IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb  

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Part Two; Chapter Five "The Game of Negotiations"

   Reginard Swiftook took a long and appraising look at the young hobbit doe and her three friends. He did not like what he saw; neither the clothes which they wore nor the letter and the supply list they had brought with them. But he was by this point of his life quite well-experienced in the game of negotiations and so his mild face did not betray his thinking. ‘And a pony, you say? All of that and a pony?’

   Gilley tried to respond with equal calmness but, as her friends could certainly see, the manners of the shopkeeper had begun to annoy her. ‘Yes,’ she replied, meeting his steady gaze with one of her own. ‘Saddled not for riding but for porting.’

   ‘The transporting of pelts, you say?’ the older hobbit questioned further. ‘You are notable hunters, or so you say, and have been sent forth, as this letter tells me, to hunt along the western border of the Shire. The four of you. You younglings?’

   ‘The four of us,’ Gilley said with diminishing patience, ‘as you say.’

   ‘Tell me, is there something wrong with my father’s letter, master Swiftook?’ Berty asked, doing his best to affect a glum, disinterested but dangerously important voice. ‘The two of you have had dealings together of old, yes? Or so he tells me and so he writes in his letter. Is that not so?’

   ‘He does write that and yes we have, young master,’ the calm-faced hobbit said, rising from his seat behind his makeshift counter to address the self-important looking speaker. ‘I know Horris Bunce only too well, which is to say that I know him well enough to not feel a strong need to do him any favours.’

   It had been perhaps an hour or two after the dawn when the four friends had come into the camp and its market. Waymeet, or the small collection of shallow living holes, hastily-crafted wooden shacks, low-fenced animal pens and fresh water barrels that were working hard to become a true settlement town, was the home of no more than two dozen hobbits or so. It could be found about half a mile south of the Great Road in a little valley, but its campfires and its smell could easily be discerned by travellers from much farther away. A rough wagon path had led Berty and his friends south from the Great Road and there they saw a market of small wooden shops covered with tarps and sackcloth and all manner of weatherproofing methods. Barrows and carts were scattered amid blankets and crates, tools and produce. Some ponies and some chickens were about, some in pens and some roaming freely. There was a team of thirteen well-fed goats, tethered to one another, picking through a refuse pile. The animals cucked and neighed and brayed as newcomers approached, hopeful of leaving this drab little place. The tarps and the blankets, and even the foods and the housewares, were as colourless as the mud of the roadside.

   There were perhaps ten or twelve stalls to the market and perhaps as many hobbits tending to them. Further south, standing a bit above the other buildings, was a large tent, four times the height of any hobbit and easily six or seven meters wide. Beside that was the largest and best provisioned of the shops and it had a blue sign; the only bright colour to be found in the camp, reading “SWIFTOOK P., P., P., & P.” Here Berty and his friends had come face-to-face with the heir of the Swiftook family in a lawless place where they had no friends and he had many.

 

*****

   But not long before that, further east and off the Road in a small but concealing cluster of trees, they had made a small camp where they could eat Bovo’s prized and stolen morning rashers and form their newest Plan.

   Gilley and Poppy’s families were both from the lower edge of the Buckland and therefore had many stories to share of their Swiftook neighbours in the settlement at Whitwell. Trade, cautious and suspicious trade though it was, did exist there along the borders of the South- and West-farthings, but the people from these communities did not mix and friendships between them were largely unheard of. Berty and Bovo, living in the centre of the Buckland and coming from families of some authority, knew nothing of Whitwell nor its people. Berty’s uncle Twoody spoke of the Southron hobbits seldom and of his family members there not at all. Any news that Bovo had to share came from talking to his father’s reeves who kept careful watch at their southern border.

   ‘I’ve not met your uncle Childebrand before, Berty,’ Gilley had said at the time, ‘for rumour tells us that he has seldom been seen among the hobbits of the Tookland. But I have met your cousin Reginard, and you will forgive me for saying that I do not like him at all. He is nothing like your other uncles which I have known and I can see why most of your family will have nothing to do with him.’

