IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb  

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Part One; Chapter Seven "Distant Music"

*Author’s Note:

 

   A large portion of this story comes from recovered text which is attributed to Goldilocks Took née Gardener and her own supporting research. But because that research, and my own, lacks any personal accounts from Gondolpho Oldbuck and Alaura Fairheart we are left with an incomplete picture of these two very important figures. We know that many letters passed between them over the years and that both were said to keep journals in the early days of the Shire. But without any evidence from these lost personal writings it may be difficult to understand the strength of the bond between them at this earlier part of their story. Many readers may find this difficulty confusing or even disappointing to their enjoyment of the tale. The depiction of their relationship, only sparsely recounted in Goldilocks’ text, may make the difficult choices in each character's life seem much more questionable; why would he go off with the elves? Why would she marry again, and then again?

   It should be remembered that Goldilocks’ text, the best and most complete model which we have for the retelling of this tale, is in itself a document of specific intention and drawn from incomplete sources. It was created as a wedding gift for her husband Faramir Took, heir of that great family and a direct descendant of Alaura’s. As to the resources at Goldilocks’ disposal, they would have been meager regarding the details of the romance between these two hobbits; for the final resting place of Gondolpho Oldbuck has never been found and the journals and letters of those two famous lovers are therefore lost to history. The many public writings by Alaura and the scant few letters by each which were preserved by the Took family at their home in the Great Smials undoubtedly served as the major source of Goldilocks' research. She also relates many observations and sayings from Twoody’s own letters and journals, both private and public. Theudebert Took, their son, possessed and scrupulously collected all of these writings though, sadly, he wrote no commentary on the things he may have read in this collection or upon his own view of his parents’ relationship.

   As discussed in this book’s foreword, my intention is not to make a direct translation of Goldilocks’ text but to recount the earliest days of the Shire alongside one of its most famous love stories. Much historical information (and a good dose of creative conjecture) from my own research has found its way into the telling of this tale. There are, of course, other rumoured accounts which I have used as a resource and which Goldilocks did not directly cite. One such example is Deidre Took’s famed but now fragmentary song “The Tale of the Tooks and the Bucks” (first published in Year Seventy-three of the Shire-reckoning). Not much of the original version is left, though it was quite popular in her own day. Many later chapters of my book owe much to Clovis Bunce’s “The Bunces Between the Borderlands and the Branduin” (published in Year Eighty), the first generational adventure novel of the Shire and found in Bilbo’s own collection of books at the Undertowers. There are also letters by relatives and witnesses which give us the details of the marriage ceremonies of Alaura Fairheart and insights into her fascinating character. There are many accounts from their neighbours in the Buckland of the love that Gondo and Alaura had for one another and the partnership which they shared in the early years of the Shire. There also remain some accounts of their later years together which, within a generation after her death, had mostly dissolved into rumour. But there are also many accounts from later generations of hobbits which speak of the great feud between the two families without offering much in the way of first-hand evidence. Gossip, of course, is not history. But when the only recordings which we have of events are largely made up of gossip the historian must do what they can.

   I believe that all these sources tell a story of three friends who together shaped the new land’s destiny alongside their own. But in having only Twoody’s letters and journals as our principal source, the records we have of their individual dreams and hopes remains disappointingly one-sided.

   I cannot provide interested readers with first-hand evidence regarding the love between Gondo and Alaura. Those private letters are lost to us and Twoody himself writes very little on this subject. We cannot hope to know their feelings through anything other than careful study and, on my part, more creative conjecture.

   So, in the interest of telling readers1 more of the relationship between these two famous yet still enigmatic characters -or, at the least, to reveal more of how I believe it was- I must now move past conjecture and indulge in fiction.

   The scene recorded in this chapter does not come from Goldilocks’ own text and is not mentioned in any of the surviving accounts. It is a story built around the absence of first-hand evidence. It is an embellishment of my own, formed from deep research and (I hope) a deep compassion for its characters. Perhaps it is best seen as a “testimony of character” for these two most important hobbits who have left us without affidavits of their own.

