Chapter 8 - Return to Brandy Hall
28 Rethe
Pippin, usually a heavy sleeper, woke several times during the night, thinking he heard something. Each time he woke he found the camps silent as the grave. A few times he saw that Merry was awake also, laying still and looking up at the stars, his expression unreadable. Pippin wondered what this mystery would do to Merry’s plans. Pippin would follow Merry no matter what his friend decided to do, but he hoped they would return to the Hall first. He at least still hoped to find Frodo there upon their return.
The mood the next morning was reserved and subdued. Everyone was tired and if Merry and Pippin had little sleep, Saradoc had got none. He was gone all night and did not return until the predawn hours. He called the wake up, then said no more as everyone readied for the return journey.
The lads cooked while Milo, Porto and Marmadas sought out the elders of the other camps to gather what news they could. Whatever they learned, they did not share with the lads upon their return. They did speak amongst themselves in muted whispers, but they were careful not to say anything where Merry or Pippin might overhear them.
After breakfast, the camps were packed up one final time and everyone filed onto the road as the still-hidden sun began to lighten the horizon. Brandy Hall was only fifteen miles from Haysend but the majority of them were walking and exhausted. Saradoc drove the lead cart and he set a slow pace. While he wished to return to the Hall as quickly as possible, he also needed to consider his footsore searchers.
Merry was at a loss as to what to feel. On the one hand, he was frustrated at the delay. They had already wasted four days and this would make five. They had not found Frodo and there had been no messenger waiting for them at Haysend from the northern groups. He did not anticipate meeting a messenger upon the Road, and the news when they returned to the Hall would be the same as their own: nothing. He and Pippin should be following the Brandywine out of the Shire, looking for their lost friend, for that was the only place they would find him.
On the other hand, his father had learned something last night and Merry wanted to know what it was. Saradoc was keeping close on the news until they returned to Brandy Hall and had clearly given instructions that he and Pippin were not to be told. Therefore, Merry would have to wait until they were home to find out what the nervous hobbit from the night before had said.
He was frustrated that they were not traveling more quickly, for the sooner they reached Brandy Hall, the sooner he and Pippin could leave. Merry figured at best they would only lose another day and be over the bounds by early next morning. There was one advantage to the delay: Pippin. His cousin would at last be appeased that Frodo truly was gone and he would raise no more protests.
They stopped at mid-morning to rest and eat. Merry convinced Berilac to go amongst the other lads and try to get information. Most lads shook their heads and shrugged, confused also about what was going on. One lad though seemed to know something and spoke eagerly, but when Berilac returned, he avoided making eye contact and said he had learned nothing. Merry felt betrayed. If there was one cousin Merry could always depend on, other than Pippin and Frodo, it was Berilac. His last card played, Merry could only wait until they returned home.
They began their march again at half past ten, with just under half the distance remaining. Pippin’s feet ached and he wanted desperately to ride on one of the carts as some of the other young tweens were doing. He stayed next to Merry however, walking so closely their arms almost touched. He was terribly anxious about this news of Saradoc’s. It didn’t help that everyone who knew the news was either avoiding them or lying about what they knew.
His stomach twisted in knots of apprehension as he imagined every possible horrible thing he could think of. Surely, nothing bad had happened? Maybe that hobbit had nothing to do with Frodo. After all, no one had found him, so what could that strange hobbit possibly know? He wouldn’t even know who Frodo was or what he looked like. Pippin focused on these thoughts, trying to convince himself that he was overreacting, as he was prone to do.
But his stomach twisted with nerves again despite himself, and he reached out and took Merry’s hand, momentarily forgetting he was too old for such actions. Merry relaxed just the slightest bit at his cousin’s touch, and he squeezed Pippin’s hand before pulling him close and slipping his arm over Pippin’s shoulders. They walked like this for several minutes before separating again, each to worry in his own way.