   ‘Some say that he and his father spent a dozen years outside the Shire. In exile,’ Poppy said, savouring the idea of that strange and final word. ‘That would certainly harden a person, or so I should think.’

   ‘That may be so, Poppy,’ Gilley replied, ‘but there’s other tales of his time away as well which make me less sympathetic to his troubles.

   ‘Either way,’ she went on, ‘we met not in Whitwell but out here in Waymeet. My father and I had come along the Road with two of my brothers some months ago. We were driving two dozen young pigs up to the Delvings and the market there. This was in Rethe,1 and the trip was easy enough but not quick, for young pigs are willful and not readily driven. They will stop at every mudhole to cool themselves and thereby slow the whole of your marching. Now if you went there in Autumn, Youngbuck, then you know that the Delvings are growing quickly indeed, and there was good profit to be made from bringing young animals to the new settlers there.

   ‘It was not by choice that we stopped for a time at Waymeet, but it was the pigs who made that decision for us,’ she continued with a smile. ‘My father may not have the same history with the Swiftooks that your’s does, Bovo, but he has a keen eye for keeping well out of dangerous business.

   ‘That place is not so much a town of its own but another mudhole along the great Road which has grown in size and grime just as any other mudhole will; through traffic. There are no farms and it seemed to me that few huntsmen were present, so who knows where their food comes from. There is no mill nor post office nor public house to be seen, no streets nor comfortable holes nor even proper buildings. It is a disorganised collection of wagons and tents, near-to-spoiling vegetables and sewage still carted off in buckets. As I say, my father did not intend to stop there, but the piglings took a liking to the smell from a mile off. Waymeet is nothing but a community of twenty or so fortune-seeking Southron hobbits looking to profit from the Delvings' success and willing to “cut deals” with any and every hobbit who might come into their camp.’

   ‘Brilliant imagery, Gilley,’ Bovo said, taking a bite of the fresh bacon and a happy swig of wine from his bottle, ‘but should I remind you now that it was your idea we go there. And just why was that, exactly?’

   ‘My uncle Twoody took us wide around Waymeet when we came this way,’ Berty said. ‘He knew that his brother Childy, or Childy’s sons, or other of the Southrons were here and rather fiercely insisted that we should have nothing to do with them. “There is bad history between us, Berty,” he told me at the time. “My brother and I were close, very close in earlier days, but there are some past grievances which may not be forgiven.” Uncle Twoody never said anything further, but that is the first I had learned of the settlement at Waymeet.’

   ‘Not the first I have heard,’ Bovo remarked calmly, much more content now with his mouthful of warm crispy bacon, soft cheese and toasted bread. ‘My father rather hates your uncle, your uncle Childebrand that is, and has had past dealings with his son Reginard, of whom he is still distrustful. He has, at rare times, talked proudly in our house about running him out of the Shire years ago and openly insisting it should be done again.’

   ‘Now that is severe!’ Berty replied. ‘I thought an agreement was made to change all of those old arguments.’

   The other three were quiet for a time until Gilley finally spoke up:

   ‘Oh, Youngbuck, you are right, and I’m sorry that none of us have spoken up or done anything about this before,’ she said earnestly. ‘But you are right; your parents have sheltered you from things which you should learn and know. They may seem like rumour, but these are the things which most Shirefolk know that you do not.

   ‘Your uncle Childebrand is an usurer, a person who lends money to those in need but charges interest at an exorbitant rate,’ she told him. ‘He brought great shame upon your uncle Twoody and, some say, it was that same shame which killed your own kindly grandfather Hincmar back in Year Fifteen2 while we were allstill children. I am sorry to tell you this, Youngbuck, but he had taken advantage of so many of the Shire’s early pioneers and therefore held an option on deeds for, as I’ve heard it, more than a quarter of the settled properties of that time.’

