Aftermath

39. Aftermath

Even as he saw the sparks fly up from the partial collapse of the stable roof, followed by a whoosh of flame that made him think of Frodo's description of the Fiery Mountain after the Ring met its doom, Saradoc seized his brother's sleeve. The smoke-blackened face turned to him, eyes wide with horror, and then Merimac gestured helplessly to the raging inferno that was all to be seen through the stable doors.

But Saradoc, who had clung determinedly to the belief that his son was alive, all those months after the Travellers disappeared into the Old Forest, throughout that agonising stretch of time before he saw Merry's face once more under a knight's helm, changed and yet so much the same, refused to give in to despair. He would not believe his son was gone until fate forced him to look upon Merry's remains. 'He might have got out the side,' the Master gasped. 'He was moving back as the loft fell in.'

Merimac straightened as if his brother had infused him with new hope. He slapped Saradoc's arm and immediately called to the nearest hobbits, Merimas, Meliloc and Berilac, to follow him. He led the little group of rescuers at a run around the side of the building. 

Great flames were still shooting high into the night sky on the near side of the building. Saradoc felt a hand on his arm and turned to see old Ossilan, the Hall's head healer. 'I'm all right,' he said in response to Ossilan's unspoken query. 'See to the injured.' He indicated the hobbits whose burning clothes had been smothered in blankets and snow, and then his nephew who sagged between two cousins, having been lifted off of Estella. Two more had then lifted up Estella off the stones but still held her fast, just in case the madness should seize her once more. Together, the three stood rigid and silent, staring into the flames.

Ossilan nodded and moved to the snowbank where the injured hobbits lay, some moaning and some ominously still. Saradoc saw him look up and say something to the hobbits holding Pippin. Although his nephew resisted them with the little strength remaining to him, they bodily turned him away from the fire and firmly escorted him towards the light spilling from the entrance to Brandy Hall.

In his mind, Saradoc followed his brother to the side of the building. In his imagination, he pulled open the door, felt a blast of heat, and then ducked under the smoke to search for a green-cloaked figure. How long would it take the would-be rescuers to find Merry? 

He tried to stave off his awareness of another possibility that threatened to take over his thoughts. How long would it be before the flames brought down the rest of the loft on son and searchers? With every passing moment, the feeling grew stronger that he'd sent his brother and nephew and young cousins to their deaths in a futile effort. How long did they have? How much grace could a Hobbit hope for?

Minutes stretched uncounted. A great shower of sparks went up as the rest of the roof fell in. As the hungry flames licked at the sky, Saradoc slumped and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. Had he doomed four more in a fruitless quest to find his son?

He heard Estella cry out, and opened his eyes to the sight of four staggering, blackened figures, carrying something between them. He stumbled forward to meet them, to see them more clearly in the smoky air, and saw that their hands were clutching the edges of a cloak, and the cloak was wrapped around his son! They stopped and, seeming close to collapse on the part of all of them, lowered Merry to the frozen stones.

Estella broke from the two hobbits who held her and ran the few short steps to Merry and his rescuers. Saradoc was close behind as she fell upon Merry and grasped him and the enveloping cloak, weeping wildly. 

Merry looked up at his father, choked, fought for air, and somehow managed to gasp, 'Get her away...!'

Saradoc did not understand. He fell to his knees beside his son. 'My boy...'

Merry, anguished, tried again, 'Don't let her see... get her away...'

And then Saradoc suddenly remembered a conversation, somehow dim and seemingly long ago in his mind, Estella saying blithely, I remember everything I see. Most of the time it is a blessing. I can close my eyes, and see Frodo as if he were standing here before me.

He nodded to his son, pushed himself upright again, and reached down to take Estella by the arm. 'Come, lass,' he said in the most persuasive tone he could muster. 'Come away,' he said, a little stronger when she resisted his pull. 'He has the right of it.'

'No!'