At just after one, the outline of Bucklebury came into view on their right, and on their left the large mound of Buck Hill emerged on the horizon. The welcome sight spurred them on even faster and they reached the lane just before three. When they came at last to rest by the stables, a large group of hobbits was there to greet them and more were coming out of the Hall.
Merimac was there, and he embraced Berilac briefly. Berilac was greatly relieved to see his father safely returned from the River and his hug was fierce and long.
Esmeralda came and embraced her family and Pippin, then looked about expectantly. “Well,” she said, “what luck did you have?”
“Have the others returned?” Saradoc asked instead.
“We have,” said a hobbit who Merry recognized as the leader of the Newbury group. The hobbit stepped forward and bowed apologetically. “We found nothing, not a trace nor sign. We were hoping your news would be better.”
Saradoc shook his head. “It is not.”
“What about from across the River?” Milo asked. “If Frodo had returned home, we would know by now, wouldn’t we?”
Merimac shook his head. “It's not very likely that we will hear anything. Seredic returned last night from Crickhollow and according to him, the bounders saw no one upon the Bridge the night of the storm. Frodo did not pass that way. But I did spend out the call. One of the shirriffs even went directly to Hobbiton to spread the word. Should there be news from that way, we'll know as early as tomorrow.”
With that Saradoc ordered the unpacking of the carts, and the crowd went to work. Pippin tried to help, but soon gave up and slumped to the ground, exhausted and weary with despair. Merry was at his side immediately. He hated to see Pippin disappointed and was secretly disappointed himself. Deep down, Merry had hoped to be proven wrong and that Frodo would be standing outside waiting for them when they returned.
Merry held Pippin close. “Tonight,” he whispered, “we’ll go tonight. We’ll find him.” Pippin nodded, and clung to Merry and to hope.
Esmeralda came to them then and motioned for Merry to follow her. He stood up and lifted Pippin to his feet. They trailed Esmeralda to the dining hall, where all the searchers would gather once the carts were unloaded. They both sat at a random table and waited in exhausted silence. Before long, the others were filing into the hall and sitting down around them.
Servants came out and served them a late tea and early dinner. As they ate, the leaders of the northern groups recounted their searches, all of them uneventful. Then Saradoc and the other southbound companies related their own journeys. Merry and Pippin listened attentively when Greenbanks began to talk, but no explanation or mention of the nervous hobbit was given. ‘See, it wasn’t really about Frodo after all,’ Pippin thought, but the tight knot of unease in his stomach did not go away.
Saradoc thanked everyone for their efforts, which they accepted with heavy hearts. He adjourned the meeting and everyone slowly filed out of the hall. Only Merimac did not get up just yet. He was waiting for his brother. Saradoc wanted to speak with him privately in his family’s apartment; Esmeralda was there already. Before the brothers left, Saradoc turned to his son and nephew.
“Go with Pippin to his room, Merry, and wait there until I call for you,” he said. The brothers left, the door closing with a dull thud behind them.
“He’d said he didn’t want to waste my time,” Esmeralda sniffed. She was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, her tears for the moment spent. Why did they not see this sooner? How could they be so blind? Saradoc sat with his arm around his wife’s shoulders, his own eyes moist with unshed tears.
“Explain it again,” Merimac said, in disbelief still. He had been so certain on his assessment of Frodo’s motives. He was beginning to realize how terribly wrong he had been. While before he had regretted his lack of hope, he now wished that he had been correct, that all Frodo had done was leave the Shire in search of Bilbo and adventure. What his brother was telling them was so much worse than he could ever have imagined.
“The miller was certain?” Merimac asked. “There’s no way he could have been mistaken?”
Saradoc shook his head. “He knew things he could not have unless he had seen Frodo.”
“Merry and Pippin do not know yet? Do they suspect?”
“They suspect something, I am certain, but they do not know anything. How do I tell them?” Saradoc asked. Never before had he faced a task so difficult. He was not certain he could get through it without breaking down entirely. Merry will be furious, he’ll refuse to believe at first. Pippin will be heartbroken. They would have to get him home to his family as soon as possible. He turned to his wife. “Maybe we should wait until your brother can get here, dearest. Or at least until tomorrow. Maybe word will come yet from Hobbiton.”