   ‘More, to hear my father say it,’ Bovo added. ‘“The Child’s Bank,” as he has called it, tried to force out the entire settlement of Hobbiton-by-the-Water and nearly pushed my father into poverty. If your parents and another few great landowners hadn’t established a very quick and important set of laws for banking within the Shire then the “Child’s Bank” would’ve become its own little nation by now. We all may be too young to remember, but he even had some Big Folk from the Bree-land serving as enforcers before his fall and they were seizing lands by threat of force and running off the owners.’

   ‘It was your own brave father, Bovo, who saw to them,’ Gilley said. ‘The Firebrand Bunce won the day at the Battle of the Bank, and Youngbuck’s uncle Childy was forced into exile for a time.’

   ‘Lawks!’ Poppy said. ‘What a terrible thing to happen between good-natured hobbits! I’m glad to have been too young to know more of those days!’

   ‘But,’ Gilley continued, ‘some of those Big Folk follow him still, for I saw a few with Reginard upon our meeting last Rethe. Trust me, Youngbuck, this cousin of yours is no simple “black sheep” but a true villain in dyed woolly cloth; Reginard may still respect and fear your parents, and your father as well, Bovo. He might deal with us in a way which you will find profitable, but he will, as is his reputation and his nature, take all that he can from any trade no matter the family relations. And more, if force and his taste for vengeance will allow it.’

   ‘What a scoundrel!’ Poppy said through his own mouthload of breakfast. ‘I’m sorry, Youngbuck, but he sounds very much like a person to avoid.’

   ‘Yes, he does,’ Bovo answered. ‘And this just makes me wonder all the more why Gilley suggests that we should visit him.’

 

*****

   The older hobbit, Reginard, was walking forward as he addressed Berty. He was not tall or physically imposing in any specific or measurable way, but his body and his manner conveyed a sense of authority about him as he rose from the seat behind his desk and he knew well how to use this in his relations with others; slowly he walked, making other conversations in the open-air storefront seem unimportant and causing them to suddenly cease. Berty, trying his best to continue with a bored facade which he hoped gave off an authority of his own, acted unmoved in a way he had never attempted before. No one said a thing as the two hobbits took the measure of one another.

   ‘Is this about money, then?’ Berty asked in a removed and disgusted tone of voice. ‘Is it so boring a thing as that which delays us? I should think that if you’ve had dealings with my father, yes, the kind which you allude to and that I have heard of far too often myself, then I should think that you might want to respond more readily and more favourably. You must know that he can pay any reasonable price that you are asking. Furthermore, you must know that a successful venture of his which you have aided will also aid your own position and reputation. But if there is some grudge of old-’

   ‘Our history is old, to be sure,’ Reginard interrupted, ‘but grudges are a weakness for common dirtfarmers and should be considered both unbecoming and impractical for businessmen.’

   This comment, offhanded as it sounded, bit into Berty’s temper and threatened his disguise; many times he had heard his uncle Twoody say that “anger is unbecoming of adults and impractical for businessmen” and knew it to be a favourite maxim of Twoody’s own father, the much beloved Hincmar Swiftwalk. To hear this saying mangled and maligned in such a way upset Berty greatly; as if everything the old hobbit had taught his sons had been twisted not fifteen years after his own death. He could feel Gilley, daughter of a farmer, bristle at his side with the same anger and knew her to have much less patience.

   But Berty was only acting, after all. He remembered that he was here not as himself to confront his notorious cousin or to take offence on behalf of his family. He had a role to play and must manage to put his anger and impatience aside to keep his disguise as they had planned. Berty was to be Bovo here and Bovo, he knew, would not have cared at all for so small a thing as a family insult.

 

*****

   ‘Well, if you all say that I should fear him, then perhaps it is best if I never meet him,’ Berty had told them earlier that morning as they were camped for breakfast. ‘Though I admit that hearing all that you have said only makes both my uncle and his son seem all the more terrifying and myself all the more curious. Gilley was right in suggesting we go to Waymeet, Bovo, for we will need provisions going forward. If not from the one uncle in the Delvings then from the other along in Waymeet.’

