eyes to the cup in his hands, Ferdi’s eyes narrowed, and then he said slowly, ‘What... what is it, you don’t want to tell me, in particular?’

Pippin blinked. ‘I look terrible, do I?’ he said.

‘Don’t change the subject!’ both older cousins said in the same breath.

‘Who’s changing the subject?’ Pippin asked. ‘It was the first thing you said as you came in the door, Merry! ...and if I’m doing so badly in your eyes, and Ferdi’s, then how am I ever going to face Diamond?’

‘What is it you’ve done?’ Ferdi said, after an awkward pause. ‘Or haven’t done, perhaps?’

‘It’s so oft what I haven’t done, gets me in the most trouble,’ Merry said, as if he and Ferdi were the only ones in the room.

And then the older cousins fell silent, and waited.

Pippin blinked at them, took another gulp from his cup and shuddered. ‘You’re still here,’ he observed, rather lamely.

No answer.

He tried again. ‘It’s not what I’ve done – or haven’t done, this time.’ He waited for one of his older cousins to jump in with something like Aha! This time!, providing him an opening to build upon more distractions ...but they simply stood before him, presenting a united front, a wall of silence that grew more discomfiting as the moments passed.

Weakly, he gestured to the cosied pot. ‘Will you have some tea, perhaps?’ he suggested.

That, at least, drew a response from Ferdibrand. ‘None of your nonsense, now, Pip.’

‘We can see you’ve been sitting here stewing long enough for that pot to go stone-cold,’ Merry added. ‘How you can drink those dregs...’ He shook his head and added in a lower voice, ‘It’s all too obvious, you’re in some sort of trouble.’

‘I look terrible, and it’s that obvious, is it?’ Pippin said, and laughed, but his expression was bleak.

‘A moment, Cousin,’ Ferdi said to Merry, and then he turned abruptly and exited. True to his word, he returned a moment later, murmuring that a fresh pot was on its way.

‘They train the teapots very well here in New Annúminas,’ Pippin quipped, but his heart obviously wasn’t in it.

‘Amazingly enough,’ Ferdi replied, ‘considering they’re Man-sized and difficult to rein in, once they get the bit between their teeth.’

Since Ferdi was the older cousin, at least where Pippin was concerned, no one told him to rein in his whimsy. And though Merry was older than Ferdi by a year or so, he was too distracted by concern for their younger cousin to take any notice of nonsense in this moment. Instead, he tugged at Ferdi’s arm. ‘Come and sit down.’

Pippin sighed as his older cousins seated themselves to either side. ‘No hope of escape now, I suppose.’

‘Just what is it, you’d like to escape?’ Ferdi said. ‘Things have settled down nicely in the Shire since your miraculous cure, and the famine...’

‘...and the fever...’ Merry put in.

‘...and the troubles with the false guardsmen...’ Ferdi added.

‘Enough!’ Pippin said, his voice suddenly sharp, and he made a cutting gesture that sloshed the last of the tea out of the cup he held.

‘I beg your pardon, Sir,’ a deferential voice said from the doorway, and the three hobbits fell silent as a Man-servant and two similarly tall assistants took away the cosied teapot, bent to wipe invisible crumbs and drips from the table, and laid out platters of food (tea sandwiches cut to fit a hobbit’s hand, teacakes and biscuits baked to the proper size, and all the necessary accompaniments) along with hobbit-sized cups, plates and cutlery for three and, lastly, a large and steaming pot of tea that had obviously just come off the boil. Along with providing comfortable hobbit-sized furnishings, Queen Arwen had carefully trained those who served in the guest quarters set aside for hobbits.

Thus, teatime was usually a pleasant occasion. Not this day, however.

‘That’s torn it,’ Pippin said, after the servers were safely away, taking his soiled teacup and saucer with them and closing the door behind themselves. ‘They’ll be reporting to Elessar all too soon, and then...’

‘And then?’ Merry said, pouring out for the three of them.

