IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb  

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Part Two; Chapter Six "The Southron"

   Amongst all of the artefacts recovered at the Great Smials in 1961 of our present age there can be found no complete historical information on Reginard Swiftook, son of Childebrand the Landlord. Much conjecture on his background comes to us through Clovis Bunce’s book (already cited), later letters between Berty and his friends and a few letters which Reginard himself wrote to his wife, Donnamira Swiftook. Presumably Clovis learned all he knew from his father on this matter, making him a fairly respectable source of information, but it should also be noted that “The Bunces; Between the Bridge and Borderlands” is an adventure novel, one of the first of its kind for that matter, and a great licence with historical reporting has certainly been taken in its creation.

  Reginard was the Landlord’s first son and heir. He was born in the winter of 1587 of the Third Age in a small and unnamed village in the Midgefield Marshes. This would make him forty-three years old in the summer that he met Berty and his friends at the roadside market in Waymeet, but Reginard had already lived many of those years in much more dangerous places than the Shire. His mother was a hobbit who lived in the Midgefield, but her people were from an older clan who lived in the Weather hills northeast of the marshlands. At one time, or so their history told them, many of the old hobbit-tribes had travelled together seeking to escape the dangers of desolation and evil forces in the East. But Reginard’s mother’s people had broken off from that group and settled into the western side of the hills. These were the “Lausa-hobbits”,1 and for generations they had lived secretly in deep and crowded warrens avoiding strangers, whether they be hobbits or no. There were some among the Lausa who remembered the sword of Priamus Swiftwalk, paternal great-grandfather to both Berty and Reginard as he led hobbits, including some of their own number, out of the dangers of the east and eventually into the Bree-land. It was an old memory among them but nonetheless honoured and so they respected Childebrand, Priamus’ grandson, and took him, through marriage, to be as one of their own. When Childebrand first left the Bree-land to begin his take-over of the Shire he sent his wife and his three children to live among the Lausa; to learn their ways and cultivate their allegiance.

   While the Lausa did not live as other hobbits did, they were certainly true to their hobbit nature in their joys and their desires; for they loved good stories, full bellies, and bright mornings. They used simple tools and, while they lived in a dangerous part of the world which made them more hardy than most town-hobbits, they shunned the unnecessary carrying of weapons. The danger of their situation caused them to spend much of their time underground in large warrens, to hunt above ground warily and in small groups, to gather vegetables and building materials only cautiously and to make friends only with other Lausa clans. This made them more practical-minded and more austere than some other hobbits of the North perhaps, but they were by no means humourless nor did they lead lives of dour desperation. They had never seen the wealth and comfort of their relatives in those larger communities to the west and so, as all hobbits are quite capable of doing, they lived well and comfortably with what they had.

   When the King’s Agreement was signed and the Shire became open for all hobbits Reginard was only fourteen years of age. He had been to the Bree-land once to meet his grandfather and there he saw the comfort of Bree-land hobbits. If he himself was impressed by the luxury of the Breelanders no record tells us. But we do know that he had a keen eye for all that he saw there and reported it back to his people in the Weather hills. And it was the rumour of luxury and wealth that he spread which made the Lausa begin to think about leaving the safety of their holes for the green pastures of the Shire, following him and his father there in Year Twenty-One.

 

*****

   Reginard and his father Childebrand were not ignorant of the lack nor the importance of map-makers. After all, Childebrand had once used the great Shire Map itself as the clearest way to establish his take-over of property. Reginard had never seen that map of course, but he had heard tales of how his father had subtly laid claim to the early deeds of nearly a quarter of the assigned areas drawn there, slowly filling them in with blue paint, a mystery to the Shirefolk at first but later an illustration of his father’s authority. Reginard had chosen that same shade of blue as a symbol for his own house; for he would remind all the Shirefolk of his legal claims. Like his father, Reginard was a cunning hobbit, more so than most, and he knew that a thing which was remembered, even if it was simply the vague memory of a colour associated with debt or loss, was ever a useful thing to apply.

   And, also like his father, Reginard was cunning enough to seize any new opportunity for success. And a chance for unexpected success is what he saw in four young hobbits on that Summerday in Waymeet.