'Estella!' he snapped, and at such an unaccustomed tone coming from him, she looked at him. He took full advantage of her attention, saying urgently, 'You're hurting him, staying.' He saw denial spring to her eyes, and she shook her head at him and tried to look away again, but he gave her arm a yank, demanding her attention, and insisted, 'You'll help him more if you'll go into the Hall.' 

Perhaps an appeal might move her? 'I need you...' Saradoc said. He coughed shallowly and tried again. 'I need you to find the Mistress, tell her what's happened.'

Confusion replaced defiance, to be replaced in turn by dawning understanding even as she tried to reject the situation and the urgings of the other hobbits around her – and finally, her shoulders stiff with resistance, she turned back to Merry. 

But his eyes never left her as he whispered, 'Please, love, please go...'

And suddenly, Saradoc saw all resistance go out of Estella. She stopped fighting the others, and a flood of tears began to spill from her eyes. Covering her face, she allowed herself to be led away, even as Merry's eyes closed and his smoke-blackened face went still and slack.  

Healer Ossilan was suddenly there beside them, briefly grasping Saradoc's arm and then moving hurriedly to Merry's side. The old hobbit bent over the Master's stricken son and then straightened almost at once. His eyes met Saradoc's as he said briskly, 'Still with us. Let's get him in out of the cold.' 

But the healer was not done. He motioned sharply towards Merimac and the other rescuers, all of whom were doubled over, coughing violently and gasping, trying desperately to take in air. 'You, too,' he said to them, though it was unlikely they heard him. 'Into the Hall! Away from the smoke... you've breathed too much of the stuff... and you're burned into the bargain...'

When it became obvious that the rescuers could no longer help themselves, much less anyone else, the old healer raised his voice, calling and gesturing to nearby able-bodied hobbits to help them towards the Hall. Others, he directed with sharp, rapidly spoken orders to take up Merry's cloak and carry him inside. 'Don't try and touch him!' he snapped. 'By the cloak, I said!'

Even as he watched the newly recruited bearers carefully grasp handfuls of cloak and lift Merry between them, Saradoc stood unmoving, frozen by the horror of it all, by his fears for his son, by his grief at the devastating loss playing out all around them. There were things that needed doing, matters that needed the Master's attention, but he couldn't seem to make his mind or his body obey him. 

Without warning, another part of the stable roof fell in, pouring more air into the devouring fire, such that it roared as loud as an angry dragon might, to the Master's imagining, as the sparks flew high, followed by flames that climbed into the sky as if to defy the buckets of water thrown in its direction. Indeed, the windborne water turned to clouds of steam that seemed impotent in the face of the raging inferno. In turn, Saradoc numbly watched the steam floating on the air and freezing into tiny ice droplets, sparkling briefly mid-air before the wind dispersed them. As frozen as the Master himself...

Saradoc became aware that Ossilan held him by the arm, partly in support and partly in an effort to turn him away from the sight of the burning stables. In all probability, his intent was to get Saradoc out of the freezing yard altogether, and into the warm Hall, and onto a bench or chair or, preferably, a bed.

But as if released from an evil spell by the falling in of a major part of the stable roof, seeing the sparks mounting high, the flames taking hold with growing vigour, Saradoc shook himself. 'I am well,' he told the hovering healer. Getting no response, he repeated himself, raising his voice to a shout, that he might be heard above the noise of the flames, the hissing of water changed in an instant to steam, the shouts of the hobbits who were doing all they could to keep the fire from spreading to other buildings.  

He pushed at the old healer standing stubbornly by his side, as if Ossilan thought Saradoc needed his services more than the rest of the poor wretches being helped, staggering, or carried across the courtyard to the wide-gaping main doors of the Hall, outlined in bright light that spilled onto the frost-glazed stones of the courtyard.

Nonsense! the Master thought with some of his old vigour. 'Go!' he ordered. 'I'll be right behind you.' He turned away from the burning building and waved a hand behind them, not looking back at the unfolding disaster. 'Naught more that I can do here.' 