But instead of taking up the cup of strong, steaming black tea, just as he preferred that particular drink, Pippin sank his face into his hands once more. ‘And then I have to face him, as well,’ he said, the words muffled but still discernible.

Ferdi took some time in creaming and sugaring his tea, staring into the depths as he stirred thoroughly. 

Meanwhile, Merry absently sipped from his cup, shuddered, and added milk and sugar. ‘Drink whilst it’s still hot, Pip,’ he said. ‘You look as if you need it.’

Pippin dropped his hands from his face, though he could not seem to bring himself to meet either older cousin’s eyes, swallowed hard, and shook himself. Then he took up his teacup and sipped.

‘That’s better,’ Merry said.

But Pippin surprised him with a bitter, ‘Is it, Merry? Is it really?’

Ferdi placed a hand over Pippin’s free hand. ‘You’ve got me badly worried at this point, Pip,’ he said, speaking cousin-to-cousin rather than Chancellor-to-Thain or even Took-to-The Took.

Pippin turned from Merry to Ferdi and said, ‘I’m more worried for you, as things stand, Ferdi. Ah, but I’m sorry that I ever allowed this wretched business to go forward... and now I see no way of stopping it, and...’

Merry was faster to take his meaning than Ferdi, perhaps because the latter was so intimately involved in the “wretched business”. ‘The journey?’ he hazarded, and then nodded to himself. He looked across Pippin to meet Ferdi’s inquiring look and said, ‘Not my journey to Rohan with Merry-lad Gamgee, that we’ve been discussing for the past week, but yours.’

‘My journey,’ Ferdi affirmed uneasily, and breaking away from Merry’s gaze, he looked to Pippin. ‘As I said before, what is it you’re keeping from me now, Cousin?’

‘He’s a stubborn Took,’ Pippin said.

Ferdi missed the significance, however, saying, ‘That I am, Pip, and I know I’ve not given you much joy over the planning.’ He raised his eyes to the high, flat ceiling, which gave him no comfort. ‘To be honest, I am not looking forward to travelling with a body of Guardsmen, whether afoot or in the saddle, for league after league, just so you can assure yourself that I can conduct myself properly in the company of Men!’

At seeing Pippin’s eyes widen, he snapped, ‘I’m not such a fool as all that, Cousin! I know why you’ve consigned me to this duty!’

‘Did Nell...?’ Pippin began.

‘My Nell did not have to say anything to me!’ Ferdi said hotly. ‘It was I, who told her, the reason we must be parted, at least until Remembering Day.’ Lower, he added, ‘I hope I will be back in the Shire by Remembering Day... according to the plans you described, to set out at Mid-year, travel through the summer weather, arrive in Minas Tirith in time for their celebration of the Ring-bearers’ birthdays, and then home again...’ He sighed in spite of himself. How good it would feel to be home again. But he must get through the journey first.

‘How did you...?’ Pippin said haltingly.

Ferdi took a page out of Reginard’s book and looked down his nose at the younger cousin. ‘The Thain has an escort, a body of hobbits who watch over himself and his family,’ he said, quoting from one of the lessons set for young Tooks to learn. ‘The practice was established long ago, when the wild Green Hills were wilder yet, when bears and wolves and Men still roamed the land, not to mention the wild swine and packs of dogs and natural hazards that are still to be found in the back-country.’

Even though he’d argued for years against the need to have one or more archers ride with him everywhere he went in the Shire, much less the Tookland, Pippin nodded. He could hardly refute the Tooks’ historical records and the facts that every young Took was required to memorise. 

Ferdi went on, no longer quoting, but speaking matter-of-factly. ‘Though Paladin disbanded the escort in his time, for he thought it had served its time, he put up with Regi re-forming the escort when the heirs to Tookland and Buckland disappeared on the same day as Bilbo’s heir, and Lotho’s ruffians began to encroach on the Tookland.’

‘You don’t have to lecture me on the history and the duties of the Thain’s escort...’ Pippin began, but Ferdi stared him down.