   ‘So are we back to visiting your uncle Clooty in the Delvings after all? Well, that is disappointing news. It means that we might have enjoyed our dinner and a rest if that Old Plan is to be the New Plan once again,’ Bovo said dryly.

   ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Berty replied. ‘For I think that while Clooty is certainly less dangerous there we would run the greater risk of having our whole mission, our freedoms and our hope of going on to Greenholm unravel. I would not see that happen. We would certainly be recognized in the Delvings and, given what Gilley has told us, we might remain completely unknown in Waymeet. And, furthermore, I believe that I’ve thought of a way we might play a joke on the Swiftooks which would make all of our families proud.’

   So it was that a forged letter from Bovo’s father, along with a list of supplies, was quickly drafted and sealed. Berty composed most of it, but Bovo could not resist dropping imitations of his father’s way of speaking into the writing as well as adding items to the list which he thought would seem particularly odd or unnecessary to the task in mind: one ranga of blue ribbon (medium width), one thimble (metal preferred though bone was also acceptable) and four to six matching buttons (material and colour unspecified). Such was Bovo’s sense of humour; acutely for the enjoyment of himself and his friends and often indecipherable to anyone else.

   The four friends would claim to be travelling as a hunting party (and this idea was mostly drawn from Gilley’s comment about a lack of huntsmen and fresh foods) led by Horris Bunce’s own son. According to the (forged) letter, the party had an open line of credit backed and guaranteed by the Chief Constable. Gilley was known to Reginard and would claim for her part to be guide and spokesperson for “the CONSTABLE’S SON and his TWO LIEUTENANTS” as they were named in writing. The whole of the letter made them sound quite grand and their mission to be of great importance.

   Reginard had met none of the others beside Gilley and it was important to their Plan that no one should know Berty’s true name or parentage. So Berty, posing as the Chief Constable’s son Bovo, would be the leader of their party, sent forth by his father on a hunting expedition into the far west of the Shire; a mission which the Swiftooks, in their own suspicious nature, might rightly mistake for espionage.

   ‘Yes, I understand the joke, Youngbuck,’ Gilley said with some hesitation at this idea, ‘and I understand how it plays on the distrust between the Swiftooks and Bovo’s own father; making their past disagreements an opportunity for profit. It's quite clever and, I should say, also a clever way for you to get Bovo here to play along. But there is some danger in the prank. The Swiftooks take no greater liking to strangers than most hobbits do, and if Reginard should feel openly hostile to Bovo’s father then your suspicious-sounding Plan and elaborate shopping list may get us nothing but a good knock on the head.’

   ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that it is as dangerous as all that, Gilley,’ Bovo said.

    ‘To which I may say that you haven’t met the Swiftooks, Bovo,’ she answered firmly.

   ‘That is true, Gilley,’ Berty said, dismissing another of the everbrewing arguments between the two, ‘but, though I have been left out of such family intrigues I have been raised on family maps. You see, Waymeet is not part of the South-farthing or the Took-lands at all, but part of the West. Don’t forget, I was looking at deeds and plans for a road going that way just yesterday. My uncle Childy, as I understand it, has been granted a great amount of land here in the Shire; but Waymeet is not part of that grant. We cannot possibly be seen as trespassers in the Tookland and I see no reason why four young hobbits like ourselves, with permission from the Chief Constable, shouldn’t be able to do a bit of poking around.’

   ‘Ah. Of course. You seem to have figured it all out,’ Gilley said.

   ‘And so, just as expected,’ she continued with a shrug and smile, ‘the Youngbuck has set us all on yet another adventure.’

