IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb  

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Part Two; Chapter Seven "Missed Connections"

   The SummerDays of Year Twenty-Nine (June 21st, 22nd and 23rd by our current calendar) brought many changes- social, personal and historical- to the Shirefolk. Many of these could have been averted, for better or for worse, through what most people might now call luck. Whether or not one believes in such a thing as luck is quite beyond the point; for a study of history shows us many moments when “things might’ve gone another way” but yet they did not. As peaceful and as simple as the country life of hobbits may seem when weighed against the larger events in the northern region of this world, it is clear that the fates of these early settlers in this new land were already being drawn into the complex history of the Third Age.

 

*****

   When the letters from Berty, Bovo and Gilley were opened and read at sunset on the first night of the Summerdays (June 21st) their parents immediately took action. Horris Bunce and the remainder of his family along with Gilley’s father and mother, Emmon and Genofeva Bramblethorn, were usual guests at the Great Smials on the Summerdays and so, in accordance with Berty’s plan, these letters were read by all the parents at the same time. Twoody and Alaura drew the parents of Bovo and Gilley into one of the small sitting rooms of the warren to discuss what should be done. In comparing the letters written by their children it quickly became clear that Berty, the Youngbuck, had a larger plan in mind than even his best friends had been aware of; to go beyond the boundaries of the Shire and perhaps never return.

   ‘Hildegund will have none of that nonsense,’ her father said. ‘Running out west of the Delvings, indeed! We raised her with a better head on her shoulders and a better sense of responsibility, too. Mark my words, Alaura, I do believe she will drag your Youngbuck back to us in a few short hours; by her arguments of good hobbit-sense I hope, or by firm grasp of ear or toe should need be!’

   ‘I do hope you’re right, Emmon,’ Alaura said more calmly, ‘but I wouldn’t underestimate my son’s ability to charm his friends into an adventure. And we all know it certainly wouldn’t be the first of such occasions.’

   ‘And,’ Twoody put in, ‘if the stated cause is to help their friend Poppy Noakesburrow then I should say that the four of them are probably quite resolved to reach the Delvings, whether they have heard of Berty's other plans or not. They wouldn’t want Poppy to go there alone, of course. Horris, what do you think?’

   ‘I think my own son will be happy to stay away as long as he can,’ the Firebrand answered briskly. ‘And I think that he is glad for having fellow truants, with all respect, as his companions. He has been avoiding all talk of mature responsibilities for some months now and has become happier wandering about and sleeping out of doors than at home with the rest of us. Yes, Twoody, he’ll need collecting, in my opinion.’

   So it was decided that Euric Bophin, one of the Firebrand’s most trusted reeves, should be sent out immediately along the Road towards the Delvings to either find the four runaways or, if he could not overtake them, carry word to Twoody’s brother-in-law Clooty about their plans. Bophin, also in attendance at the house and married to Alaura’s sister Ermenberga, was a level-headed hobbit who knew all four of the youngsters well. Twoody wrote a letter that Euric might carry to Clooty should the four friends not be found on the Road, but also cautioned him on how to deal with Youngbuck and his friends should he meet them.

   ‘You might well catch them up if you leave now and go straight on, Euric,’ he said, ‘for their pace will be slow and, feeling quite confident, they will not be overly wary. Should you see them, my friend, it is Berty you will need to convince; he has a way of setting his mind to a thing in secret and there are few who can dissuade him once that has happened. I wish you luck in that case, and perhaps you might tell him-’

   ‘Tell him that his family still needs him,’ Alaura interrupted with a clear and frank voice. ‘Tell him simply that “his mother believes that it is irresponsible to leave one’s family to answer the call of an uncertain future.”’

   None of the other parents had anything to add to a message like that.

   And so it was that Euric Bophin, who was tall enough to ride a strong pony, did indeed leave the Buckland right away and make good speed in his travel. But, as we already know, he missed Berty and his friends entirely; for just an hour before dawn, and just outside of Waymeet, the four friends had turned off the Road for their morning breakfast. They were in a clearing perhaps two hundred paces away as Euric passed them. Their morning cook fires had not even been lit yet, otherwise they most certainly would have been caught.

   If the older hobbit had encountered them the whole trip to Waymeet would have certainly not happened. Euric, like many of the Firebrand’s reeves, knew very well of Reginard Swiftook’s presence there and saw it as a danger to all the folk of the West-farthing. If he could not convince Berty and the others to return home his instructions were to escort them further on to the Delvings where Clooty the Builder, through the orders in Twoody’s letter, might delay them. At the very least he would have kept them from meeting with the Swiftooks.

   And these were Euric’s orders as he went hurriedly and unaware past the youngsters’ hidden encampment on June 22nd, an hour or so before dawn, along the road to the Delvings. Had Bovo started his cook-fire twenty minutes earlier then the smell of fresh sizzling bacon would no doubt have changed everything.

 

*****

   Eumaeus Sandyman had “the very great misfortune of leading a collection of extraordinarily stubborn and obstinate goats into the Waymeet” on the first night of Lithe (June 21st). “Thirteen they were in count, which is a portentous number in accordance with many sources (particularly amongst bakers, magicians and moon-watchers) but,” as he was discovering on his long day’s journey from the Buckland, “enough that it made for an unmanageable cadre of woolly-chinned miscreants who did not respond well to either the proffered carrot nor the threatened stick.”

Eumaeus had left the Buckland before the dawn on that morning by himself, hoping to bring his livestock all the way to the Delvings just after sunset. But with his rather characteristic short-sightedness, he had decided to do this alone, leading the tethered group behind his loyal pony, Whistler. It seems that the two had been no match for the thirteen willful goats. By all reports they tugged and turned aside from the Road at “any occasion of their choosing and stubbornly set all fifty-two of their stringy, strong-muscled legs against any unwanted advise for their mutual advancement.” The pony Whistler, “who was anything but an experienced herder,” would then lockstep with them and Eumaeus, “who was anything but a professional whistler himself, endeavoured to hail them by emitting a kind of weak call between his rounded lips and holding his arms arched over his head.”