“It will come late if it comes at all,” Merimac said.
Esmeralda stood up and gathered herself together. “And Paladin may not even be on his way; I did not beckon him to come,” she said. “We cannot wait to tell them. They’ll hear it from someone else before long.” She placed her hand under her husband’s chin and lifted his face to hers. “And you will tell them the same way you told us. There is a strength in weakness, my husband. They will need you to be strong, but they need to see you weep as well when the time is right. I will get them now.”
Saradoc nodded. There was no preparing for this anyway. He squared his shoulders for the task ahead and took a deep, steadying breath. He would be strong long enough to make them understand. Then he will let the chips fall where they may.
Merry and Pippin entered the guest room. They noticed immediately that someone had been through to clean it. Everything was back in order. The beds were made, the candles replaced, and the ink stain on the desk and floor nearly completely scrubbed clean. Merry opened the wardrobe and looked inside.
“Is everything here?” he asked.
Pippin came and grabbed the traveling packs. He placed them upon the bed and went through them. “All the cooking gear is, and the sleeping rolls.” He looked at the clothes Merry was slowly pawing through. “That could be all his clothes. He didn’t bring that much, just a few day’s worth.”
“That’s odd,” Merry said, stopping his search.
“I know. Usually he brings an entire wardrobe of his own.”
“No,” Merry said shaking his head. “Well, I mean, yes, that is odd he would bring so few changes of clothes with him, but that isn’t what I meant.” He pulled something out of the wardrobe and held it up for his friend to see. “His traveling cloak. He never goes anywhere without this, not even to Tookland. Why would he leave this behind?”
Pippin shrugged, surprised by Merry’s find. Bilbo had given that cloak to Frodo on his coming of age. Frodo cherished it and could always be seen with it whenever he was more than a day’s walk from Bag End. He had even interrupted Sam in the garden to find out where it was. Pippin ran his hand along the smooth red velvet, his fear redoubled.
“He hadn’t meant to leave then,” Pippin said uncertainly. “That’s the only reason he would leave it, right? But then why would he leave if he didn’t mean to?”
Merry was at a loss. He had been trying to answer a similar question several times over the last four days and still he had no answers other than the ones Berilac had supplied. Now that they were home and able to assess the scene anew, even that theory came short. “It makes no sense,” he said. He sat down next to the packs with the cloak held firmly in his grasp and, for what seemed like the hundredth time, went over everything that had happened since Frodo’s arrival. There had to be some sort of clue there somewhere that would reveal to them their friend’s mind.
Pippin sat down on the other side of the packs and sighed. “He did say he had ways of disappearing we couldn’t possibly imagine. He wasn’t joking after all.”
“What?” Merry asked, more sharply than he intended. Pippin jumped at his tone, but Merry ignored him and stood up again, the cloak falling to the floor as Merry suddenly realized something. Why did he not think of it before? The ring. “Of course! That’s it!” he exclaimed, not noticing Pippin’s confusion as he began to pace back and forth excitedly.
Bilbo had given Frodo his magic ring. Merry knew this perfectly well, as he had been there, hiding in the pantry, when Gandalf showed up and started talking gibberish about how Frodo needed to be careful with it. If Frodo had been wearing the ring, they could have walked right past him and never have known it. Still, this didn’t answer the question why Frodo would leave in the first place, unless Merimac had been right after all. In his desperate hope, Merry told himself this made sense, even as his eyes fell again upon the beloved cloak lying dejectedly on the floor, and the half-full packs sitting on the bed. The packs.
“We already have everything we need,” he said. “I’ll take Frodo’s pack, you take yours. I’ll get provisions from the kitchens and see to the packing of the ponies. We can leave as soon as night falls. Father will never agree, so we’ll leave him a letter explaining everything. If we go quickly, we can be long out of the Shire before they wake up and find us gone.”