   The final section added in this chapter is a translation of the remaining fragments of Deidre Took’s song which describes this scene. Attentive readers will note that the rhyme scheme, while sometimes forced, echoes that of the famous translation of the “Ley of Luthien” found in the Red Book of Westmarch. Some historians are quick to discredit it for this reason, wondering how a hobbit in the early days of the Shire would have encountered such an uniquely Elvish song. There are some who believe it was written much later, well after the War of the Ring, when tales from the old world began being collected at the Great Smials and, as such, it is only a stylistically re-fashioned echo of Deidre’s original song. Perhaps this is true. As with my own work, it is perhaps purely the indulgence of a storyteller rather than the useful guidepost of a historian.

   It is said that “history forgives a good story.” Let us hope that will be the case.

-D.F.R.

 

   In defense of his faithfulness2 it should be noted that Gondo, on the morning of June 13th in the First Year of the Shire-reckoning, limped his way up Bree-hill in desperate fear of the tongue-lashing he was likely to receive and with a full awareness of how richly he deserved it. He was showing up at Alaura’s father’s doorstep alone at dawn, unexpected and with no advance message of his recent return; and everyone knew that unannounced, unescorted, unexpected and quite unlooked-for guests were not met well by stand-offish hobbits like Isengrim Tinyfoot.

   But perhaps he was not altogether unlooked-for. And that made Gondo’s worried steps just a little lighter.

   He had marveled at the work done by Twoody and Alaura in the three months since the signing of the King’s Agreement. Just the night before, on Gondo’s unexpected return to the Bree-land, Twoody, Twoody’s father and many of the other hobbits present proudly showed him many of the broadsheets that Alaura had written and managed to spread throughout the Northlands. These writings were brief and bold and hopeful in their tone, projecting a future for all hobbits just as the three friends had talked about together in the years since the discovery of the land beyond the Stonebows bridge. The “Shire” she had called it, translating the King’s language better than either he or Twoody could upon hearing it. As he walked uphill toward her home the word “Shire” rang in Gondo’s ears. The previous night he had heard many hobbits from unfamiliar lands say this same word and, while all had some different accent or inflection, he could hear the hopefulness in their voices and the dream which Alaura’s broadsheets had put into their hearts. Having heard so many idealistic voices and their interpretations, Gondo did not yet know how to say the word himself. He longed to hear it in Alaura’s own voice knowing he would say it that same way for all the rest of his days.

   Twoody had been such a wise and caring friend during these past three months as Gondo had taken off (again) on his own admitted flight of fancy. Twoody had saved a copy of the very first “SHIRE-RECKONING” written in Alaura’s own hand. He gave it to Gondo the night before saying:

   ‘Well, she’s put all of our dreams and ideas here on paper, Gondo. We’ll need to do a fair piece of work living up to them now.’

   Later, in the last quiet moments he would have alone that evening, Gondo had unfolded the paper carefully, tenderly, and read it slowly, hoping to hear the firmness and humour of Alaura’s voice in his head, to be transported to the memory of her face by the signs of her pen. After a few long minutes, he carefully folded the paper again and put it in his special wallet; the one in which he carried the copy of the King’s Agreement that Twoody had written for him three months before.

   ‘I am unexpected but not unprovisioned,” he thought to himself, walking up the Hill and tapping the pocket in his new change of clothes which held the wallet. ‘And perhaps not wholly unlooked-for. Assuming old Isengrim will let me in.’

   If Alaura’s father was surprised to see Gondo coming up the hill with the dawn then Gondo could not read it on the old hobbit’s face; nor did he expect to. The watchful eyes, the bristling ear hairs, the furrowed brow, were all things that the old blacksmith employed to greet his unwelcome guests and, Gondo believed, they were all just part of a story the hobbit had cultivated about himself to keep others from bothering him. There were many Breelanders who thought that old Isengrim was just hateful and mean-spirited, but Gondo knew better. Old Isengrim Tinyfoot was indeed mean-spirited, but he was also smart enough to let the legend of his hatefulness keep him from having unwanted involvements with his neighbours.

   With his usual polite gruffness, the old hobbit greeted Gondo and stated his position on this early and unexpected arrival:

   ‘So you are alive, as anyone can plainly see. And you’re back again. Unlooked-for by myself, but not wholly unexpected. Word of your coming has not reached us. Why is that, I wonder, when you return so hale, hearty and praiseworthy?’