   Reginard knew that the Delvings were now being built, town and farm, public building and countryhouse, just a few hours west of his current location. He knew that Clooty Pudifoot was making maps and dividing parcels of land, establishing borders and granting ownership to pioneers using the same foolish methods that had been employed in the earliest days of the Shire. Reginard, through the grant made to his father, had more land available to him in the fertile south of the Shire than his own family (and even their friends among the Lausa) could hope to fill in six generations. But still his competitors in the northern parts of the Shire were more quickly moving west and limiting what his father believed to be the south’s commercial opportunities. If northern hobbits reached the land’s borders before his own people did (a motivation set by his father which Reginard himself did not entirely understand) then, or so Reginard had been told, the hope of his family's success would be lost.

   ‘We must hold the westernmost towns of the Shire,’ Childebrand had said, ‘it is vital to our enterprise and a condition of our partnerships in the east. We hold the ford and long, long acres of undeveloped land now in the south. That is good. We can make a good living here and even cautiously open up trade again with our former friends in the north. But if the way to the west is blocked from us, if we have no people there, my son, we will lose everything.’

   Reginard did not understand what his father meant by these “conditions of partnership”, but understood the seriousness of the situation. He had pushed his people to build their settlements as far and as fast into the west as possible and now, here in Waymeet, they had left their own deeded holdings in the South-farthing for new lands that were yet unestablished. Waymeet would come to be a town soon enough; for the Swiftooks knew of the coming plans to build a road west from Buckland. And with this road there would be opportunities for more trade and more expansion. But for Reginard and his father Waymeet was just a stop-over to those lands on the Shire’s western edge.

   But establishing themselves in these unclaimed lands still proved to be a problem. Their competitors in the north of the Shire were traveling into the west along the Great Road, surveying the lands around the Delvings and setting up deeds in accordance with the King’s Agreement. But this same opportunity was not open to Reginard or his Lausa-folk. The family of Childebrand Swiftook could no more walk into the Delvings and take up residence there than they could walk back into the Bree-land and retake Hincmar’s inn. The Bunces and the Bolgers, the Pudifoots and the Fallohides of the West-farthing would not enter into negotiations with the Swiftooks again and, while the King’s Agreement made this land available to all hobbits, those families would block their attempts. Without a map-maker to survey the land it could not be properly registered.

   And the Lausa made no maps.

   Though he may have been ignorant to many of his father’s larger plans, Reginard did understand that holding the western end meant holding western trade (whatever western trade may one day be), and it was his job to see this much of his father’s plans through.

   For Reginard had, as always in life, followed his father’s plan. He had lived in the rough land of the Weather hills while his father had gone forth to develop this green and bountiful country. He had then, by his father’s placement and instruction (and by showing instruments of his family’s traditions) enlisted the aid of all of the Lausa to join him and to come forth and take their holdings in the Shire. He had come with an offer of peace (written by his father) and a show of force (commanded by himself) to open up the Southern Ford in the month of Astron eight years past. Reginard had even openly challenged the very people who had exiled his father by building new cities on the outskirts of their own lands. And now he found himself and his family here, in this lawless, unsettled and ungoverned region of the West-farthing, a member of the Shire in ways his father could not be, making money again as his father once had; off of the hopefuls, the pioneers and the dreamers; exploiting, as his father once did, those less cunning hobbits who were going far west without any idea of what they needed but willing to pay great prices for things which their ignorance saw as useful. Twenty-five years earlier and more his father had traded stores and supplies for deeds and shares and amassed great wealth from the gamble. Now Reginard, heir to the greatest parcel of land in all of the Shire, needed new lands on the far western border. Because that was his father’s plan. And so he had come to this place of Waymeet where he was, on behalf of his family, relegated to the guise of roadside peddler while scouting and hoping to lay claim to the western border through his knowledge of the game of negotiation.

   So what did Reginard, this shrewd player in the game, see then in the idea of a young map-maker sneaking his way into the West on a holiday, a day in which no Northern hobbit travelled far from home? How much did his scorn of Horris Bunce, a rival who had gotten the better of his father in their past, make him certain that there was some great scheme afoot with these four younglings?