‘It seems that, perhaps, I do,’ the older cousin answered. 

Merry had nothing to add to this peculiarly Tookish conversation, and so he merely listened as he sipped his tea and nibbled absently at a biscuit, looking from one cousin to the other.

Now Ferdi said, ‘I was confused, at first, when you said you were sending me along with Farry on this journey.’ He looked away, selected a tea sandwich with some care, took a bite, chewed, and washed the mouthful down. ‘Drink your tea!’ he barked.

Pippin drank... and waited (rather uncharacteristically, Merry thought) for the rest of what Ferdi had to say.

‘After all,’ Ferdi resumed, ‘you have half-a-dozen archers you could send along with your son, and still leave one or two to dog your heels at Regi’s insistence.’

Pippin’s mouth twisted at this reminder that the escort did not serve at his pleasure but under the direction of his Steward. Or he’d’ve disbanded the escort himself at the earliest opportunity, as Paladin had done before him.

‘Certainly, it seemed fitting for me to guide your son in our recent retracing of his family history within the Bounds of the Shire,’ Ferdi went on. ‘For I was only sharing my own experience with him, my travels to the Woody End and back again, retracing my steps as a Tookish scout who was gathering information for the Thain to use in shaping the defence of the Tookland. And because the Borderers and Watchers have been doing their job, these past two years, once the false guardsmen were rooted out, it seemed that I’d be enough to keep young Farry safe during our little excursion, with my experience and my ability to shoot – at least a few arrows before my old injury should trouble me and spoil my aim.’

Merry nodded. Yet unforeseen circumstances had arisen, putting both Ferdibrand and Faramir in peril in the midst of what ought to have been an uneventful walking party. 

But Ferdi wasn’t finished. ‘As things turned out, ‘twould have been better if we’d had a hobbit of the escort, or two or three, along for the journey.’

Merry sipped his tea thoughtfully, then refreshed his cup with the warmer liquid in the cosied pot. His cousin had the right of it. He’d been there in The Crowing Cockerel with Pippin when the panting forester had burst through the door, to announce the shocking news that the son of the Thain had been found alone in the depths of the Woody End after his “escort” had fallen into one of the old ruffian traps from the time of the Troubles. Had there been two or three hobbits of escort in the walking party along with Farry and his uncle, the incident might have been a mere inconvenience, an amusing anecdote to be told in future years, rather than the near-disaster that had occurred.

Ferdi cocked his head and regarded his Thain. ‘And of course, there is the fact that I’ve not qualified as a member of the Thain’s escort for nearly a dozen years now,’ he said quietly. ‘O, when I was no longer fit to bend a bow, you had pity on me and made me your special assistant...’

‘Pity had nothing to do with it!’ Pippin said sharply.

‘...and later, it amused you to designate me your chancellor,’ Ferdi went on as if the Thain had not spoken.

Merry seemed to remember that Ferdi had been the first to jest about assuming the title, perhaps after hearing Pippin mention the King’s chancellor in conversation, though the details were murky now. But now was not the time to interject himself into this conversation, he deemed. On second thought, he was lucky they hadn’t banished him from the room whilst they discussed Tookish matters, even though he was half-Took himself. 

‘So why would you send me, your “chancellor” but no longer fit to be an escort, along with your son on this mad endeavour, travelling well outside the relative safety of the Shire?’ Ferdi mused aloud, contemplating the half-sandwich in his hand. Looking up again to meet Pippin’s eyes, he said, ‘I could only conclude it was either meant, misguidedly, as some sort of honour...’ He was silent for a moment, perhaps considering the circumstances one more time, and then he shook his head. ‘...or to address some failing on my part.’

‘Ferdi...’ Pippin said under his breath.

Ferdibrand put his sandwich down and pointed his finger at Pippin’s face. ‘You cannot lie to me,’ he said. ‘As you know very well.’

‘I know it,’ Pippin said wryly. ‘As you know it,’ he continued, looking from one older cousin to the other. ‘And even Merry knows it.’