   ‘Hah! “Praiseworthy” is certainly a word which I’m glad to hear from your lips, sir! But I hardly have heralds to announce my coming!’ Gondo said, with a slight bow and a wide smile. ‘I apologize for any surprise which my presence brings you, but I returned very late in the evening last night and have worked very hard to settle my business in town so that I might join you in this early, but still respectful hour, at your home. Though,’ he said with a smile, ‘knowing you and your family as I do, I doubt that I have shocked anyone into wakefulness.’

   If Gondo was prouder now than when he last met Alaura’s formidable father none might argue that he had good reason. He had met with lordly knights and high kings and had never once quavered. He had spent months alone in the wilderness building a new home with his own hands and had never relented. But Gondo was also wiser from these experiences and so did not mistakenly wear pride to cover vanity as others might. He simply waited for the old hobbit guardian at the wrought iron gate to respond.

   ‘Off making a new home for yourself, or so I’ve heard,’ Isengrim said with an appraising eye. That eye looked up and down and through the old hobbit's guest; noting the still-wet hair from bathing, the clean pants, jacket and waistcoat that had never been worn into the wilderness, the clean-cut nails on fingers and toes and the fresh-brushed hair below his ankles. ‘Well, you have cleaned up well and look the stronger for your work in the wild, I will say that. But talk of your doings has caused quite a stir around the Hill. You’ve brought many strange hobbits to my door, young Bucklestrap.’

   ‘And many new customers, I should think, sir,’ Gondo replied without hesitation. ‘All those fresh hands will need tools to build with in the new lands.’

   ‘Likely so,’ the blacksmith said, still not opening his gate. Gondo could feel the measure of Isengrim’s gaze going deeper. He tried to let the pause go on without him speaking, but was eventually broken by the eyes of Alaura’s feary father.

    ‘Many of those new folks will be leaving with me this morning,’ Gondo continued, filling the long silence of Isengrim’s scrutiny, ‘though their need for your services will continue for some years, I’d imagine.’

   A nearly audible grunt of acceptance seemed to sit in Isengrim’s throat, but whether he would give it out remained uncertain. After a time he said, ‘I’d imagine so. You’ve made me busy enough already, but I’m no stranger to busy work. But “leaving with you,” you say? Off again so soon, are you? And alone then?’ Isengrim asked with some directness.

   Gondo thought for a moment about his next response and moved cautiously forward with the conversation. ‘Yes, sir, off again,’ he said. ‘There are a great number of hobbits down beneath the Hill who seem to need a guide further down the Road and have taken me for that position. I’ve seen the land and know how to lead them. No families, of course, at least not yet,’ he said with some directness of his own, ‘for there will be hard work ahead building wells and roads and mapping the lands and such.’

   The old hobbit continued to look Gondo over, his stare fixed but still appraising. If another of those small grunts of acceptance ever came out of Isengrim Tinyfoot’s throat Gondo never heard it.

   ‘And you’d like to speak with my daughter before you go, I suspect,’ the old hobbit said.
   ‘I would, sir,’ Gondo said without embarrassment or shyness. ‘If I have your permission to do so.’

 

*****

 

   After finally stepping aside in what passed for his consent, Isengrim sent Gondo to wait, as usual, in the gardenhouse. Gondo walked the familiar stone path towards the western side of the hill and under its shadow. It was high summer and so the air was still warm and filled with the aroma of flowers. Bees and other insects were waking to the Sun, but where the shadow of the Hill fell there was still a coolness and a quietness in the air. Gondo could see and even hear the buzz of activity around the inn in the town below and knew that plans were in motion, much sooner than he ever could have expected. He knew that he should not be delayed, but he was quite content for a time to sit here in the gardenhouse at the opening of a new day.

   The garden of Alaura’s mother, Celedine Tinyfoot, was at its best in high summer. The pillars and canopy of wrought iron were entwined and commingled with all manner of clinging and flowering climbers, some hanging nearly as low as Gondo’s own head as he walked onto the balcony. In the main garden just below there were bushes that were bursting into bright yellow stars, there were clusters of plants with long stalks of pale green which opened into delicate folding petals of purples and pinks and white. There were high-growing upright plants that every few inches seemed to open their beak-like petals of a fiery yellow trimmed in red, like the mouths of dragons. Bright red bulbs rising from dark green leaves in some places, and the stones through the path and further around the hill were lined with a ground cover of light yellowish-green. Towering over the rest were titanic dandelions, like they had been transplanted from the gardens of giants, with big dark faces, bigger than Gondo’s own, and surrounded by double crowns of delicate golden petals. In that moment Gondo wished that he had taken the time to learn the names of these plants and flowers; for in his wanderings and his map-making a knowledge of trees had always been more important than a knowledge of flowers. But, as he sat there waiting for Alaura, he thought about making such a garden himself around the doors of Sarehole. ‘Did Alaura know anything about flowers?’ he wondered. Surely she must, for she knew and thought about many things which he had never bothered to consider.