It helped that he could hear the Steward shouting orders that other hobbits echoed, lending the impression of an organised battle in the midst of confusion and chaos. It sounded to the Master as if Carodoc had things well in hand. They were letting the stables burn, now – as if there were any way to save the building or any of the doomed ponies still within. The firefighters were working together in a concerted effort to keep the flying sparks from taking root in any of the other outbuildings. Of a mercy, the light snow covering the fields ought to be more or less protection from the further spread of the conflagration, despite the gusts of bitter wind that fanned the flames.

Bemused, Saradoc stared at the whirling snowflakes that had resumed while he'd been out here in the courtyard. Snow wasn't all that usual in the Shire, and so the snow this Yuletide had been greeted with wonder and delight. Who would have thought it would bring an extra blessing with it? He was reminded of Sam Gamgee's story of asking the Lady for a little light and water. Perhaps someone is watching over us, though we don't even know it? And then he shook his head at himself. The Lady that Samwise had spoken of with such awe and reverence had sailed away into the West, forever gone out of Middle-earth, and the thought of hobbit-folk probably never even crossed her mind anymore, where ever she had gone.

As for the Master, he forced his own thoughts back to the present once more. The situation, as it stood now, was as well as might be, considering what they were up against. And Saradoc's presence, it seemed, would not be needed here. In fact, he'd be more of a hindrance than a help, though it was a bitter thought to admit. He had neither the strength nor the stamina to join the line of hobbits passing water buckets along, nor might he do anything else that would serve a practical purpose. 

He took a deep breath of the smoky air and considered his options. He could perhaps be of practical help in the morning, once the fire had consumed all the fuel available to it, once the stables had been reduced to a pile of smoking rubble, once the surviving ponies had been rounded up again, the injured ones treated, and those too badly injured to live given the only mercy possible for them. Tomorrow would be soon enough to seek out barns and byres to board the survivors and shelter them from the bitter weather until the temperatures warmed enough to turn them out in the fields once more. As to rebuilding...

The very idea was well beyond his ability to think at the moment.

And so, putting away that last thought, Saradoc followed the hobbits bearing Merry into the Hall.

Saradoc paused on the threshold of the great room, surveying a different kind of chaos mingled with organised confusion. The tables that had so recently held plates and cups and platters of food now supported burned or gasping hobbits. Throughout the banquet hall, mistresses and lasses in their bright festival gowns, now smudged with soot and crumpled and even torn, were cutting away clothing, dressing burns, offering drinks, and gently sponging soot from the faces of hobbits who'd rescued ponies or joined in fighting the fire.

Carodoc, who had but a moment before been shouting orders in the courtyard, came up behind the Master and touched his arm. 'We're managing to keep it from spreading to the other buildings,' he said. He then took Saradoc by the arm and guided the Master to a chair that someone had placed directly by the table where the bearers had laid Merry down. Of a mercy, the chair was close enough for Saradoc to see all that was done but still out of the healers' way.

Not taking his eyes from the limp form of his son, Saradoc kept his mind firmly on practical matters. Hobbits first, his father had taught him, and he had taught Merry the same. Hobbits first, and then supplies, and then the clearing up after a crisis or disaster. And then, and only then, would it be the right time for the Master of the Hall to grieve his own losses.  

Somehow, he managed to steady his voice enough to question his Steward, still standing by his side, watching the healers unfold the cloak – no, cloaks. 'How many have we lost?' This close to his son, Saradoc could see that Merry had, at some point in the evening, perhaps as an extra protection from the icy air as he left the Hall for the stables, thrown the grey-green Elven cloak over the dark-green covering of the Rohirrim.

Carodoc briefly took his attention from the general confusion of healers and helpers surrounding them. Before allowing himself to reply, he seemed to assess Saradoc's mind and the state of the Master's damaged heart in one shrewd glance, and then he nodded and answered. 'Animals, it's hard to say. Some ran off into the night. Some were definitely still in the stables when the roof fell in. Hobbits? None killed outright. I don't know how many we'll lose to burns or having taken in too much smoke.'