‘I was there when the truth was revealed to us,’ Merry said quietly. ‘Of course I know it.’

‘The lad is a stubborn Took,’ Pippin said, and Ferdi started.

‘You weren’t talking about me, then,’ he said, a question in his tone.

Pippin sighed, sipped at his cooling tea, shuddered, and placed the cup on its saucer with careful precision before turning back to face Ferdibrand. ‘You have the right of it,’ he said. When Ferdi would have answered, he held up his hand. ‘No,’ he said, heading off the inevitable question. ‘You have the right of it in many things. I cannot lie to you, for you have the curious talent of hearing a lie when it is spoken and recognising it for what it is.’ He ticked off one finger, and then the finger next to it, saying, ‘I am sending you to Gondor for your own good, Ferdi, and for the sake of the Tookland.’

‘My own good...’ Ferdi echoed. ‘How...?’

‘You are to be Thain after me, should anything happen to me,’ Pippin said.

‘And the Thain is one of the Counsellors to the King,’ Merry said in sudden realisation. ‘Is that what this is all about, Pip?’ Worry rose in him again. ‘But I thought the Ent-draught cured you! Is it that...?’

‘I could fall from my pony and die this very day,’ Pippin snapped. ‘...not that I’m planning on doing so,’ he added, looking from one stunned face to the other. ‘But accidents happen. Illnesses... happen. Ruffians happen, even, as both of you’ve found in your own experience, cousins. Escort or no escort.’

And now it was Pippin staring Ferdi down. ‘The King – and many of those who serve him and do his bidding and represent him when he cannot be present – is a Man. And if you cannot tolerate the company of Men, Ferdi... cannot work with Men for the good of the Kingdom... the Shire... the Tookland herself... then not only the Tooks... but all Shire-folk will suffer. And I refuse to die with that on my conscience!’

And neither older cousin chided him for his whimsy or tried to override his argument with the simple fact that he was very much alive in this moment. For accidents... illnesses... and yes, even ruffians... could happen at any time, and anywhere, even deep in the centre of the land called the Shire.

‘So I must go to Gondor,’ Ferdi said. ‘And in the company of Men, that I might get used to them somehow. Or that is your hope, anyhow.’

Pippin nodded and ticked off a third finger. ‘As to the stubborn Took... I wasn’t talking about you, though you might be the first person to come to mind when anyone mentions stubborn Tooks! But no... as I said but a few moments ago, I was talking about my son.’ 

‘And what does this have to do with Farry?’ Ferdi said, his tone subdued. ‘For you might have sent me – just me – to Gondor, and spared your son.’

‘It was Farry’s idea to go to Gondor in the first place,’ Pippin said.

Ferdi nodded.

‘And so,’ Pippin said, ‘I thought it might all work out for the best, and no need to trouble you with my doubts about your ability to serve as Thain, should the need arise...’

‘There’s a “but” in there somewhere,’ Merry said lightly, to cut the tension between these two beloved cousins of his.

Pippin threw him a pained look. ‘There is,’ he said. ‘For my son has decided to trace the journey of the Fellowship as you and I lived it.’

‘We’ve already been over that ground,’ Ferdi said.

‘No,’ Pippin shook his head. ‘We haven’t.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Merry said. ‘Nor do I,’ Ferdi agreed.

Pippin rose from his chair, propelled by his perturbation, strode to the closed door, and turned to confront his astonished cousins. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand! My son wishes to retrace the journeys of the Fellowship! ...to retrace...’ He broke off, clenched his fists, and hissed, ‘No escort, do you take my meaning now? No body of guardsmen, no protection, save perhaps what Haldoron can offer, and yourself, Ferdi, despite your ”old injury”, and...’ he swallowed hard and dropped his voice, ‘and perhaps a Man of Gondor, and an Elf and a Dwarf, should fortune favour us somehow and they answer my appeal to them, sent off with a messenger this very morning...’