   By midday it was clear to Eumaeus that he would in no way reach the Delvings on his own travelling in this fashion. “The quandary was, bringing common sense to bear upon it, that there was evidently nothing for it but to put a good face on the matter and foot it to Waymeet for the evening.

   “So in due course I accordingly did just that, proceeding perforce toward a new and unwelcome destination. Making tracks in that direction, debouching themselves from the Great Road, the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the little town touched the hairy snouts of my attendant livestock and urged them forward on a spree which I and dear desperate Whistler were forced to follow.”

    And so it happened that Eumaeus Sandyman found himself in Waymeet on the night prior to Berty’s arrival. For some reason, the facts of which remain unrecorded, Eumaeus did not stay in that settlement for the night though his thirteen goats did. As to whether he had dealings with Reginard Swiftook we have no record, but all accounts place him somewhere outside of Waymeet and not yet having gone to the Delvings two mornings later when he meets the Oldbuck. Later chapters of the story told here will try to reconcile that peculiar situation as best we may but, for now, it is important to recognize that Eumaeus Sandyman was not present on the morning of June 22nd when Berty and his friends came walking into Waymeet and therefore was in no position to avert the coming events. Eumaeus had known the Youngbuck since his birth and the disguise Berty had chosen and, indeed, all of their Plans would have been quite impossible with that older hobbit’s involvement in the mix.

   We do not know what happened to Eumaeus in Waymeet or why his thirteen goats remained and he did not. We do not know why he was lingering in the hilly lands around the Waymeet for two nights until he, quite by accident, met the Oldbuck on his return. We also have no information what happened to his overworked pony Whistler.

   But if he had been in Waymeet to watch Berty and his friends negotiating with Reginard Swiftook then certainly the outcome of those events would have been greatly changed.

 

*****

   Two mornings before the day that Berty and his friends left the Buckland (June 20th) a letter was sent forth from the Southern Ford to Reginard Swiftook away west on family business in Waymeet. It was carried by his brother Leufred and, more importantly, it came from their father Childebrand.

   “My most Faithful and Resourceful son,” the letter read, “we have received unexpected and most complicating pressures at our border as of last night. A small band of horsemen, no more than a score or so, have made a camp for themselves on the eastern side of the Ford and, as yet, have not made their allegiances or their intentions known. They are armed Men, but fly no banners. The ropeline for our ferry is still intact on the distant shore and, fortunately, the raft remains on our side of the river.

   “I do not know who these Men are,” the letter went on to say, “and while I am doubtful that this is some kind of attack their presence slows our improvements. The horsemen watch the river but seem unconcerned with us who dwell on the other side. But this means that, for a time at least, our supplies from the east are cut off. Our partners there will not be pleased by this development and will, I am sure, take whatever measure they consider to be an appropriate response. But that may take many months and slow our goals of western expansion.

   “I will need you to return to the Ford immediately, Reginard, and find out more about these Men. Our business in the west, important as ever, must wait until this unforeseen trouble is resolved and I have no one else, my most Faithful and Resourceful son, who can handle this as you can.”

   The horsemen who took watch over the southern crossing into the Shire, and their intentions, would not be revealed for some time. How long this blockade of the Southern Ford lasted is not known through the documents found in the Great Smials, but its consequences will be revealed later in this story.

   But the letter, and its demand of Reginard’s immediate attention, which should have been delivered by Middle-night on June 21st did not reach him until three days later. Reginard’s younger brother Leufred had friends in Whitwell and, instead of following his father’s orders and heading straight on to Waymeet, Leufred had stopped to feast with those friends at their Summerday dinner. It is also told that Leufred’s friends had a lovely young daughter who persuaded him to stay through the night, and so the younger brother entered the camp of Waymeet in the early morning of June 24th, shamefaced, and well after Youngbuck and his friends had themselves passed through.

   Had this letter arrived on time Berty and the others might have never met Reginard Swiftook, never been challenged by him, nor met the Zaragamba brothers, nor been pressed into their service. They might have purchased their supplies on Bovo’s line of credit as planned, gone on to visit Greenholm that same evening, and never had anything else to worry about in the next dangerous days to come.

 

*****

   While the Summerdays were perhaps the most anticipated of Shire holidays, guards were still being posted at the Stonebows bridge all evening in Year Twenty-Nine. It should be noted that this was not something which the King himself had ever asked for nor was it a tradition which continued for very long throughout Shire history (with a few notable exceptions). But in those first few decades since the Shire’s founding, when tales were still being told of the Battle of the Bank and of the brave sacrifice of Roderick Proudfoot on the Bridge, to be posted as guard at the Stonebows was considered to be quite an honour for young hobbits, even when it meant missing a night of feasting.

   There was also a Daywatch in those early years, but this mostly consisted of volunteers from nearby farms or villages manning the post for a few hours each. Most of the traffic over the bridge during the daytime still came from the Bree-land of course, and Shire-folk who were stationed there held the job of directing other hobbits, now mostly relatives and returning merchants rather than settlers and newcomers, toward their destinations. The work was easy enough, particularly in the heat of summer, and a hobbit could while away a few easy hours catching up on gossip and making new friends while all the time fulfilling a public duty.

   But being a member of the Nightwatch1 was quite a more serious matter.

   It was said that the Oldbuck himself had set up the first Nightwatch in Year One of the Shire. After bringing the first Pioneers into the land he had been anxious to put them to some good function right away. Those Pioneers were over two hundred in number, dragging carts and pushing barrows and leading ponies. They had walked two days from the Bree-land and, crossing the bridge shortly after nightfall, had no real idea what to do next. As anyone might guess, two hundred tired hobbits, most of whom had never met one another, does not make for a small and organized camp at the end of a long day. There was not much open space around the bridge at the time other than the broken turret of the old guard tower and the length of the Road that stretched west into the darkness. Bickering about what to do next began to ensue.