   So, choosing the best-tailored clothes from among their very small combined wardrobe, Berty dressed himself to be rather a dandy version of Bovo Bunce, son of the famous Firebrand. Gilley put on one of Berty’s better shirts to look a bit more business-like (though she kept her well-worn slacks, old duffel and battered hat). Poppy, for his part, was glad that he did not have to change his clothes much or worry about changing his name; for he would now be acting as “Master Bunce’s personal servant.”3

   But it was the real Bovo Bunce who took on the biggest disguise. Dressed in some of Poppy’s old work clothes, he wore his own wide-brimmed and dark green sun hat, his bow and his quiver across either shoulder and Gilley’s well-worn traveller's cloak to make him look more the part; for it was Bovo, under a different name, who would need to draw Reginard Swiftook’s attention as a worthy hunter and a potentially dangerous individual.

 

*****

   ‘I know your father, master Bunce,’ Reginard continued, ‘but I don’t know you. It has been said that he was always clever at a bargain which is a thing, despite their differences, that even my own father greatly respects in him. Even after,’ and here he paused to look directly into Berty’s eye again, ‘the other troubles which your father and his mob brought to my father’s former place of business.’

   Berty’s eyes did their best to say nothing.

   ‘Yet he is very open-ended about his price here,’ the older hobbit said, holding the letter up and shaking it gently in his hand. ‘Much less prudent than I might have known him to be in our past negotiations.’

   ‘Ah,’ Berty said coldly, still trying to look bored. ‘So it very much is about money. Yes.’ And Berty also allowed for an emphatic pause.

   ‘Well, I am sorry to inform you, shopmaster,' Berty continued, 'that I did not set out into the wild with any kind of purse for picking and certainly not with any desire to haggle with short-minded hobbits looking for fast gains over long returns. If you do not like the language of my father’s offer or, for some unfounded reason you are doubtful of his credit, then I’ll thank you to hand the letter back to me and I will seek my provisions further down the Road in the Delvings.’

   ‘Why did you not?’ Reginard said, still holding the letter in his raised hand, but drawing it away from Berty’s outstretched grasp.

   ‘I’m sorry?’ Berty asked.

   ‘The question could not be more simple; why did you come here to Waymeet when you could have gone on to those kindly share-and-share-alike pioneer-folk in the Delvings? Certainly young miss Bramblethorne there did not make the suggestion of using my services,’ he looked at Gilley and smiled a wolf-like smile which gave Berty his first glimpse of just how chilling his black-sheep cousin might be.

   ‘Yes, that is certainly true,’ Berty replied as calmly as he could. ‘In fact I think she finds you very distasteful. I am sorry for this, Gilley,’ he said looking at his friend but maintaining his guise of authority. ‘You warned me, just as my father did, that the Swiftooks here might prove intractable. Yes. Perhaps I should have listened better. But the truth is, shopmaster, your little camp came first along the way and I’ve grown impatient from walking and wished to be on to my enterprise. If you cannot, or will not, meet my needs then I suppose that my impatience has proven to be nothing more than a waste of time for both of us. I will take that list back and go.’

   ‘There are no inns or publichouses here to soothe your impatience or your tired feet, master Bunce,’ Reginard said, looking back at his potential client and again pulling the list away and placing it in his opposite hand. He examined it again as if to give it greater importance in their conversation. ‘It is true that you and your folks might have been very much more comfortable along the Road and could have passed our “little camp” entirely.’

   Behind them the real Bovo Bunce, in the curious and mismatched costume which he had borrowed from his friends, was moving amid the stalls of things for sale. His role was to be that of “notable hunter” as mentioned in the letter, so he wore his hat low to shade his eyes and had his bow and his quiver hung carefully on either shoulder. He moved forward letting his keen eye and bored hand pass over small shovels, farming implements, carpentry tools and carrying sacks set atop overturned barrows. He finally took an unstrung bow from one of these carts into his hand and held it on two fingers checking the balance. He raised it lengthwise in one hand and looked from one end to the other checking its right curve and its forward straightness. It was then that one of the Big Folk, clothed in worn leather, with tattered boots of old cloth and broken heels, came around the side of the wagon to show himself. Bald as a saladbowl he was, well past twice of Bovo’s height and with arms wider than frying pans. His hands were thick and ham-like with wide sausage fingers on pink-coloured palms, each of which were quite large enough to grasp full around a hobbit’s head. A moment later another of these enforcers came silently forward from behind some other nearby wagon. That one, less tall and less stout, had matted hair and equally shabby grey clothing with a formless cap on the top of his head, but there was a longknife on his belt to which the nearness of his hand kept ready.