   After all of his ramblings to the court of the king and around the new lands, all his months away on adventures and all the plans with the other hobbits which he laid just the night before, Gondo finally found a moment of peacefulness in Celedine’s garden which he seldom felt. It did not make him reconsider his vow to leave the Bree-land today and to never return, but for a few quiet and contented moments awaiting Alaura, Gondo did not look so restlessly forward and thought instead about the joys and the blessings he had already been given.

 

*****

 

   Contrary to most opinions of the Shirefolk, Alaura Fairheart was not one to ever allow herself to waste any of her time waiting for Gondo to return. Ever since she was a young doe Alaura’s days had always been filled with the important work of planning her own future. When Twoody and Gondo were both away at Norbury those days of planning had stretched on and on, placing her in a dark and dangerous mood; for six long months she had no idea what might happen to her friends on their mission or how it might affect all of their plans. But it was not the waiting which troubled her nearly so much as the way in which not knowing a thing put all her other plans into a stasis. ‘Or a torpor,’ she once wrote. ‘For I find that not knowing how another hobbit’s life will change one’s own is a crippling condition of dependence.’ And Alaura found any condition of dependence to be ‘an unwanted confinement’.

   Alaura was the eleventh child of Celedine and Isengrim and, by Year One of the Shire, she had another four younger siblings as well. Many hobbits have said that the sheer size of the Tinyfoot household went a long way toward establishing the fierce independence which Alaura would be known for all her life. She had hated the six long months waiting for Gondo and Twoody’s return from Norbury and during that time much of that feeling was turned inward; for her inability to move on in her plans without her friends made her feel weak and this weakness was another condition of dependence which she could not tolerate. There were long dreary winter days when not even the noisy bustling and arguing of her many siblings could raise her from her bed. She wrote very little at that time, spent most of her days sleeping too much, eating very little and thinking too darkly.

   When Twoody returned to the Bree-land alone with the King’s Agreement in hand Alaura found herself lifted from this black cloud of dependence and inactivity; finally there was work to be done and a future to be seen outside of her father’s overcrowded hole on Bree-hill. The document which her friends had secured stirred her imagination. The language of it was like none she had ever read, strewn with unusual phrases and many untranslatable words, the sounds and meanings of which she could only guess at. While Alaura felt joy to have Twoody returned to her and disappointment to hear that Gondo had gone on alone, it was her intense feeling of envy which she found hardest to hide on that day in the garden.

   For, by her own appraisal, Alaura herself should have gone alongside her friends to Norbury. She should have had the opportunity to walk in those gardens, to see the high walls and towering spires, to read in the great library from all sorts of unfamiliar books and learn all that she may in the court of the Sea-king. It was, of course, only her sex, her age and, as always, the narrow-mindedness of others which prevented this.

   The walk from the Bree-land to the king’s court at Norbury was reported to be long and dangerous. Going at a wary pace a hobbit might manage to cover the distance with five nights spent in the open. But no hobbit had gone or come from that way in recent memory and the Northlands were, with good reason, considered dangerous by all Breelanders. No one felt this was a trip to be made by a proper, young and unmarried doe3 like Alaura. Most of her neighbours (and some of her family) might have found it easy to blame this ridiculous thinking on her father, a hobbit who was very well-known for his indomitable conventionality. But Alaura, in her heart, had been disappointed most to find it in her friends.

 

   ‘Alaura, you are not listening,’ she could remember Gondo saying to her long months ago before their trip began. ‘The north may be dangerous as many folk say, and while I would be cautious every step of the way for your safety I also imagine you might be better suited to a long trip than Twoody here,’ he said with a smile and a jab at their friend’s rather solidly stuffed waistcoat. ‘But, please, be reasonable. What might await us in Norbury is anyone’s guess. How a doe like yourself might be received there is completely unknowable. The Big Folk seldom travel with their women-folk, from what we’ve seen.’