   As the stories go, the Oldbuck chose eight of the sturdiest hobbits he could find and led them into the turret. The place still held some store of old and forgotten arms; impossibly long bows with arrows as tall as any hobbit, wooden pikes which were twice that height, and old swords, broad in their blade and wider than a hobbit’s waist with a haft and handle thicker than a hobbit’s head and longer than a hobbit’s thigh. These artifacts of war were mostly rusted or ruined by age and weather and presented these new Pioneers more with terror than any hope for protection.

   But, or so the stories continued to tell, the Oldbuck took from these stores four of the great rusted pikes with their wooden handles and handed them to his eight selected guardians.

   ‘Carry these out for the others to see,’ the Oldbuck said to them. ‘These are protections from the King who has ruled this land long before we have come here and clear evidence that we come now in his service. Cut them in half while the others can see you do it and then make two groups of yourselves. Those four who bear the head and its iron blade will be the Nightwatch at this bridge. You will protect the Road as the King has asked and allow no danger to come into our lands after nightfall. Those who carry the wooden shaft will be our Rounders. Take the company as far along the Road as you may that all might find rest tonight as one long company. Your staves and your pikes are the King’s own blessing and are the symbols of your office.’ And with this the tradition was made that many of those Shire-folk who walked the outer borders (the “Reeves” they were called in Horris Bunce’s day and the “Bounders” in the days of Frodo Baggins) carried thick wooden rods taller than other hobbit walking sticks.

   The shortened bladed staves of the Nightwatch however never left the Stonebows bridge and had taken on a rather ceremonial mystique among the younger hobbits. Years ago they had been cleaned and tended to by the renowned Tomba Fallowhide, first blacksmith of the Shire and wealthy inventor of the umbrella. Tomba had been asked to treat them with great respect and, so doing, he cleaned the rust and the pits from their blades with great care, oiled the ancient wood and replaced mouldered leather straps at the joint of blade to haft. They were still rather useless as weapons for hobbits; the weight of the blade and the shortness of the handle made it quite impossible for anyone of their small stature to wield. But, in the years after the Battle of the Bank, they had come to represent the resilience of the Shire-folk and their ability to defend themselves.

   Since that time, and for many decades of the Shire’s early history, the Blades of the Nightwatch were taken out each evening at dusk to stand in defense of the Stonebows bridge. In those still early days four hobbits were given the assignment to do this and to guard the bridge alongside these relics. They were to question or detain, by force if it should ever seem necessary, anyone who came over the bridge at night whom they deemed a threat to their community or, and here the language was quite specific and was reported to come down from the Oldbuck himself; “if they had not heard of the King.”2

   This was the kind of a job which appealed greatly to young and disenfranchised hobbits. While there was certainly no recent history of danger attached, being one of the Nightwatch carried a certain heroic largeness; one got to handle important weapons (though they were unusable) and ask important questions (though there were seldom travellers to ask them of) and one was also given the responsibility to make decisions for the safety of the community (though there was very little to decide on). But to be a young hobbit, particularly one who had no real inheritance or plan for his future, there was a prestige to be found in serving the Nightwatch even when it meant missing out on the first feasts of the Summerdays.

   On the late afternoon on the first day of Lethe, while Youngbuck and his friends were nibbling sandwiches and changing their Plan, four hobbits came to the Stonebows to take up their guard. They all knew one another, for they had all taken on this duty before, but had not met all together for some time. They said hello to one another outside of the old broken turret before the beginning of their shift, as the fateful night was falling.

   Eracles (‘Harry”) Heathertoes was the oldest at thirty-six years of age. Eracles was the kind of a person who expected to be a leader and hadn’t yet learned that he was nothing of the kind. He was a bit taller, definitely a bit broader and, many would say, decidedly louder than the other three hobbits on Nightwatch.

   But he was not boisterous, rude or ill-mannered to the others and whatever bluster he had was seldom at the expense of anyone other than himself.

   Waltraub (“Troby”) Thornburrow hailed from Frogmorton and was the youngest. The Thornburrow clan was becoming quite large by Year Twenty-Nine and Waltraub’s father, Ansegar, had great plans to marry as many of his children as soon as he could so that he might be called to the Council of Great Families within a year or two. Waltraub, still only eighteen years of age and with no such matrimonial intentions, thought that serving the Nightwatch during the feast of the Summerdays was an excellent chance to avoid the issue of potential brides that his father had selected.

   Gundahar (“Gundy”) Grubb was the younger friend of Eracles Heathertoes. His own family was large, larger than Waltraub’s or Eracles’ and they had a seat on the Councils since its very beginning. Gundahar had opportunities which these other hobbits did not share, but he lacked both interest and ambition. If ever there was a hobbit who needed the spark of some other hobbit to guide them, well, this may be said of Gundahar Grubb in relation to Eracles Heathertoes. They each needed one another’s company to reassure them of their own purposefulness.

   The last of the four was Odulf (“Dulf”) Bramblethorne who, being the youngest brother of Emmon Bramblethorn, was Gilley’s own uncle. He had been born in the Bree-land thirty-two years ago and once, in his infancy, had the rather fleeting honour of being the youngest of Pioneers to cross over the Stonebows bridge on his own downy-haired feet. The Bramblethorn family was large and Odulf was the youngest of his generation. He had not yet taken a claim of land for himself nor had he married or decided upon a trade. His older brothers were all drovers and livestock farmers and so this was the only trade which he had been taught. But the truth was that he hated the smell of pigslop and chicken coops and goat hair. He had no true fondness for animals and found them to be more of a burden than a resource. He admitted this to no one of course, but happily volunteered for the Nightwatch so that for the next three days he might avoid such complicated questions about his future.

   These are the kind of people who often stand vigil while the rest of us celebrate; they sometimes seek honours which have not yet come, or they have been given responsibilities which they never asked for, or they have opportunities which are, to themselves, unappealing or simply not what they wish for, and then too there are many, many, who simply have not found their place in the world. And many times all of these folk are drawn together as comrades simply because they do not ask questions of one another’s purpose.