   ‘Now I do not mean to suggest that your father’s offer, at least what of it he addresses in this letter, is unacceptable, young master Bunce,’ Reginard continued, ‘but knowing your father is not the same as knowing you and so I find myself having to make some guesses about that. And my guesses tell me that you are not quite what you say.

   ‘Your letter claims you to be “notable hunters,” but the little Bramblethorne girl, from what we’ve seen, is little other than a clubfisted pigfarmer and livestock-drover. If she’s a quiet and experienced deer-stalker then I’m an acrobat at birthday parties.

   ‘Your turn-footed fellow there, Noakesburrow, is it?’ Reginard went on to say, ‘well, he looks more a carpenter than he does a valet. Look there! He’s got a mallet which hangs off his belt rather than some dusting brush for cleaning your lordly waistcoat.’

   The other folks around the shop began to laugh in a way which, to all, seemed a bit uncomfortable. The two Big Fellows did not laugh. It was as if the people of Waymeet had heard this kind of speech from Reginard before and some feared what might happen next. Those other two had no such fear of what might come next.

   ‘My father tells me that there was an old Daddy Noakesburrow who was quite a gifted painter of the Shire Map,’ Reginard continued. ‘Has his talent dried up so that his grandsons have now become daylabourers?’ As calmly and as casually as he may, Berty did look at Poppy, standing there bravely on his best foot and suffering the insult. They were all so used to their friend’s mallet being with him all the time that no one had noticed the important incongruence of it hanging from his belt now.

   ‘And you are certainly no hunter yourself, master Bunce,’ the Swiftook said with slow and deliberate authority. ‘Your dress is too garish, your walk too confident and your manner too polished. No, at a glance I can see that you’ve spent more time in schoolrooms and sitting parlours than you’ve done in the wild and it makes me wonder why your father, who is not one to waste talent, would send you on such a silly excursion claiming you to be a “notable hunter.” Horris Bunce would have raised you to a much better position with hope of a greater talent.’

   There was a long pause here as the two hobbits, once again, took one another’s measure. Many discoveries had been made that worked against the Plan of the four friends, but Berty, despite his inexperience, did not flinch and, with a braveness that he never knew he had, said nothing as he awaited the next move in the game.

   ‘But, no, you’re not a waste at all, are you, young master,’ Reginard said, stepping closer. ‘No. For I can see that while your hands are soft and uncalloused there is ink on your fingers; stains from daily use, by the look of them.’

   Berty could see Gilley from where he stood and saw also the visible tension in her shoulders. Her eyes were darting around and whether she looked for weapons or avenues of escape he could not tell. Knowing Gilley well, he assumed it would be weapons. He was glad that he could not see Poppy from this vantage point. Poor Poppy was not made for this kind of drama and adventure and, glad as Berty was to have him along, he felt responsible for the terror his friend must now be feeling.

   All Berty could do is look into the menacing eyes of his Swiftook cousin and try to hold onto his own disaffected facade. He thought to speak and then thought better of it. Wisely he waited. He waited until, eventually, his waiting worked.

   ‘You’re no hunter,’ Berty’s blacksheep cousin Reginard said finally, weighing his judgement. ‘You have a keen and unwavering eye, a steady hand under tension and scrutiny, and ink-stained fingers, master Bunce. I don’t think you’ve been sent off to hunt, because that is not a talent you seem to possess and therefore a waste of other talents which your father would not make. No, you have been trained for a deeper and much more important task, I would say. You’ve been sent off to make maps, haven’t you?’

