Chapter 6. At the Sign of the Prancing Pony

~ in Bree, the day after Midyear’s Day ~ 

Ferdi had to admit that the beer here at The Prancing Pony in Bree was passable. More than passable. Perhaps Gandalf’s blessing, as Pippin – or was it Merry? – had recounted, had persisted, long after the Wizard himself had sailed away on an Elven ship, leaving Middle-earth behind him forever. 

He shuddered at the thought of it – sailing away on a ship. What madness! 

‘I do hope you’re not taking cold, cousin,’ Pippin said helpfully, and he laughed as Ferdi glared at him in response. ‘If you are to leave on schedule, that would be on the morrow. In the morning.’  

The two of them were the only remaining wakeful members of the party of Shire-folk staying at The Prancing Pony, all of whom would be departing in the morning, some returning to the Shire and others bound to travel somewhat farther, according to the plans made earlier. Everyone else had sought their pillows, even the Thain's escort, whom Pippin had ordered to bed an hour or two ago, stating that he didn’t see “any need for escorting until after the Sun kicks off her bedcovers, at the very earliest”. 

‘I’m quite aware of that,’ Ferdi said. ‘At ten o’ the clock, I do believe, if we are to be precise about the matter.’ 

‘My son is quite a stickler for detail,’ Pippin said, leaning back in his chair in front of a crackling fire in the private parlour old Butterbur had set aside for the visiting hobbits. He sipped appreciatively at his beer, then stared a moment at the bubbles rising in his glass before adding, ‘It will stand him in good stead when he’s Thain after me.’ 

‘Should he survive to become Thain,’ Ferdi said acidly. ‘He has perhaps the most unhobbity taste for adventure of anyone I know.’ He took a swallow from his own glass – ah, but he was going to miss this sort of thing, sitting at his ease in a chair by a fireside, relaxing, sipping a mug, unconcerned by nightly noises happening outside the circle of firelight. ‘Present company included,’ he added. 

Pippin said with a chuckle, ‘Don’t sell yourself short, cousin,’ then threw back his head and laughed. At last, he wiped his mouth and said, ‘I fear we have been a bad influence on the lad... Merry and I – and Gimli, and Legolas—’ 

‘Don’t forget that ruffian King of yours,’ Ferdi put in. ‘And I’m glad to hear you’ve left Mayor Sam out of it altogether. He probably has more sense in his little finger than all the rest of the remaining Nine Walkers, put together.’ He sipped contemplatively but put his glass down at the sudden thought that occurred to him. ‘That lad...’ 

‘Yes?’ Pippin said, eyes alight with curiosity and, it must be admitted, amusement. 

‘That stickler for detail, as you so eloquently put it,’ Ferdi continued. He cocked a suspicious eye at his cousin. ‘He’s not hired old Butterbur and his workers to rouse a clamour in the night, to waken us from the last good sleep in a bed I expect to be able to enjoy, at least until we reach Imlad—, er, Rivendell (these Outlandish Elvish names!), all in the name of authenticity!’ 

He picked up his glass once more and stared gloomily into its depths as he waited for Pippin to stop laughing again. 

At last, sobering, the Thain shook his head. ‘Authenticity,’ he said ruefully. ‘Perhaps you'll be glad to know, cousin, that – although cousin Frodo dreamed of galloping hoofs and the wind shaking the inn, Butterbur said the next morning that he hadn’t heard a thing. Not a single sound.’ He sighed and muttered under his breath, ‘Authenticity.’

‘Indeed,’ Ferdi said. ‘I’m beginning to detest the very sound of the word. Can you not ban its use from the Tookland, at the very least, as a personal favour to me? For I’m sure I’ll have no patience with hearing the word after we return – if we return, that is!’ And he fixed his younger cousin, Thain or no Thain, with a jaundiced eye. 

‘Ferdi...’ 

‘Why, if I hear someone say the word to my face, I’ll be tempted to flatten his nose for him, and you’ll have no choice but to put me on water rations for the rest of the day. What sort of justice would that be, after all I must suffer in the upcoming weeks?’ 

‘Indeed,’ Pippin said, and topped off both their glasses from the half-filled pitcher of beer on the table between them. 