   The four hobbits stood their guard in the usual shifts on the first night of the SummerDays. They shared and ate together the provisions which they had all brought, and caught up on what news they had heard. As night fell the watches were set; two for the early evening to trade off with two after middle night. Eracles and Gundahar took the first watch (as they usually did) and Waltraub and Odulf went off to sleep without any concerns.

   Four hours after sunset Waltraub and Odulf were awakened. ‘There is a company of the Big Folk, soldiers maybe,’ Gundahar told them, ‘riding toward the Stonebows up the Road from the East. Harry has gone out to meet them at the second rise of the bridge and he’s carrying one of the Blades with him!’

   Dulf rubbed the sleep from his eyes and, standing quickly to action, strung his bow. Troby was somewhat slower to call from sleep, but each hobbit knew the seriousness of the situation. In the past fourteen years since the Battle of the Bank no one had heard of nor seen a company of Men riding into the Shire. And a company of soldiers traveling by night might certainly be seen as a sign of trouble!

   As they ran past the bridge gate and up to the first rise there was nothing for Dulf and the others to see. The three remaining Blades of the Nightwatch were still in their ceremonial rack and Harry, who must be over the first rise of the bridge by now, was also not in sight. Dulf and Troby ran as fast as they could up the bridge carrying their bows, outstripping Gundy who took time to grab one of the old Blades in the rack for himself. When they came to the top of the second rise, the one on the further side of the bridge, Dulf and Troby finally saw Harry. He was holding one of the Blades of the Nightwatch in his right hand and his left was held out in warning.

   ‘Hold your position, travellers!’ Harry’s big voice boomed. ‘For you are entering the land of the Shire and we hold this bridge for the king!’

   As Dulf and Troby came rushing up to the top of the rise to join him they saw the train of riders below. It was just as Gundy had reported, a cadre of tall soldiers, thirteen in all, mounted on great big horses, twice as tall as any hobbit. They wore leather armor on their legs and arms and bright ring-mail hauberks covered their chests. Over the top of these they wore long cloaks, all of a dark green color. They all had swords at their sides and shields on their backs; soldiers certainly, though they carried no banners and had no devices on their shields which might show their service.

   ‘And what king might that be?’ said the rider in front. He wore no helm as the others did and his face looked calm from what Dulf could see of it; calm yet stern it seemed in the moonlight. In fact none of the soldiers looked upon the hobbits in a threatening manner. Their swords still hung at their sides and they kept their rank, three by three, in line behind their commander at the base of the bridge.

   Gundy came up from behind them then and, holding his own Blade, took up position on Harry’s right side. ‘Did he say he hasn’t heard of the king, Harry?’ Gundy whispered. ‘Is that what he’s saying?’

   ‘I don’t think so,’ Harry whispered back to all of them, ‘but let me ask before we jump to conclusions.’

   ‘Are you saying you haven’t heard of the king, then?’ Harry yelled back at the commander, filling his questioning voice with all the authority he might muster.

   The commander smiled complacently. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘that does seem to be the important question. I’ve heard of many kings, little Bridge-warden. Which one, I wonder, do you serve and who might he be that claims this land as his own?’

   The four young hobbits looked at one another, each clearly flummoxed by this quite simple but unexpected question. They knew their duty as citizens and as wardens and had been told, as all hobbits had, that the land was given to them by the King. But just ‘what king?’ they had never bothered to ask. If he had a name that one of them knew then, in silence they desperately tried to find it on one another’s lips. There was a long, and increasingly dangerous, pause then until finally:

   ‘The King up in Norbury,’ Troby shouted out, speaking the most of what little he knew. ‘The King up in Norbury has granted this land to our people, hobbits we are and that is, so that we might tend it and keep peace on his Roads. And also his bridges. The Shire we call it as our own, but, yes, we hold it in the name of the King up in Norbury.’

   ‘Where in the world is “Norbury?”’ one of the other riders asked, and many of his comrades chuckled.

   ‘The Shire, you say,’ the commander called back. ‘Well, that is as good a name for this land as any I have heard of for a very long time. I’ve ridden through here in younger days, warden, when it was a somber and empty place. I pray that you tend it kindly and find great bounty here as it did yield of old.

   ‘But if you hold this bridge and this land in the name of the “King up in Norbury” then perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell me the name of that king?’

   And at this another long and potentially dangerous pause ensued. Eventually it was Dulf who found his wits and spoke up:

   ‘We cannot, traveller,’ he said, ‘for we are simple Bridge-wardens as you have said and do not, as such, go on a first name basis with those high folk that are kings. And such. But if you would care to wait for a time perhaps, then one of my associates here might go and fetch someone of proper authority to answer your worthy questions.’

   At this all of the soldiers laughed and the commander smiled broadly. ‘Ah! We have met a clever warden who knows it easier to stall uninvited guests with his lack of authority rather than with the blade of his pike. Tell me, what is your name, little hobbit?’

   ‘I am Odulf Bramblethorne, captain,’ he replied, quite unable to stifle a little bow to the commander for his compliment. ‘Or simply “Dulf” to my friends, if you will. And might I ask your name as well?’

   ‘You may and you should, Warden Bramblethorne,’ he said, ‘for whether we become friends or no, it is well within your right as guardians to expect as much from “travellers” who would go armed through your lands at night.

   ‘I am called Ohtar,3 and my company and I ride in service of the heir of Elendil,’ he said calmly, sitting high in his saddle. ‘It was Elendil who was the first great King in this land and from whom your “Norbury king” is but a lesser descendant. As we are both loyal servants to the heirs of Elendil, you through your king and we through our Princess, I tell you now that we have as much right to ride through these lands as you do to defend them. Tell me, wardens, does hearing that much ease your wariness?’

   The four watchmen talked together of this while the soldiers waited.

   ‘I don’t know about any Elendil or any Princess,’ Gundy said, offering very little help to the problem, ‘but this Ohtar does seem to know more about the Shire’s history than we do.’