Saradoc nodded. Some of the badly injured might linger for days or weeks. Helpless, he watched Healer Ossilan unwrap both of Merry's cloaks from around him. A small, numb corner of his mind, strangely calm, noted the absence of scorch marks on the outermost cloak itself. Elvish, the thought whispered within him, and, Perhaps it gained him some time and a chance at life... protected him, somehow, through its Elvish magic. He could scarcely breathe as hope and fear warred within him. 

And then he saw his son move.

Merry writhed on the table, and half sat up, choking. Then he began coughing violently, and Ossilan directed two Brandybuck cousins to hold him upright, even as the healer half-ordered, half-coaxed the Master's son to try his best to drink from the cup an assistant healer held to Merry's lips.

Don't choke now! the Hall's healer admonished.

'Too late!' Merry gasped, and then, even as he fought the coughing fit, he added something about choking already, and Saradoc felt a brief surge of joy, along with a wave of desperate hope at his son's brave and bright spirit. Surely if will alone could save his beloved son...

Somehow, the healer and his assistant got the draught into Merry, sips and swallows that had to be fought for in between strangling coughing fits – but they got it into him. The healers knew their business, it seemed, for the stuff seemed to ease the coughing somewhat, even as Merry's strained, harsh breathing, telling of too much smoke in the lungs, persisted.

As the assistant set aside the empty cup, Saradoc saw some of the tension go out of old Ossilan's shoulders. The healer nodded to himself in grim satisfaction, and then he took up some fine shears to cut away Merry's shirt. 

Saradoc's breath failed him as the skin was revealed, as red as if a fire had been set in the flesh, and further marred by rising blisters. His son's arms had taken the brunt of the damage when he threw them up to protect himself against the flaming boards from the collapsing loft. 

And yet... red, the skin was... blistered, certainly... but it was not the blackened ruin that the Master could see atop a nearby table, where another healer and assistant worked grimly on one of the hobbits who'd run from the stables, his clothing aflame, before diving and rolling in a snowbank.  

Truly there must have been magic in the Elvish cloak.  

Ossilan poured the contents of several pitchers of boiled water over Merry's arms. He did not try to dry the flesh but let the water drip onto the towels that his helpers had tucked under Merry. When most of the water had run off, the old healer and an assistant smeared generous quantities of honey over the raw and blistered burns. The process had to be extremely painful, Saradoc knew, and yet his son never made a sound, though his eyes were open and aware, following the healers' movements. At last, the old healer dressed Merry's arms with pads folded from torn linens, and the assistant carefully wound lengths of bandage to hold the pads in place.

While the bandaging was still progressing, Saradoc heard Ossilan ask Merry, 'How's the pain?' 

Merry shook his head, jaw clamped, and his father's heart bled for him. Or so it felt to Saradoc.

The healer took a small bag of oiled silk from his pocket, picked up a glass of brandy waiting with others on a tray, and shook a few grains from the bag into the glass. He stirred the mixture vigorously and told his assistant to raise Merry enough to drink – 'Gently!' – whereupon he held the glass to Merry's lips. 'Sip it, lad,' he said. 'But get it all down.'

Then, meeting Saradoc's gaze, the old healer said, 'At least his cousin tested it for him. We know it will give him some ease, and – if there's any mercy at all to be found – it probably won't kill him.' 

Small comfort. When Saradoc had hovered in the entryway to the great room, Ossilan had already been dosing some of the other badly burned hobbits with the powder from the bag. Now he resumed his circuit around the room, followed by a lass wearing an elaborate gown with jewels sparkling from the lace at her throat and sleeves. She seemed to take no notice of the damage to her dress from spilled tea or brandy or soot or blood as she carried a tray heavy with small glasses half-full of brandy.

Even as he watched, Saradoc became aware that young Celandine was standing beside him, a steaming mug in her hands. 'Hot tea, and plenty of honey,' she said. 'Healer's orders.' She laughed incongruously, a brittle, bitter sound. 'It's all the latest fashion! Everyone's doing it!'