The minutes passed all too quickly, and Ferdi could scarcely credit it when the dwarf-made clock in the parlour struck midnight, but there it was. And somehow the pitcher had been emptied of beer. He sipped as slowly as he might to make the most of the last of the beer in his glass. 

At the corner of his eye, he saw his cousin upend his own glass to savour the last drops and then set it down beside the empty pitcher. ‘Well then, cousin,’ Pippin said awkwardly, and Ferdi turned towards him, politely attentive. ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ 

‘Tomorrow is upon us even now,’ Ferdi countered. ‘Though it seemed as if Farry and Pippin-lad would never fall asleep for excitement, they actually did fall asleep some hours ago, according to Robbie.’ And no doubt young-but-sensible Robin Bolger had sought his pillow not long after. Ferdi had persuaded Pippin to add him to the party for his sense as well as his good influence over Faramir; he was one of few hobbits Faramir might listen to when one of the lad’s stubborn fits took hold of him. 

‘I suppose we ought to do the same,’ Pippin said, quite as if he were as reluctant as Ferdi to recognise the ending of this day and the beginning of the next, with its anticipated partings. 

‘I suppose we ought,’ Ferdi echoed. ‘Lest that kinsman of Elessar’s should take it into his head to come by and scold us into our beds.’ He shook his head. ‘And it would be too much to hope, I suspect, for him to leave in the morning without us.’ He looked over at his younger cousin and clarified, ‘Faramir and myself, that is. Though he’d have a much easier time of it shepherding just young Pippin-lad and Robin all along the journey without the complication of keeping two stubborn Tooks in line.’ 

‘I’d imagine he’s asleep, himself, seeing as it’s his last night for some time in a bed, snug inside four walls and a roof over his head,’ Pippin said, stretching his arms high in the air before rising from his chair. ‘If he’s anything like the other Rangers of my acquaintance, he’ll scarcely sleep whilst traipsing across the Wilderlands.’ 

‘Is that supposed to be reassuring?’ Ferdi said sourly. He drained the dregs in his glass, placed the glass carefully on the table (he’d had rather more to drink this evening than was his usual custom), and stood to his own feet. Turning to face his cousin, he said, ‘In other words, you’re telling me his senses will be dulled from lack of sleep. What sort of bodyguard can he be under such circumstances, I ask you!’ 

‘He is to serve as guide, not bodyguard,’ Pippin answered, suddenly stern. Fixing Ferdi with his gaze, he added, ‘He has sworn no oath to defend the Thain and his family... nor even an oath to the Ring-bearer to save him by life or death as Strider promised my cousin Frodo a lifetime ago.’ 

Shaken, Ferdi said, ‘I—’ 

‘Indeed,’ Pippin said implacably. ‘But, you. You have sworn such an oath, as I do not need to remind you.’ 

Ferdi bowed his head. ‘If that is how it is to be...’ he fumbled. He felt Pippin’s hand come to rest on his shoulder. 

‘That is how it must be,’ the Thain said. ‘I am counting on you – your good sense, your skills, your talents and instincts – to bring my precious son safely through. 

‘Even as Strider guided us through the Wilderlands, half my lifetime ago, I had no illusions,’ Pippin added more quietly, with a squeeze for Ferdi’s shoulder. ‘He persuaded us to take him on in order to safeguard Frodo and what my cousin carried – certainly not me, nor Merry, nor Sam. O, I was fairly certain the Man would do what he could for the rest of us should danger come upon us, but as Merry and I knew full well, Frodo was his chief concern, at least until the Breaking of the Fellowship happened. He took the decision to save Merry and me from the dreadful Orcs that had captured us only after realising the fate of the Bearer was no longer in his hands. Had he determined, instead, that his duty was to search for Frodo in the wilderness, then guide my unfortunate cousin to Mordor, Merry and I would have been abandoned to torment and death.’ 

Ferdi raised his head to meet his cousin’s steady, sombre gaze. Pippin looked long and searchingly into his eyes, then nodded. 

‘You understand now, I think,’ he said. ‘Elessar has charged his kinsman to guide the New Fellowship through the Wilderness all the way to the White City, yet my own son has tied Haldoron’s hands – or hobbled him, in a manner of speaking. Though the King has alerted his outposts to watch out for us along the way, provide resupply and an occasional well-guarded place to sleep, your guide will not have the benefit of a full complement of Guardsmen travelling along with you all in order to vouchsafe the Party’s well-being. Should any ruffians seeking after the Thain’s gold catch a whiff of it...’ Pippin dropped his eyes and shuddered, then looked up again and continued, ‘By my own son’s insistence, you’ll have to walk softly, trying to escape all notice, whether curious or malicious – thus ironically making the journey more “authentic” into the bargain.’ 