   ‘And he seems too clever for your idea of making him wait, Dulf,’ Troby said. ‘But that was a sharp notion in a blunt pitch.’

   ‘Yes, very clever at need, Dulf,’ Harry said coolly. ‘But it, and the sharing of your name, seems to have put you in the drive of this negotiation. I’m not sure that is best for us, but he knows your name now, and so there is that.’

   ‘Would you prefer I gave him your name, Harry?’ Dulf asked.

   ‘Lawks, no!’ Harry responded quickly. ‘But I trust you’ll discuss any new ideas with the rest of us before any further comments.’

   ‘Warden Bramblethorne,’ the commander called again, ‘the hour is late and I am certain that we all have business to attend to. Will you come down and hear of mine?’ At this they saw the commander dismount and walk a pace or two forward on the bridge.

   ‘See!’ said Harry quietly to the others. ‘I told you that you should not have given your name. Now he thinks that you’re in charge and has called you to parley! Oh, lawks, that’s bad. I should be the one to go...’

   ‘And what’s “parley”, Harry?’ Dulf asked before his friend could speak to the commander.

   ‘You see? This is why I should go,’ Harry said in a harsh whisper. ‘You don’t even know what parley is and now you’ve put yourself forward to speak for us and, by extension, all of the Shire! But it's fine. I’ll tell him that I’m in charge of the Watch and it should be me-’

   ‘But you’re not,’ Gundy whispered, cutting his friend off. ‘I’m sorry, Harry, but there’s no leader here on the Nightwatch. You’re my friend and I trust you here by my side should things go wrong, just as I’ve ever done. But he’s called Dulf out and I don’t think it's a good idea to look so disorganized as to not let him speak.’

   The four hobbits looked at one another for a moment, and a silent agreement was made.

   ‘Here then, Gundy,’ Dulf said. ‘Take my bow as it will be no use to me there, and I’ll take that rusted old Blade of yours, if I may. If I am to represent the Nightwatch I must hold the trappings.’

   And when this was done Odulf Bramblethorne found himself walking carefully down the slope of the bridge. He had to move slowly, for he carried the Blade of the Nightwatch before him in both hands and the weight of it going down the slope strained his shoulders and his back and left him more than a bit imbalanced.

   ‘Greetings to you, Warden Bramblethorne,’ the commander said as they met at the bridge’s base. Dulf had the higher ground here still by a bit, but the commander was more than twice his height and towered over him nonetheless. Standing close together Dulf could now see that he was an older man, clean-shaven, but his hair was mostly grey. He had taken off his leather gloves and stood there with his open palms near to his waist in a sign of peace. Dulf could see that he had a plain ring of bone on one finger.

   ‘That is quite a cumbersome relic you carry,’ the commander continued saying, ‘but I see you have cut it down for size and tended it with care. I should very much like to believe that this is indicative of how all hobbits treat all of those things they have found in your “Shire”.’

   ‘I am told that these “relics” as you call them were left behind from when the King’s own soldiers once stood watch on this bridge,’ Dulf said. ‘We hobbits don’t care much for weapons, but we respect them as symbols of our office and our duties to the king. And all things deserving of respect are deserving of care, or so it seems to me.’

   ‘Well spoken, master Bramblethorne,’ the commander said. ‘And does your duty to that unnamed king preclude you from allowing travellers over the bridge at night?’

   ‘Not directly, no,’ Dulf replied, trying to seem both curious and unwavering. ‘But to protect this bridge and our land, as you have said yourself, means asking questions after nightfall. Will you tell me your purpose and your destination, Commander Ohtar?’

   ‘Indeed,’ the commander replied. ‘All of it that I may which concerns you and our travel in this land you call the Shire.

   ‘It is our mission to take as prisoner any enemies who serve our great enemy, the Witch-king of Angmar. Surely that name is known among hobbits?’

   Dulf hoped that the commander had not seen him blench at this name.

   ‘It is, Commander,’ he replied, ‘though I am glad to say he is rarely to never spoken of in our peaceful Shire outside of the fearful tales of our grandmothers. But there are many hobbits here who have come to escape the dangers of the East.’

   And if the commander had not seen Dulf cringe before at this name he certainly saw him go pale, eyes widening, as a new realization came upon him.

   ‘Are you saying that, no that cannot be, that there are agents of... no that cannot be...’

   ‘Calm yourself, Warden Bramblethorne,’ the commander replied. ‘Cling tighter to that relic and let it help you to find comfort in your own mission.

   ‘I did not say for certain that there are agents of the Witch-king here among your people,’ he continued to tell Dulf, ‘only that our purpose, of which you have asked, is in seeking them out.

   ‘As for our destination, there is an old ford of the river some forty leagues south of this bridge. My people have been spying caravans out of the east moving that way for many months now and find their point of origin, like their purposes and destination, to be suspicious. These are wagon trains of Men not hobbits, Warden Bramblethorne. What seems worse to us is that these wagon trains seem to be supplying a garrison that is being built on the other side of that ford. Now, if I might ask you a question in return for those two which I have answered; do you know anything of Men settling into the south of these lands and across that ford?’

   All of this new, and very important, information quite put Dulf off his guard with the commander and he set the butt of his Blade to the ground between them and rested his hands across the top. As a Bucklander he did know something of the lands to his immediate south and had gone with his brother Emmon one time to sell a small drove of pigs in Whitwell. The Tooklanders down there were developing the town awfully fast, or Emmon had said at the time, but no one that he knew had any further contact with them beyond Whitwell. And a month or two past Emmon and three of his children had driven a bigger herd out to the Delvings and reported that the Tooks held a new settlement at Waymeet, deep in the West-Farthing.

  ‘Men? Men in the South-farthing, you say?’ Dulf asked in reply. ‘Well that would be a surprise to all of us here, to be certain. There’s no one here who has been as far south as that ford, for that’s all Tookland and we don’t interact with those folk much. Due to some past grievances, you see.’

   ‘Tookland?’ the commander asked.