The Thain took a shuddering breath and added haltingly, ‘and perhaps I can send a pair of hobbits of escort with you. Surely he could not object to that? There were four hobbits in the Fellowship after all...’

‘Call it off!’ Merry objected. ‘There’s no need for...’

But Pippin interrupted him. ‘The lad is a stubborn Took,’ he repeated. ‘Have you already forgot the trial we lived through in the Woody End? And he was only ten at the time!’

To Ferdi, he added, ‘I remember, all too well, the bargain you had to make with him! I remember, like a dagger in my heart, hearing you tell how the lad said he would run away, again and again, no matter how many times someone found him and brought him back home...’ He took a sobbing breath.

‘...because of the Talk of the Tooks, and not any failing on his parents’ part,’ Ferdi said urgently, rising and crossing to Pippin and taking him by the arm. ‘But we settled all that!’

Pippin shook his head. ‘You made a bargain with him, that you’d stay with him for a week in the Woody End, and if he said not a word to the hobbits sheltering you, you’d take him on to Gondor. And I nearly banished you for that! For I would not listen to the rest of the bargain: that if he spoke, even one word, he was bound to give up his plans to run away to Gondor but would return to the Tookland and not trouble his parents any more... as if he troubled us in the first place!’

‘It was all the Talk of the Tooks,’ Ferdi repeated.

‘And you claimed that if Farry had triumphed in your bargain with him, obliging you to take him to Gondor, or at least to set out on the journey... you claimed that you’d have sent for me, to let me know, that I might follow you and catch up to you and my son... to try to heal the hurt that had driven him to seek after such a desperate solution.’

‘And we didn’t believe you,’ Merry said. ‘I am at as much fault as Pippin, here, for that.’

‘And for your loyalty and service, for your trying to talk sense into my stubborn, hurting son, you’d have been rewarded with banishment from the Shire, you and Tolibold together!’

‘But it was your “stubborn, hurting” son who saved us in the end,’ Ferdi said quietly. ‘For he spoke the truth and cleared us from the charges of being in league with child-stealing ruffians.’

‘That is not the point!’ Pippin shouted, stunning his older cousins all over again. With obvious difficulty, he took hold of himself. ‘If he ran away to Gondor by himself, when he was only ten...’

‘I doubt he’d do the same now,’ Merry said. ‘He’s learned much since then of the ways of the world. After all, while he was still only ten, and not all that long after he was persuaded that running away was no solution to any childish problems, he was thrown into the company of evil Men. I doubt he’s forgotten...’

‘No!’ Pippin said, slicing his hand through the air to cut off Merry’s thought. ‘But I cannot shake the fear that, should I forbid him this journey, he would see fit to gather companions – a cousin or two, perhaps a gardener of his acquaintance – and set off on a misguided Quest of some sort.’

He looked helplessly at his older cousins and finished, simply, ‘He is a stubborn Took.’

‘And a fool of one,’ Ferdi said, shaken. He knew Tookish stubbornness all too well, having lived with it all his life. Some Tooks outgrew this quality with time and weathering. Some did not. He had great hopes for Faramir, but the lad had some way to go, so far as Ferdibrand could see. And even as the stubbornness of Tooks was so well known as to be legend amongst the Shire-folk, Fool of a Took was a byword in the Tookland.

‘Just as his father before him,’ Merry said, ‘as Gandalf observed, and more than once, as I recall.’

‘Comfort me not with wizards!’ Pippin said bitterly. ‘Or fools, for that matter. What ever am I to say to Diamond? Much less Strider?’ 

*** 

Author’s notes: More details about Faramir’s attempt to run away to Gondor and the repercussions of that decision, as well as other incidents mentioned here, can be found in the following stories: Runaway (co-author JoDancingTree), A Matter of Appearances, One Who Sticks Closer than a Brother and The Thrum of Tookish Bowstrings, Part 1.

‘Comfort me not with wizards!’ was spoken by Denethor in “The Siege of Gondor” in The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien, when Pippin tried to reason with him during the dark hours as they watched over a stricken Faramir.

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