Chapter 2. The Long Ride Home
After a three-way consultation with Aldi, the chief engineer of the Tooks, and Mardi, as the healer on the spot, the Thain directed those returning to the Great Smials to ride along the dry streambed, which was “as wide as one of the King’s high-ways”, as Pippin described it. ‘A little rougher, perhaps,’ he added, conceding the jumble of rocks and silt uncovered by the damming of the Tuckbourn’s waters by the landslip that had nearly taken the lives of Eglantine, mother of the Thain, and Tolibold, her escort.
‘But you’ll make better time in the valley than riding up and down the great hills in this part of the Green Hill country,’ he said. ‘And Aldi thinks the dam will hold.’
‘He thinks so, does he?’ said Ferdi, head of the Thain’s escort – at least until the annual archery tournament should take place later in the year, in the autumn. This year, Tolly was favoured to win, due to Ferdi’s recent fall while racing, resulting in injuries that threatened to permanently affect his shooting. He added wryly, ‘That might be a comfort... or so one might think.’
‘The dam should hold,’ the engineer clarified, unperturbed. ‘In fact,’ he said, pursing his lips and taking a moment to survey the spreading floodwaters below them, ‘did we wish for a lake at this spot on the map, ‘twould take little enough reinforcing and perhaps some yearly maintenance to ensure the dam’s continuance for years to come...’ He stomped a foot, albeit somewhat cautiously, considering the unstable slope upon which they stood. ‘See? Solid!’
‘If not Bilbo Lake, then Lake Paladin,’ Ferdi said. ‘Or Peregrin, perhaps.’
‘Lake Eglantine,’ Tolly contradicted stoutly, still feeling warmed and invigorated by the tea Mardi’d administered, even though now the fire had been extinguished and the tin cups and kettle had been packed away, preparatory to the departure of rescuers and rescued. ‘Lake Eglantine,’ he said, and of a wonder, despite the pain of his injured leg and cracked ribs and the still-fresh memories of the desperate night they’d only recently passed, he felt a grin stretch his lips as he added, ‘Sparkling in the sunlight.’ Had he been in his right mind, he might have mentally kicked himself for such familiarity, but for the feeling of relaxation spreading through his body. Taking strict hold of himself again, he blinked at his brother Mardi in sudden suspicion – had there been more than just tea and sweetening in the cup he’d quaffed?
No reprimand for his nonsense came from the Mistress or the Thain or even the head of escort, strengthening Tolly’s suspicion that he’d drunk some sort of healer’s potion, all unwitting, in the guise of a mug of tea.
‘Indeed,’ Eglantine said with a smile of her own. Under her borrowed cloak, she was covered head-to-toe in drying mud. Only her face and hands shone forth, testament to Mardi’s gentle ministrations with a cloth and the limited water the rescuers had carried with them. Though water a-plenty sparkled below them in the morning sun, getting down to the banks of the new-formed lake would have been no easy task. ‘My lake looks quite lovely in the morning light, not at all frightening as it looked only a few hours ago, lying in wait for us, as the lightning flashed and the hail pounded down in the night.’
‘I think the farmers of the Greentuck Vale would have some objection to this new lake continuing to occupy their smials and fields,’ Pippin said mildly. ‘I’m sorry, Mother, but yours and Tolly’s lake must vanish again, and sooner would be better than later.’
‘Just send a messenger back when the rescue party reaches the Stone Bridge,’ Aldi confirmed, ‘and we’ll see to it that Bilbo Lake vanishes as thoroughly as the hobbit Ferdi named it for last night, once the old fellow decided to stay vanished, that is.’
‘Down to the River, and on to the Sea,’ Tolly heard the Thain mutter under his breath, quoting a sad old song, reminding him that young Pip, still only a tween at the time and years away from becoming Thain, had accompanied old Bilbo to the Grey Havens of the Elves on the Baggins’s final disappearance from Middle Earth. But when the bedraggled escort looked over at him, the Thain smiled and nodded in response, not at all melancholy as he sat with one arm encompassing his mother, cloak, blankets, and all, holding her close as if he might never let her go again.
‘We’ll send a messenger forthwith,’ Ferdi said to the Tookish engineer. ‘Far be it from me to keep you – much less, the Thain – waiting a moment more than necessary.’
‘Would you care to accompany the rescue party, Sir?’ Aldi turned to the Thain to ask.