   And at that, Odulf Bramblethorne, inexperienced as he was and desirous of helping this commander in what seemed to him such a noble mission, began to recount what he knew of the Swiftooks, the Battle of the Bank and the Landlord that hobbits in the north of the Shire called Childebrand Swiftook. This was mostly rumour of course, for Dulf had been a bit too young to have participated in the Battle himself, but he had listened eagerly to the stories of his older brothers and their friends. Also he remembered clearly the day, just over eight years ago, when the Swiftooks marched back into the Shire and set their course south to take up the lands which were promised to them.

   ‘We’ve called that part of the south “the Took Land” for a decade or more,’ Dulf said, ‘having given it to the Landlord to end our old arguments. The Swiftooks have developed there uncommonly fast it seems, but we had no idea of, well, outside help I guess we should call it, until you mentioned it. I am only a volunteer warden, Captain Ohtar, and we Shire-folk have no standing army. Nor do we want one. Lawks, no! But if those kind of Men who helped the Landlord in our past have set up some kind of encampment in our south, well...’

   As Odulf’s consideration of his own authority to make a judgement on this issue caused his conversation to drift off, the commander spoke again.

   ‘I do not know what foresightedness was given to Argeleb the Second, your “king up in Norbury”, to grant this land to your people, Odulf Bramblethorne,’ he said, ‘but I am pleased by the wisdom of his decision. I have met only a few hobbits in my time and this past hour spent with you and your comrades makes me reconsider everything I have formerly thought about them. You are brave and you are earnest. You stand sincerely against great odds and speak your heart without bluster. And, most importantly, when told of danger in your own lands, you wonder how you and your comrades may address it rather than quail in fear. I deem hobbits here in the Shire to be of a much higher quality than I had previously considered them and I am happy to confess my mistake. Argeleb the Second is not my king, Dulf, but you and your friends do him a great courtesy by your allegiance.

   ‘But the hour is late and now you and your comrades must decide,’ he said, standing taller and putting on his gloves. ‘Will you let us cross this bridge, now, for your tale tells me that the need is great, and turn south to the ford? Do not take this as a threat, my friend, but as advice: I do not think it would be wise to make us wait.’

   And so Dulf climbed the rise of the bridge to talk to his friends and recount all that he had been told. Harry was in an angry mood that so much had gone on that he was not a part of, but he listened intently to all that Dulf had to say and made only reasonable responses about how much his comrade had let on to foreign strangers. After all of the discussion had been told to the other hobbits it was Gundy who said, ‘Well, if they’re going south to look for Men- evil Men who may serve the Witch-king himself, they say! Lawks! Men like that in our own land? Well, why should we deter them?’

   So the decision was made to let the soldiers pass over the bridge and proceed south to the ford and a plan for their responsibility in this was devised. They all voted upon this plan, for they felt that was the best way of deciding among themselves as to how they might represent the rest of the Shire, and afterward Odulf went down to the base of the bridge once again to tell the commander of their decision.

   ‘We thank you, wise Warden Bramblethorne, for your vigilance, your information in our hunt, and your friendship in allowing us to travel through these lands which you now call your own,’ the commander said in return. ‘I hope that when our business in the south is done that I might return to this place and tell you and your other comrades of the land’s deeper history; for you and your people make it seem happier to me than it has been for many generations of my own people.’

   And at this the party of soldiers climbed the bridge, a double file of thirteen horsemen with their captain in front. They cleared the second rise and, coming upon the gate and the old stone turret, saw young Waltraub Thornburrow sitting upon a pony that was clearly too big for him to manage comfortably, a heavy Blade of the Nightwatch strung across his back.

   ‘And who might you be, young master bridge-warden?’ the commander asked.

   ‘I am called Troby by friends, commander,’ he replied, ‘and I hope you will come to see me as such. But I have family not far west of here, the Thornburrows we are called. It will be my privilege to escort you through the lands of the Shire until we enter the Tookland in the far south and, if you’ll have me, I will continue further in your company to see that our neighbours are dealt with fairly and within our laws. Does this meet with your approval, commander?’

   Many of the other riders laughed at the blunt challenge of this lone hobbit on his little pony, but the commander only smiled and, with a slight bow of his head and an opening gesture of his arms, accepted this new traveling companion.

   ‘Oh, you are most welcome, Warden Thornburrow,’ the commander replied with a smile and a gentle laugh. ‘Lead on and we will let your little pony set our pace.’

   With Troby leading the commander and his Men south, the three remaining hobbits had to decide what to do next. Surely some “Hobbit of Authority” should be informed that a party of soldiers had entered the Shire. As it was now close to middle-night, and the first feasts of the SummerDays were mostly concluded, Gundy suggested that one of them should go out to Buckland where, arriving by early morning, they might meet with the Chief Constable and the Chief Assayer. This was further than just going to Frogmorton of course, but they could all agree that there was no hobbit in Frogmorton of any genuine authority and also likely none who were currently awake. Harry suggested he should be the one to go (of course), but it was argued that Dulf had better do it, having spent the most time with the commander and, no less important, having heard first hand his report of the matter.

   But, if things had gone differently, if the four hobbits had managed to stall the soldiers until morning or, much worse, if the Men had decided to ignore the Nightwatch and simply march along their way, then the relationship between the north and the south of the Shire would be much different in the next few days to come and many hobbits would be the worse for it.

 

*****

   Though he did not arrive until very late the Oldbuck did not stay long in Greenholm on the first night of Lithe (June 21st). What he discovered there, the signs that hobbits had come so far towards the border in such a short time, had seemed strange to him and so he decided to walk further that same night so that he might discover more. He had always enjoyed walking by night, but this had become the common practice in his travels with the Elves. Lately he had begun to feel as if he could see the land all the better at these times and that his feet were refreshed all the more under starlight. So he walked north and west from Greenholm to come to the Old Road again under the bright night, feeling cool grass on his feet in a way that seemed both familiar and somehow forgotten.