   If this son of the Firebrand was indeed a map-maker as Reginard surmised, why did he not go to the Delvings for provisions? The answer seemed simple; the boy’s thin guise as a "notable hunter" would be of no use there. Clooty the Builder would know this youngling for who he really was and then this secret excursion West would be known to everyone.

   So the next question Reginard had to ask himself was why would Horris Bunce want to send a map-maker, indeed, his own son, secretly into the west? This answer also seemed simple; Bunce meant to register the lands west of the Delvings for himself before other hobbits could. And that was something which Reginard could not allow to happen.

   For such is the way of all folk who have turned their hearts to bitterness, jealousy and profit; presented with the obvious fact that these four young hobbits were lying, Reginard could only understand their motives in relationship to his own; as an act borne of avarice and opportunity. To Reginard's way of thinking these younglings had come, whether on their own or (more likely) on the Firebrand’s command, to map the western regions of the Shire. They would record and sell plots of land which Reginard, working on his father’s behalf (as always) dreamed of owning but could not yet get a hold off.

   Unless he could make an opportunity of this current situation.

 

*****

   ‘... for I find myself wishing to negotiate the services of a Map-maker,’ Reginard said through laced fingers, his eyes unwavering as he looked at the youngling. ‘So. Are we going to end this little dance with you telling me that you have no skill in that area, master Bunce?’

   ‘Oh, I can draw a hill, describe a stream and measure an acre better than some, yes,’ the hobbit said. ‘It doesn’t take much specialised learning to know east from west or a ranga from a league, master shopkeeper, though you might not get much education of that sort off in the Tooklands.’

   ‘Well, he is every bit as bold as his father,’ Reginard thought in response. ‘Caught in a deceit he braves his way through with bluster by insulting my own education. That is bold.’ But Reginard could also see how terrified Bunce’s companions were by this kind of response and knew, with resolve, that his earlier guess had met the mark.

   ‘Well, then I trust that you will forgive we poor and uninformed hobbits from the south for our needs just as I will supply you with your own,’ Reginard said, evading the insult. ‘For I have three parcels of land in the west which I wish to have measured for a claim. You are going west over those very lands, it seems. If the supplies which you request can be provided then I see an opportunity in which we can help one another. Would you not agree?’

   ‘Hm,’ the younger hobbits said, ‘it was my intention to purchase provisions, not trade services.’

   ‘Your intention was to purchase on credit, you mean,’ Reginard replied flatly. ‘And that is not a service which I normally provide. It seems that if we are to work together then some small accommodations must be made by us both.’

   A remarkable thing happened then; the three other hobbits looked very sharply at the young negotiator and Reginard could see the fear and refusal in their eyes. They wanted to leave immediately, he knew, and they felt trapped by whatever decision their friend was about to make. He could feel their resolve crumble and their willingness to run away from too rich a gamble. But not so this young Bunce, the Firebrand’s son. He did not look at any of them, did not seek to consult or argue, and only looked straight into Reginard’s eyes.

   ‘You have all those supplies on my list, then?’ he asked.

   ‘All and more,’ Reginard answered.

   ‘Including papers and chalks and all that is needed for your own purpose?’ 

   ‘And more should your own unspoken purposes need them.’

   ‘Very well,’ the youngling said with a firm and unwavering voice. ‘I will give you three days of my time to be spent measuring your three properties and no more. We are agreed that my services will equal the debt of the supplies and, when your maps are made we shall exchange them for my father’s letter. Agreed?’

   ‘Master Bunce,’ Reginard said with a wolf’s smile, ‘I can think of no more fair an agreement.’

 

end of chapter six

Chapter End Notes

Notes (06/24/2024)

1) “Lausa-” is from the proto-Germanic for “the breaking up of an army”. There is no hobbit phrase for this of course, but I find this one to be particularly useful for the purposes; I like the idea that Priamus once led thousands of hobbits away from the dangers of Angmar and that many of them came from this highly disputed and war-torn land around the Weather hills. The Lausa, like many of the different pre-Shire hobbits in this book, are my own creation.

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