‘That ought to warm the cockles of Farry’s heart,’ Ferdi said with a wry grimace. 

‘I’m sure he’ll be gratified – should he survive the journey,’ Pippin said. He was not joking this time, as Ferdi thought at first. In point of fact, he was deadly serious about the matter, the older cousin realised belatedly, as the Thain continued,  ‘I am counting on you to bring my much-beloved son safely there and back again. In other words, in order to better guarantee the outcome, I am making you, not Haldoron, responsible for his safety.’ 

‘The Wilderlands are not so wild as they were half your lifetime ago,’ Ferdi said, at the same time wondering in the back of his mind whether he was trying more to reassure Pippin or himself. ‘The King’s paths through his lands have been cleared and made straight again, and he has established guardposts along the way. Not to mention the extent to which so much of the formerly forsaken and empty land has been settled since the War ended...’ 

‘In the very midst of the quiet, well-guarded Shire,’ Pippin said low, his eyes suddenly intense. ‘Rogue Men captured my precious son whilst inside – not just the Bounds of the Shire, but the bounds of the Tookland, deep in the Shire.’ He broke his gaze away then, staring fiercely into the dying fire on the hearth. ‘That is the only reason I have granted him permission to make this journey.’ 

‘I don’t understand, cousin,’ Ferdi said humbly, his head a-whirl from the evident contradiction his cousin had just presented him, and that on top of the beer he had recently quaffed. 

‘There is no guarantee of safety for my son anywhere in Middle Earth,’ Pippin said, ‘much less in the Shire. To wrap Farry up in cotton wool, to lock him away, deep inside the Shire, would be his ruin, and to what end—?’ He swallowed hard. ‘For I cannot keep him safe – and no one really can, not even deep inside the Bounds of the Shire.’ 

Ferdibrand himself, riding as escort to the young son of the Thain some years earlier, had been struck down and left for dead by the very rogues who had seized little Farry and threatened unthinkable harm to the child, hoping to move the Thain and the Tooks to their will in their greed for the gold the Thain was rumoured to hold. Fortunately, Ferdi had survived and even recovered from his injuries, and Faramir had been rescued, though it had been a near thing. Had the Muster been delayed even a handful of moments in tracking the ruffians to their hiding place, Pippin and Merry and the Tookish archers with them would have come too late to save the tiny lad from death – or worse. 

‘Pip, I—’ Ferdi said, then stopped, at a loss for words. 

‘What sort of life would that be? What sort of Thain would he become?’ Pippin persisted. ‘Why, I’d be as bad as Mistress Lalia – worse, even – who tried her best to protect her precious son, and ruined him instead.’ 

Ferdi nodded in spite of unspoken but rigid Shire tradition to honour the dead and avoid speaking ill of anyone after their passing. 

‘And so, Ferdi, with no illusions, and fully realising the enormity of the task I lay upon you, I ask you to do your best to bring my son safely through,’ Pippin said solemnly. 

‘I will do my best,’ Ferdi said. 

‘I know that you will,’ Pippin said, and finally released him with a clout on his shoulder. In a complete change of mood that signaled the end of serious discussion, he added, ‘But what are you doing, staying up so late when you know you are to be off soon after breakfast!’  

‘Is it so very late?’ Ferdi said, shaking off the solemn moment that had just passed by affecting astonishment. ‘Why, I must have lost track of the time!’ 

‘Indeed!’ Pippin said in his Thainliest tones. ‘Now be off with you!’ 

After sending Ferdibrand off to his rest, Pippin did not follow suit. Instead, he sank into the chair before the hearth, stirred up the fire, added another log, and stared, brooding, into the flames. Long did he sit there, adding another stick or two of wood whenever the fire began to falter, until the dark behind the windows began to lighten, heralding the approach of dawn. 

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A/N: Some turns of phrase may have been borrowed from the chapters “Strider”  and “A Knife in the Dark” in Fellowship of the Ring and “The Departure of Boromir” in The Two Towers.   

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