   ‘Father has mentioned a few female soldiers coming through the Bree-land,’ Twoody had offered as weak argument, ‘but they are rare by all accounts.’

   ‘The two of you go on and on about the roles Women play in the world of Men and I simply cannot understand it,’ Alaura had replied with swiftness and a bit of anger. ‘What do Women and Men have to do with Hobbits? Why is it that the role of Women is so much more interesting to you hobbits than Men themselves are to Women? And what, I ask you again, should anything which you have observed of Men and Women have to say about us as Hobbits? Sometimes it seems to me that we’ve made the history of the male’s opposition to female freedoms more convoluted than the history of freedom itself.’4

   Gondo had laughed loud and quick at this argument; Alaura knew how he loved clever language and she was not above using that love to woo his attention and support. But Twoody, looking a bit stung and a little defensive said, ‘Alaura, that’s unfair. Gondo is simply suggesting that we do not know anything about the Court of the King and how you might be accepted there.’

   ‘I should be accepted just as you may be, I should think, Twoody,’ she had replied harshly. ‘Just as any of us should be by a king who respects his people. Together we should be accepted as three young, charming, well-informed, far-sighted hobbits who believe in the worthiness of our People to develop the lands beyond the Bridge for ourselves, to restore them to abundance, and to keep them free in the King’s name. I think that I can present myself in this way every bit as well as the two of you might. And I think that is the respect I should expect from any good king... and from my friends as well.

   ‘Tell me,’ she asked, sparing Twoody from her attack and looking toward Gondo, ‘should I be talked out of attending this king’s court because of my own sex or because of your own protectiveness? Can we not have one argument without the other?’

   ‘Is it wrong for us to wish to protect you, Alaura?’ Gondo had asked, and there had been a great silence between the three friends for a time after.

   ‘It is not wrong to wish it,’ Alaura had finally said, ‘and it is most kindly meant, I know. But it is not fair, nor just nor kind for your protection to contain myself as a person. You wish to protect me, the both of you, but will you not also allow me to grow from these experiences just as you will?’

 

   In her better and younger days (before Twoody and Gondo had gone north without her) Alaura was most always the earliest riser in the Tinyfoot home. When she had first learned to read and to write as a fawn5 she could not wait for each day to begin. An eleventh child in a household of fifteen children has few responsibilities in their morning, but Alaura, then not yet a tween, would rise from her cot each morning well before the Sun and drag her borrowed books, her begged-for ink bottles and her very raw and ragged strips of borrowed paper up to the eastern edge of her father’s home so the the awakening Sun might help her study. There was a small grove of trees above the north wall, a fallen stump to sit on and, if the day of writing and reading went on for too long, a little rill of water in which Alaura might refresh herself. There were larks somewhere in the grove and Alaura was happiest in those early days when she woke before they did. This strict and regimented behaviour went on for a full year before Isengrim, in his usual clipped and harsh manner, decided to put an end to it.

   ‘Here now, Little Princess,’ he had said (of all his many children Isengrim always called Alaura “Little Princess” for her being, in both her manner and her mysteriousness, most like to her mother Celedine whom he loved, respected and openly admitted to misunderstand greatly). ‘Winter is coming and the morning is cold on the side of the Hill. I won’t see you sitting upon a stump, drinking pondwater and doing the work of determining your own life unsupported. If you’re to greet the Sun earlier than your sluggard brethren, for whatever purpose suits you, then you will need a more apt place for doing it.’

   And so, while she was still quite young, “Alaura’s Room” was built into the Bree-hill. It ran through a long and divided tunnel in the family hole which made the other Tinyfoot siblings unwelcome. There was a round staircase (something hobbits generally do not favour) which was dark and discouraging and led from that tunnel to the Room’s position high above the rest of their home. The hill of Bree was very broad and Isengrim’s house was nowhere near the crest, so all of this digging was done in secret, her father and brothers burrowing deeper and higher than most hobbitholes might be. Isengrim chose to have the light come from the east and the southwest. This required round windows set high into channels of the Hill, almost like skylights, and they afforded no view to the outside world or, better still, little outside view into the room. But in this way Alaura’s Room received morning light before anyone else and evening light much longer. It was small, more like a perch than a parlour, and furnished in a spare manner so that Alaura might entertain no visitors and also never become so relaxed as to not return home at the end of a day. In the Room itself there was a well-crafted table and a straight backed chair and a row of various sized shelves (for Isengrim himself did not read nor did he yet understand the practical design of a bookshelf). Here, apart and deep in the hillside, Alaura had a room of her own6 and no other hobbit than her father and her brothers had ever seen it.