“He’ll come after us, and he’ll be upset,” Pippin reasoned, still at a loss as to what had Merry so excited.
Merry nodded, thinking quickly. If only there was some way they could leave where they would be guaranteed no one would follow. There was the Old Forest, but that would do them no good, as they needed to go south first. They would simply have to travel as quickly as they could and hope that no one caught up with them.
That was the least of his worries though. His main concern was that he had no real idea where they would go once they crossed the bounds. He had said east, and he did feel that was the best way to go. But, how far east would they have to travel? And what exactly lay to the east of the Shire anyway? There was Bree, but that was north on the East Road. From Bilbo’s stories, he also knew that Rivendell lay at the end of the East Road, and the Misty Mountains, Mirkwood, Lake Town, Dale and the Lonely Mountain all east of there somewhere. He realized now just how little that would help them. For the first time, Merry wished he had paid more attention to Bilbo’s maps when he visited Bag End. Bilbo’s were the only ones that didn’t show a vast white nothingness beyond the borders of the Shire.
“Gold and silver,” Pippin said suddenly. He stood up from his bed and walked across the room. Merry watched him questioningly as he opened the box of rocks Frodo had given them a week earlier. The box was sitting on the chest at the foot of Frodo’s bed and had previously gone unnoticed by them. Pippin picked up a rock of a deep red-brown color and examined it. “One side could have the bases encased in gold and the other in silver.”
Despite himself, Merry smiled. He went to his cousin’s side and picked up another of the rocks, this one a cloudy bluish-grey. “That would be one way to do it, and I bet your cousin Ferdibrand could shape them for us,” he said, then frowned as another uncomfortable thought intruded in his mind. “Why would he give these to us now?”
Pippin shrugged, once again forlorn. “You said they were a parting gift, to remember him by,” he reminded, his voice small and uncertain. He fidgeted impatiently with the rock he held. What was taking so long? Pippin slipped Merry’s pocket watch from his cousin’s waistcoat and looked at the time. 3:30. “Maybe they forgot about us?” he said.
Yet just as he said that, a loud, single knock sounded on the door and Esmeralda entered. She looked tired and pale, and her eyes were red with dried tears.
“Are you feeling well, Mother?” Merry asked with concern.
She nodded. “As well as I can be. Come along you two. The Master is waiting for you.”
The Master. Merry gulped and followed her reluctantly. Only once before had his mother addressed his father to him in that way, and that had been after Merry and Pippin nearly injured someone with one of their pranks. Pippin followed closely behind Merry, dreading what was about to come. All indications promised nothing but bad news.
When they reached the apartment, Esmeralda opened the door to let Merry and Pippin enter first. They stepped into the room to find Merimac and Saradoc sitting gravely on the settee. Saradoc fixed them with a conflicted, doubting expression. The Master took a deep breath and stood up as he motioned for them to sit down. When they didn’t move right away, Esmeralda nudged them gently from behind and steered them to the settee. The two friends sat and waited, hardly breathing for their fear. Esmeralda and Merimac came to sit beside them and give what support they could. They waited for the Master to speak.
Saradoc paced back and forth. How could he say this to his son? To Pippin? Yet the longer he waited, the harder it would be, on him and the lads. It was best to get it over with. Keeping this in mind, he rooted himself in front of the settee and looked at the two young lads before him with sad eyes.
“I have something to tell you both that will not be easy for you to hear and even more difficult to understand,” he started at last, relieved that his voice was staying steady for all that it wanted to quaver. “As you know, Greenbanks’s company searched the area east of the River and west of the Road. Theirs was the smallest to search, and was made even smaller by the rising of the river. As such, they were the first to arrive at Haysend, and they decided to search the town. Only when Greenbanks arrived at the inn to announce their arrival, they found someone already waiting for them.