   Following the Road he came to the low hills of the White Downs well before dawn smelling things he had not encountered in some time. There were the heavy remains of many cook fires still lingering in the air to the north and the older, more rank smells of livestock and turned earth. Climbing one of the higher hills to look north of the Road, Gondo was surprised once again. In the wide valley below it seemed that a very large village had begun to grow in his absence; it was wider and more populous by great extremes than the Buckland or the village under Bree-hill or any other hobbit place he had visited but yet it lay here, some ten or fifteen leagues west of the Shire’s furthest settlement.

   ‘How have they come this far in so short a time?’ Gondo asked himself. And he began to wonder how the world around him was so vastly changed. To his great surprise, this wide settlement seemed to spring up from maps which he himself had once drawn of the then barren land on his last trip to the west.

   He stood for a time, wondering about time, and yet could come to no resolution.

   It was not full morning as he drew closer to the settlement and a few stars still shone cold in the awakening sky. Gondo could see fences and farmhouses dotting what had been empty hillsides in his memory. There was a footpath in that memory which he and Twoody and Nob had established in their first explorations of this empty land, but now it had become a well-tended lane showing the ruts of many wagons and even a signpost naming it “Delvings Way.” This sign alarmed Gondo more than the path itself, for only Twoody, Alaura and he had ever imagined and discussed a Shire filled with road signs and named pathways. Seeing the fact of that idea, sprung from their imaginations and carved on a great wooden sign, made his hopes of a future now seem somehow overripe and distasteful.

   ‘I cannot say what I make of this sign,’ Gondo thought to himself, standing beneath it for a long time and eyeing it with great concern. ‘It feels either insulting or nostalgic or, perhaps, an indication of the failure of our best plans.’ Insulting in a personal way because Gondo, an explorer at heart, had always argued against signs; nostalgic in a sad and familial way because it made him remember those old arguments that he and Twoody and Alaura had in their organising the Shire and the care which they each put into it.

   ‘We never intended to make visible borders in the Shire which hobbits might feel constrained by, as this sign for “Delvings Way” might do,’ he thought, considering how such a thing as a road sign might be construed as a failure. ‘The labelling of roads is unnecessary for those who are familiar with travelling them and Alaura used to say that such a thing just creates borders between who lives on one side of a signpost and who lives on another. Seeing it now I don’t like that very much and it seems against all our best plans.’

    As Gondo continued down the lane the Sun came over the trees along Her slow climb in the east. Responding to the Sun’s call Gondo could hear the sounds of livestock; of chickens and cows and pigs awakening and answering, and he could see lanterns being lit among some of the farmhouses. Drawing closer into the village he could see that many of these homes and buildings had lanes of their own adjoining this “Delvings Way”, some with names of their own. Once again Gondo stopped to marvel with great confusion at how much had been done in his time away. It was as if the very dream that Twoody and he had imagined for this valley had happened all at once while he had been gone and, try as he may to understand it, he could still not resolve the matter; often stopping to look at the smallest of details: (for example) ‘How,’ Gondo thought, ‘has that iron clasp of a gate, or that barrelhoop over there, come to be here and to become rusted in so short a time?’ Or ‘How,’ (by another example) ‘did bricks come to be used for that house, when bricks were still being made so far away as the East-farthing and in such short supply?’

   As he came to the end of the farmhouses Gondo found that there was a very great collection of buildings and shops surrounding the village square and another building which was unmistakably the town’s well. All of these shops were neatly arranged and constructed, with the round wooden doors and windows which all hobbits favour, but had clean stone or brick walls and neatly thatched roofs which are less than common among the hobbits he knew. Some windows of these shops were opening to let in the new morning light and Gondo could see many young hobbits there but he recognized none of them. All the buildings had signs upon their doors, neatly painted in a great variety of colours, proclaiming their professions or their names and, Gondo was more surprised to notice, each door even had a numerical designation for its place upon the street.

   Being drawn forward in his bewilderment, he walked further into the neatly arranged town square. Gondo could see the familiar shape of the well now and, beyond it, a great stone building built high above the ground. Still unfinished, the structure was larger than the old Assayer’s Office in Bridgefields (the largest building of the Shire which had begun being built during Gondo’s former time there) and looked to be three stories high (quite an uncommon size for any hobbits to approve of). It had wide columns of what appeared to be single-cut stone and a tall pointed roof of ceramic shingles. In his own travels Gondo had seen many wonderful things, including towers so tall that they seemed like mountains compared to this developing structure. But all the same it made him stop in his place, thunderstruck with astonishment. How could hobbits come to build, or learn to build, or even wish to build, such an un-hobbitlike thing?

   He looked back towards the well for reassurance. Gondo had dug the beginnings of the first well in the Shire himself in Sixteen-hundred and One of the Third Age, before any other hobbit had come to live here. That well had been a meagre thing at first, for Gondo only had himself and one clumsy and overworked shovel to do the job. It had been his friends the Bucklanders who had shaped it into something greater. But the well here in this village looked to be an echo of that Buckland well done on a grander scale. There was the same slate canopy and pulley system, but here it drew four pails at a time and had shaded drinking tables and watering troughs for thirty feet in either direction. The roof was spired and a small green banner flew from its top with one white bar and a golden crown.4 Despite the unusual size and decoration it was a clear copy of the Wisher’s Well.

   And with that observation all of the Oldbuck’s bewilderment at all that he saw turned to memory and longing and, eventually, understanding.

   He remembered keenly the silence of all the young hobbits (had it really been many years before?) as Alaura took her first drink of water from the well in Buckland. She drank deep and slow, not sipping lightly or daintily as some would expect but talking the whole of the cup in a gentle and unhurried manner that seemed auspicious and formal by all the expectant hobbits who had come to greet her. In his mind he could still see her doing this; the smile in her eyes and on her lips, her raised jaw and her rosey-white throat drinking. When she had finished Alaura turned the cup over, empty, and set it gently on the table before her. Smiling broadly she then said to them all (and he could still hear it now), ‘it is that taste of the good clean water of this new land which I will hold in my memory with each new wish I make for our future.’