   On the morning of Gondo’s return Alaura sat in that highest perch of her father’s house writing new reports for THE SHIRE-RECKONING and letting the Sun stir her plans of the future. The house had begun to awaken below her but the morning was quiet and, while she could not see out from the high windows, she caught her father’s voice on the air, talking with someone. Then, and almost before he spoke, she recognized Gondo’s own voice in response.

 

*****

 

   He heard her before she arrived, of course; Alaura was never a quiet hobbit, particularly in the mornings. Just how many siblings were packed with her into Isengrim’s vast hole in the hillside at this time Gondo did not know, but while they all made a great din of talking and yelling at one another (as they did on most mornings) Alaura’s voice rose above the rest. ‘Ooch, will you get that off me!’ He heard her say. ‘Can I not have a moment to myself, please?’ ‘Oh, rocks! I cannot think for all of your prattling!’ There was a sound of crashing mugs and laughs from the others inside, to which Alaura called, ‘fine then! You take him the milk and scones! You may tell him that I shall be along presently or I shall be along when it suits me, whichever is more to my own liking! I’ve no doubt that he will understand the logic of that!’

   There was a bit more muffled disquiet caused by this response, but Gondo could not make it out. He smiled contentedly though, knowing that he was being made to wait and accepting that this might be the easiest portion of his eventual punishment.

   From the western side of the hole and through the garden below Gondo saw the small figure of one of Alaura’s younger brothers come up the path bearing a tray. ‘Hullo, Gondo!’ the youngster called waving, and quickly stopped to steady the laden tray again with both his hands. This was Clothaire Tinyfoot, whom they all called Clooty; the seldom invited tag-along on many of Gondo, Twoody and Alaura’s earlier adventures. He was six years younger than Gondo or Twoody but had followed the two of them whenever possible (and whenever Alaura would allow it). As a fawn, Clooty had been all ‘shins and hinds and elbows’ as some hobbits say, a clumsy ball of energy which the elder Twoody and Gondo could direct into whatever mischief they liked. It seems that Alaura had directed him to be her herald this morning.

   ‘Hullo, Clooty,’ Gondo returned, standing to help the youngster up the path with the overly large tray. ‘Have you been chosen as Cupbearer for the Day?’

   ‘It would seem so,’ the young hobbit replied with a smile as they set the tray on the wrought iron table in the gardenhouse. ‘“Our Ladyship” is in a temper to hear of your return and seems to be putting on airs and changing wardrobe. You’ve upset her by being gone so long, you know. But we are all very happy to see you safely returned! Three months in the wilderness without a pot to cook in, from what we hear! How did you manage? Here, I’ve brought some good morning dainties for talking. Sit and enjoy them!’

   Gondo did as he was asked, quite eagerly in fact. Most of what he had eaten the night before was done standing and between mouthfuls of conversation with Twoody and the other pioneers at the inn. Here the tray was laden with small bowls of bright summer fruits, scones and muffins alongside jams and creamy butter, two small cakes giving off hints of savory contents, and a large kettle of steamed sweetmilk.7 He was glad to see that there were only two cups and two plates and two napkins.

   ‘You’ll not join me then?’ Gondo asked cautiously.

   ‘Oh, heavens no! She’d have me quartered!’ Clooty replied with a smile. ‘But,’ he said, looking cautiously over his shoulder towards the path, ‘I would venture a nibble of one of those scones while we wait and talk.’

   ‘Take what you like and I’ll keep lookout,’ Gondo said with a conspiratorial smile of his own.

   This went on for another twenty minutes or more, Gondo sitting at the table talking and Clooty listening intently while standing (and sneaking occasional bites from his pocketed scone). Gondo told the youngster about all of the plans that he and the other hobbits had made the night before, about the lands that he had seen and about how much work there was to be done there.