 

*****

   Map-making was an important (and lucrative) skill that was in great demand during the second generation of Shire expansion. Hobbits, coming into the Shire as they did from their many hiding places in the world, had no institutions nor apprenticeships for developing the science of cartography as some other People of Middle-earth had. They had been a nomadic folk to be sure, but if any maps were kept of their former travels none exist among the few recovered libraries of Hobbit culture. It seems that any skill they had in cartography (though they never called that skill by such a lofty name) comes out of their relationship with the Big Folk and many historians find it worth noting that hobbits used Númenórean words for units and scales of measure rather than those more common among the people of the Bree-land.

   But cartography is, of course, not simply a science of measurement but an art of rendering the measured world into a schematic and understandable space. Draughtsmanship and an acute sense of description are no less an important part of the cartographer’s art than are his tools of measurement.

   There were no places within the Shire to learn the science and art of cartography but, as more and more of the land was becoming rapidly settled, and deeds could not be filed without accurate maps, there was a great need for people who had some skill in map-making.

   Berty’s father had drawn the earliest and most famous maps of the Shire record. Those were drawn in great need and haste, often made while on his travels with chalk or other rough tools for rendering and on crude papers folded and jammed into knapsacks carried over long distances. But for all that they had a clear keen sense of translating the distances and dimensions of large areas of the landscape. The maps of the Oldbuck remained, for many long years of hobbit history, a relic and an artifact which show the Shirefolks' connection to their past. Just as Alaura’s book, First Families of the Shire, copies of Oldbuck’s drawings were commercially reproduced for many generations and the copying of these maps, particularly since their creator’s disappearance, was the only way a young hobbit might try to learn the art for himself.

   Before his disappearance the Oldbuck had taught some of his skills and technique to his brother-in-law, Berty’s uncle Clooty, who, for quite a few years, refined all of the Shire’s early maps into regimented documents which could record the parcels of all the ownerships in the new land. Clooty, though we are uncertain as to where he may have learned it, brought the first notion of survey into his maps and, through that art, began to chart the elevations of hilltops. When Old Noakes drew the famous Shire Map that Reginard had just spoken of much of it was done from the detailed maps of Clothair Pudifoot. And that young hobbit showed great skill as a draughtsman and for a time fell into the important (but unofficial) position of master Mapmaker in Year Four of the Shire-reckoning. For more than a few of his young bachelor years, and between his other feats of engineering, Clooty had travelled from town to town making his considerable fortune by drawing maps which all the hobbits of each settlement could agree upon. Each fencepost and lane, every shared well and boundered grazing land, were set down and agreed upon by maps bearing the signature “CP, B” for “Cloothair Pudifoot, Builder” and set into the records of every town from Rushby to Hardbottle.4

   For the craft of map-making is, of course, essential to the growth of any settlement, any town, or any county or nation. One must have a clear delineation of the land if one can truly claim it as their own. As the community of hobbits grew greater and the expansion of properties grew farther and farther away from the maps of the Oldbuck, a new generation of mapmakers was needed that could see the land, understand its features, and set it forth for all to understand. A map-maker makes the world not only discoverable to pioneers but factual to the arguments of lawyers; map-makers indicate what is where and, ultimately, make it easy for others to determine who exactly might own what.

   But Clooty, for all his skill, was at heart more of a builder than a wandering map-maker. Some of his earliest assignments took him to the further edges of Shire development where all of his various talents could be put to use. It gave him a fairly legendary status among the newer pioneers and the younger generation of hobbits like Poppy Noakesburrow, but it left him no time for the mentoring of apprentices. He was doing important work in the Delvings, for that had become the heart of new development of the West-farthing, but at this time there was no one in the Shire who was a match for his map-making talents.