“The hobbit was a miller who lives near the River and his home was flooded in the storm. He was staying in town until his home could be repaired and he had heard about our news from the bounders. He knew we would be reaching town by that day or the next, and he was desperate to speak to us.
“He told Greenbanks that he was evacuating his wife and children on the last night of the storm. Some debris had crashed into the wall of the mill and water had begun to spill inside. He was helping his family into a cart, when some movement caught the corner of his eye. He turned his head and no more than a few hundred yards away, at the edge of a small wood that came up to the very edge of the River, stood a hobbit. It was Frodo.
“The miller described him perfectly: average height, thin, pale and with dark hair. He described his clothing: a formal dining suit, dark red in color, with a white flower in the lapel. The miller called out to him and went to see what was the matter. He had not heard of our news at this point and thought this to be one of the hobbits from town, though he did not recognize him. However, before he could get more than a few feet, Frodo turned around, back towards the road. He gave no indication of seeing the miller.”
Here Saradoc paused. He cleared his throat, wet his lips and seemed unable to continue. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, seeking for a strength he did not feel. Resolving himself to continue without strength, he looked up and his eyes were red with unshed tears. When he started speaking again, he voice was hoarse and quiet, and he had to speak carefully to keep from choking on the words.
“What happened next went by too quickly for the miller to help. He was too far away. He said that Frodo smiled and stepped back into the River. By this time the river was high and the current strong. When Frodo at last broke through the surface, he was already nearly out of sight. The miller thought he might still be able to help if he drove the cart along the River and watched for a place he could attempt to grab hold of Frodo, but then he heard a monstrous noise and barely got away from the water in time to escape the flash flood.
“He followed the River to the bounds, but there was no hope of finding Frodo. The flood was too great, too powerful and too fast. No one could have survived it. I am sorry.”
Silence followed Saradoc’s statement. Merry and Pippin sat in shock, too stunned to do anything but stare at Saradoc in disbelief. Then Pippin began to shake his head and couldn’t stop. “No,” he said, his voice choked and fragile. “No. No no no no no.” He sobbed and tears spilled down his face. Esmeralda embraced him fiercely and cradled his head as she cooed soft nothings in his ear.
Merry’s brow was furrowed and his expression became grim with anger. All these stories. All these rumors and guesses and theories. He’d had enough. “You’re lying,” he spat. He stood up with his fists clenched tight. “That miller was lying.”
“Merry,” Merimac began.
Merry turned on him. “Don’t say it,” he warned. “You had already given up on Frodo anyway. I know; Berry told me since none of you could find the courage to do it yourselves.” Pippin lifted his head from his aunt’s lap and watched his enraged cousin stare down their uncle. It did not encourage him to see his ever-steady Merry falling apart and his despair doubled.
“Merry,” Saradoc said gently, “he wasn’t lying. He saw Frodo.”
“It wasn’t him,” Merry insisted. “It was someone else. How could he know? How could you be so sure he’s right about what he saw?”
“He knew what Frodo was wearing. Mac never gave that information to Seredic. There was no way the bounders could know to pass that along.”
“No!” Merry exclaimed. “He’s lying. He has to be. Frodo wouldn’t step into the river. That’s absurd! How could you even believe he would do such a thing? Why would he? It makes no sense. You just don’t want to look for him anymore. You just want to give up!” he accused, heedless of the tears now streaming down his face. He faced his father and uncle, his expression full of wrath. “Well I’m not giving up. I’m going to find Frodo and none of you can stop me.” His bottom lip wavered and a sob escaped his lips. “I will find him. I’ll bring him home and he’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. He will be fine. … Dad.”
Saradoc was at Merry’s side in an instant and sat him upon the settee before his legs could give out from beneath him. He held his son fiercely as Merry sobbed ceaselessly, and at last let his own tears fall.
Merimac stood and removed from the hearth the tea the healer had brought while Esmeralda had been fetching the lads. The tea would soothe their wearied nerves and help them all to sleep. He poured out the tea into five cups, then sat at the table and placed his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
End of Part II
To be continued…