‘No,’ Pippin said, his eyes alight with curiosity. ‘I’ll stay and watch the engineers at their work. I’m sure Merry will be fascinated to hear how we “disappeared” an entire lake without bringing down a flood on Tuckborough!’ His arm tightened in a brief hug, and he tenderly kissed Eglantine’s cheek, and then he released his hold and stood lightly to his feet, ready – even unTookishly eager, considering the subject of discussion was a treacherous body of water – to take in this novel experience.
And why not? Tolly thought to himself. Pippin’s mother, whom the rescuers had thought lost in the cataclysm, was found, and safe! ...no thanks to Tolly, her escort. The warm, relaxed feeling that had surrounded him seemed to fade now as the weight of his failure pressed down upon him once more.
He scarcely noticed the activity that swirled around him as he was lifted and eased into a saddle, nor did he hear Ferdi order Adelard (one of the more recent additions to the Thain’s escort) to remain with the Thain and his engineers, nor did he even mark when the pony under him began moving. He was only slightly aware of Hilly and Mardi, walking to either side of him, steadying him in the saddle as they made their way on a gradual diagonal down the hillside, until they reached the valley floor on the dry side of the dam.
Not far behind them, Tolly heard Eglantine conversing cheerfully with the hobbits walking on either side of the pony she rode, as well as calling occasional comments to the others walking before and after, and even to Tolly and his brothers, leading the rescue party. As for himself, he had nothing to say. In fact, it was taking all his remaining strength to concentrate on bracing himself with his uninjured leg while trying at the same time to relax his body, despite the firmly wound chest-bindings that held him upright, to move with the motion of the pony he sat upon and thus minimise the jarring that sent ripples of pain through his body.
Mardi evidently noticed Tolly’s abstraction, for more than once on their way down the great hill, he urged his younger brother to “stay with us, now, Tolly”.
Each time, Tolly blinked and sat a little straighter, but he did not have the heart nor the courage to answer in words, sunk deep as he was in feelings of shame and disgrace.
Ferdi had assigned him to escort Eglantine safely back from Whittacres Farm, to guard her and keep her safe from any danger... yet she’d been the one watching over him through the long, weary hours after the landslip had left him pinned under the bole of a fallen tree. She’d safeguarded him, and ignored his pleas to make her way off the unstable dirt slope, at least as far as where the broken-off trail beckoned and the grass began, signalling more stable ground than that where Tolly lay, all unwilling, but unable to free himself.
When they reached the valley floor, Tolly was vaguely aware that they stopped briefly, at which point the walkers mounted ponies for the ride back to Tuckborough. Mardi coaxed some water into him, and he drank. Some minutes later, his pony began to move under him once more, picking its way with some care over the rocky streambed, occasionally splashing through the shallow puddles left behind by the dammed stream. He fell into a dream, then, consisting mainly of the pony’s motion and his brothers’ hands on his arms, steadying him as they rode onward, a journey that seemed to have no beginning that he could remember, in the moment, and no ending that he could discern.
Though he scarcely noted Mardi’s occasional question or encouragement, after they had been travelling for some time, the cheerful tones of the Mistress of the Tooks pierced the dark fog surrounding him.
When the near-tragedy had struck the previous afternoon, Eglantine had been riding back from Whittacres Farm where the Mistress of the Tooks had been visiting Pearl, her eldest, to the Smials, where she ought to have breakfasted this morning as a part of her second-born daughter’s birthday observance.
Even now she was saying to Haldi, another hobbit of the Thain’s escort, who was riding beside her, ‘I don’t know how I’ll ever make it up to the lass, to have missed her birthday breakfast!’
‘Now-now, Mistress,’ Haldi rumbled in reply. Somehow that hobbit, amongst very few of those who lived and worked in Tuckborough and its surroundings, seemed always at ease in Eglantine’s presence, as if he were one of her grands rather than a mere archer assigned to her protection by order of the Thain. Even now, he was bold enough to contradict the old hobbit, for all she was the Head of the Took clan. ‘ ‘Twas the happiest birthday breakfast of her life, I deem, for the arrival of the messenger before second breakfast, if I’m not mistaken, with the news of your surviving – and the most memorable celebration of her experience, for the same reason.’
And Eglantine tolerated this contradiction, aye, even seemed to welcome Haldi’s observation, laughing heartily at his response and commending him, of a wonder. ‘Bless you, lad! I find myself quite heartened! You have me feeling much better...’
As for himself, Tolly was feeling worse by the moment.
***