   Berty, though he had from a young age shown much of his father’s skill in drawing, was never truly trained to be a map-maker. He had seen all the old maps in his mother’s schoolrooms and his uncle Twoody’s Assayer’s Office and there were some, like the elevations and placements of the hills of the Great Smials, some of which Berty could recreate from memory. But, more like his mother and his uncle and very much unlike his father, Berty had (until very recently) been a homebody. With a few rare exceptions he had never travelled very far from the Buckland and therefore had no practical understanding of roads and rivers as they wound around hills and woods. He could find the west and east as any sensible hobbit could, knew the logic of walking a straight course in a forest better than most, but having an organized method by which to measure it remained beyond his experience if not quite beyond the grasp of his intellect. But, like his father, Berty had the keen ability to turn a little bit of knowledge into practical service; he could find talent within him when need arose.

   Reginard Swiftook was no blood relation of Berty’s; he was the son of a brother to “uncle Twoody”, who was Berty’s adoptive father. If those two brothers shared any deeper characteristics beyond their manner and likeness, Berty could not, at this moment of their conversation, see it in this son. This hobbit who stood before him was, well, “an unsavoury sort”, Berty might have said at the time. His dress was a bit rough and worn, though not overly dirty or tattered, his feet were certainly muddy, though not uncombed or uncared for, and his hair was certainly longer, darker and more unkempt than Berty’s own, though this in itself was not something which made him stand out from other countryside hobbits. What made the hobbit shopkeeper seem “unsavoury”, Berty recalled later, was to be found in Reginard’s way of speaking, his manner of standing and how oddly it reminded Berty of his uncle Twoody. Reginard had authority and presence and was quick with a response or an observation in the same way that Twoody could be. There was a kind of small smile and gleam of the eye that both had in making a smart response or seeing an overlooked point in the conversation. But Berty could see that Reginard’s smile was entirely ungentle; wolf-like. It was as if the very assets of character which made his uncle Twoody so charming and compassionate made this older brother’s son nothing but dangerous.

 

*****

   ‘My business and my travels beyond this camp,’ Berty replied, ‘will remain my own, my father’s, and none of yours, I should think. Now, will you supply some of the items on our list or shall I take that business elsewhere?’

   ‘Oh, I can help you with your supplies, that is easy enough,’ Reginard said, looking over the list again, ‘and we can keep this letter as a promissory note between myself and your father just as you wish. I imagine he’ll be quite piqued to hear you’ve come to see me, won’t he? Hah!’ He laughed, as if the idea of doing business with Horris Bunce gave him some sinister pleasure.

   ‘He’ll pay, and right quickly I am certain, when he hears it is me who holds your note. But I’ll need a bit more from you and your little group of hunters if we’re to do business together, master Bunce, just a small bit more and nothing out of your line or off of your way, really,’ Reginard said, sitting back down on his little chair behind the makeshift desk of his open area storeroom. As he did so the two Big Folk drew in along either side of him, saying nothing and keeping their eyes on Berty and his friends.

‘You’ve come at a very propitious time, you see,’ the shopkeeper said, settling his elbows onto the table and looking at Berty over his interlaced fingers. ‘For I find myself wishing to negotiate the services of a Map-maker.’

 

end chapter five

Chapter End Notes

Notes (06/22/2024)

1)  “Rethe”, you may remember, is called “mudmonth” by some hobbits and corresponds to March in our calendar.

2)  This would be 1616 of the Third Age and Berty, Bovo and Gilley would have been thirteen or fourteen years of age.

3)  I’m really sort of avoiding the idea of servants in the Shire culture. There definitely is a class system implied in Tolkien’s writing and Sam is definitely cast as Frodo’s servant in many cases, but there also seems to be a more agreeable understanding of class relations than I, as an American, am very comfortable in portraying.

4)  These two towns, probably quite small in Year Twenty-nine of Shire-reckoning, are found far to the southeast in Marish and to the northwest of the North-farthing. They represent what I believe to have been the most distant edges of Shire civilization from that time.

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