'Cellie,' he soothed, using the tone he might employ to calm a jittery pony, and she sobered at once. Obviously taking hold of herself, the lass said, 'Or would you prefer hot spiced cider instead? I can fetch that for you instantly, or nearly so, anyhow, if you wouldn't mind starting on this tea and honey and drinking it until the mug is empty.'

'Please do,' he said, not that he really wanted any of it. But he knew that he must keep on drinking, in prodigious amounts, to help his body fight the effects of the smoke he'd breathed. And he'd breathed so much less than many of the hobbits here, sitting or lying on the tables...

He watched Celandine move towards a central table where servers were laying trays of mugs, both cold and hot beverages from what the Master could tell. Earlier in the evening, he'd seen her fluttering, practically flying, a brightly-coloured butterfly flitting about in time to the music. But now, she trudged, exhaustion evident in every line. The dress she'd been so excited about wearing still fluttered on the breeze of her passing, but mainly because it was now torn and tattered, and he could see that someone – likely Cellie herself – had torn strips from the hem and petticoats when they'd run short of bandaging. 

By the time Saradoc had finished his tea and honey, as well as the better part of his hot spiced cider, Ossilan had gone round the entire room with his merciful powder and his brandy-bearing helper. The level of noise in the great room was lower now. The frenzied bustle had died down to a more methodical kind of steady activity, and much of the moaning around the great room had died away as Ossilan's seemingly magical potion took effect.

'Right then,' the old healer said, returning to the Master's side. 'We've got to get these lads into beds, keep them warm, keep them drinking. They're losing fluids from their burns.'

Saradoc nodded sombrely. 'What can be done?'

'We've got to make sure they drink enough that they don't die of dehydration.'

'How bad?' Saradoc asked.

The healer shook his head, tears of exhaustion and sorrowful knowledge leaking from the corners of his eyes. 'I cannot save them all.' He took a shaking breath and added, 'We'll lose at least two to their burns. Mayhap three. And I don't know yet about the ones who breathed the smoke.'

Ossilan wiped at his forehead and followed Saradoc's eyes to Pippin, slumped on a bench with Diamond and her mother bending over him. 'Aye,' he said. 'He took a lungful. And he doesn't have the lungs to manage it well. We'll put him in bed and see how he fares.'

Apprehension hit Saradoc like a punch to his stomach. 'Do what you can,' he managed to say.

But Ossilan wasn't finished. 'Not much I can do for those that breathed smoke, just hope their airways don't close off from the swelling, hope they heal fast enough to keep breathing.' He met Saradoc's gaze. 'Still, he took in less than one or two others.' The old healer's gaze intensified. 'Your brother, being one.'

'Merimac!'

'Aye. He's already been taken off to his bed. I won't give you false hope, Master. It could go either way for him.'

Saradoc swallowed hard and asked the question he'd been putting off. 'And what of my son?'

'He's not as badly burned as some.' The Master nodded, recognising that this assurance was really no assurance at all. He saw Ossilan try to smile, more of a grimace than anything, but then, the old fellow must be close to collapse by this point himself. 

'What can you tell me?' Saradoc said.

'I hold out hope for him, if we can keep the wounds clean, and he didn't take in too much smoke,' Ossilan replied. 'He told me he crawled along the floor after the first part of the roof fell in, smoke wasn't as thick there. It may have saved him.'

Along with the power of the Elven cloak, Saradoc thought to himself. Best not to voice such a thought aloud, or the healer would doubtless pop him into his own bed, claiming delirium brought on by strain.

With infinite care, the injured hobbits were carried off to their beds, where anxious relatives set themselves to watch. 

Exhausted as he was, the old healer did not sleep that first night, nor much of the next day, ceaselessly making the rounds of his patients. None of his assistants slept, either, except for those who'd been in the thick of the action in the yard and themselves had suffered burns and inhaled too much smoke.

Two hobbits, one a stable lad and another visiting from Stock, died before the belated winter dawn began to light the sky.

***