   ‘And they named it “The Wisher’s Well”,’ he said to himself softly.

   Now, returned from his time with the Elves, Gondo could no longer refute that the world of the Shire had changed greatly in his absence. Where there had once been nothing but hills and maps a great city was rising; a thriving, bustling urban centre built on their earliest plans. All the other things which may have happened in his time away then made Gondo afraid and, for the first time in his memory, he sat frozen in place looking at the well and thinking about the call of night birds.

   In the dawn light there were already a few hobbits assembled by the well; they were either the very old or the very young and Gondo could not recognize any of them. Some may have noticed his odd behaviour and clothing but, being Shire hobbits and therefore unwilling to ask deeper questions (nor to immediately offer their assistance to a stranger) they mostly kept their distance. To them Gondo was simply another queer newcomer; one of those hobbit-folk who come into the Shire from outside lands and are not quite sure what to make of things. This was not an uncommon occurrence in those years as hobbits had never had a safe place of their own before and now were eager to come only to be surprised by what they found. He did not look like the typical refugees who had started coming up from the south, with his dusky-green travelling cloak, his sword at his hip and his intense and thoughtful gaze, but he had the very same fish-out-of-water expression often seen in the newcomers. Eventually, still trying to understand how things had all changed, he sat himself down on the paved stones of what was becoming a very well-manicured town square.

   ‘Are you alright, sir?’ the voice of a young hobbit asked him. ‘May I offer you a good morning and perhaps a cup of clean water?’

   The Oldbuck stared up at the youngling who addressed him. He had dark hair, nearly black, and bright eyes. He carried a large water satchel with him and in his outstretched hand he offered a small clay cup. Gondo rose quickly as he could and ran out of the Delvings and into the low hills, quite uncertain what to do next.

   Had the Oldbuck stayed and taken the charity offered to him things would very certainly have been different. He would never have sat those remaining hours in the hills wondering what to do or where to go next. He would certainly never have seen the small group of travellers coming west across the open lands nor decided to follow them for more discreet answers to his many questions.

   If the Oldbuck, in all of his fear upon discovering just how long he had been gone, had decided to accept the young hobbit’s hospitality he would have met and spoken with his own nephew and namesake; Gondovar Pudifoot, son of Clooty the Builder, and, perhaps, been told many of the things which he rather badly needed to know.

   And things would have been very much different.

 

*****

   On that same morning before the start of Lethe (June 21st again) an important discovery was made in the North-farthing. Hugo “Firstcut” Stumbletoe, greatest stonemason of Shire history, had been busy in the Delvings building wells and a post office, an assayers’ office, a library and a town square. Together with his friend Clooty he hoped to build the first great city of the Shire. While there was good limestone to be found in small hillsides throughout the land the white hills which surrounded the Delvings were mostly composed of chalk and clay; ideal for digging and useful in brick-making, but bad for the kind of stonework Hugo prided himself on. So in Year Twenty-Seven Hugo had sent his four nephew-apprentices into the four directions of the Shire in search of a good repository of building stones.

   Other little quarries were found, but the greatest one was discovered by the youngest nephew, Timboldt Stumbletoe, in the uncharted lands above Budgeford. Not many hobbits had ventured that way, but within a day’s walk of the Budgeford bridge Timboldt found a large cluster of rocky hills made of good, hard stone. He was no map-maker, but Tim knew the importance of recording all that he could see and putting it in a letter to his uncle. Perhaps that is what convinced him to wander alone in such inhospitable lands for a week and to sleep in uncharted caves (a thing which no careful hobbit would ever do).

   The letter which he wrote to his uncle went undiscovered for nearly three hundred years. The evidence later found seems to suggest that Timboldt spent his last night in one of these uncharted caves and, so doing, became the first hobbit to encounter a troll within the boundaries of the Shire.5

   If Timboldt had survived and his letter had therefore been sent then Shire-hobbits surely would have migrated into this area very soon and, knowing next to nothing about combatting trolls, might have found themselves in a quite unexpected war which they would’ve been completely unequipped to handle.

 

*****

   All of these incidents may seem unrelated to our story of the Youngbuck and his friends, to the consequences of Gondo’s return or to the struggle for western expansion in the early days of the Shire. But one should remember that history, whether in the quiet countryside or along the clashing borders of warring kingdoms, is determined by the small chances of one thing happening instead of another. If one is to believe in “luck”-whether good or ill- it can be read in the study of history’s missed connections.

 

end of chapter seven

Chapter End Notes

Notes (06/29/2024)

1)  To call the guardians of the Stonebows bridge “the Nightwatch” might seem simple, facile and too much like Game of Thrones. To be frank, I never worry much about that sort of thing. Those books steal so openly from Tolkien’s work and my work here is nothing like the intent in those stories. The idea of a day-watch and a night-watch grew organically in the writing of this story. I might have come up with different names to spare my audience any confusion of similarity but, and I think this more and more about fanfic, why bother? If you’ve read this far and haven’t realized that my writing has little or nothing to do with Game of Thrones I will be shocked. But if you also think that George R.R. Martin should hold an exclusive copyright on anything remotely similar sounding to “The Nightswatch” than you’ve obviously missed the point of fanfic.

2)  This expression “not heard of the king” remains in the Shire-hobbits way of speaking for many generations to come and is, of course, mentioned in the prelude “Concerning Hobbits”. Once it was determined that I needed this scene (which was a much later development in the writing) I decided it might be fun to link to this old expression.

3)  You find a note below this one which mentions the idea that characters from The Fall of Arnor, my much larger work, were finding their way here. Ohtar comes from a long line of Ohtars.

4)  This flag is my own invention, still roughly noted here, and may wind up being a flag for the Shire in later writings. They need one.

5)  While this last little bit about the Timboldt Stumbletoe might seem unconnected it is intended to be the origin story of Sam’s Troll Song and something I play with again in The Fall of Arnor. Timboldt Stumbletoe is the “Uncle Tim” of Sam’s troll poem.

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