   ‘We will leave this very morning,’ Gondo said, measuring the words which he knew he would have to repeat soon for a much more difficult audience. ‘All last night the hobbits were registering their names and discussing their shared provisions for the great task ahead of us. Make no mistake about hobbitfolk, Clooty. When they have a fire in their belly to do a thing there’s little that can stand in their way. I have never seen such a dedicated group of strangers offer to throw their backs into a job so readily. Twoody thinks we will have two hundred or so by the time we leave and each, to a hobbit, will find lands and positions for themselves by next year’s planting.

   ‘We will build roads and wells, clear stumps and open fields, dig irrigation and sewage for months first, of course,’ he continued. ‘Very hard and tedious work that needs to be done to make the first homes and settlements and farms ready. We will work through long months as the countryside is mapped and parceled. But each of these early pioneers will be able to stake out a home for themselves just as I have done and each of them will have worked alongside new friends and neighbours who will help them build it.

   ‘And this will be our new home, Clooty,’ Gondo said, looking the young hobbit straight into his eyes and recognizing the excitement which his words were fanning there. ‘We will be safe there and under the protection of the King and, as our own past has been so terrifying, that protection means we might finally live together in peace and without fear. But, moreover, this will be our land to build! What fantastic things we might do there, just hobbits together, without the rest of the world-’

   ‘Oi!’ a voice came loudly. ‘You are gone nine months without word nor message nor sign of regard. Have you come now to tempt my brother to join you or to speak your grand ideas of a future to me?’

   In their excited conversation Gondo and Clooty had quite lapsed in keeping lookout. If they had expected her to follow Clooty’s path up through the garden on the west side of the Hill then they had been foolish and forgetful; for Alaura Tinyfoot seldom came into any conversation from an expected vantage point. They were quite unprepared for her when she arrived, but Gondo most of all.

   The midsummer Sun was still low and soft and yellow behind her as Alaura appeared, bathed in Her brilliance.8 Alaura had, presumably, come from the other side of the Hill and down the path from the front door to catch him unawares. As she stood chastising him the Sun was behind and just a little above her, casting warm light to surround her figure and long shadows over the grass between them both.

   She walked forward to the gardenhouse and, somewhere, for just a moment, Gondo thought he heard a strange bird call in the west. High and soft and musical, it was. He knew little about gardening, but his time as a traveler had taught him much about how to follow the songs of birds, to listen for dangers and hope in their voices. ‘It must have been the lark,’9 he thought, ‘for she comes with the Sun.’

   Alaura had the darkest hair that any Bree-hobbit had ever seen and the morning Sun glimmered there like jewels on the raiments of the King. Her skin was pale, for she never cared for much time in the outdoors, but it had a rose-like tint that Gondo found hard to describe; no stone or flower or sunset that he had ever seen in all of his travels held the warmth and luster which Alaura’s skin did as the light of the Sun broke around her. He would travel longer and further in his future and see many sights and colours which were nothing like those of Bree-hill, but there was nothing he perceived in all those travels, since then or even later, nothing like the rosey coolness of Alaura’s skin as it remained fixed in his memory.

   She was wearing a dress of blue and it was bright as the day behind her. Gondo had never seen her in a dress before, he was a bit shocked to discover she even owned such a thing. As she walked toward him on the paving stones he watched it ripple in the morning light.

   Some years later Gondo would be the first Hobbit in all their recorded history to look out on the Great Sea. What he saw there, and what he may have thought of that vast and unending blue shimmering and rippling on into an unknowable distance is lost to us. But on that morning in Celedine’s garden he was transfixed by the rippling blue of Alaura’s dress coming to him from out of the Sun and would remember that moment always.

 

*****

 

   They spoke for a time of the king’s court and all that Alaura had missed there. Just as Twoody had done on his own return, Gondo recognized that Alaura should have accompanied them and that they had been wrong in keeping her from it. He talked for much longer about the new land, “The Shire” as she had called it, and he was glad to hear the name from her lips. ‘The Shire, it is then,’ he added with a strange kind of praise and authority, ‘the place we’ve planned to make together.’ He told her of what he had found and built there; of the small start of a well and the digging of what he called “Sarehole” and she laughed with him at the dry humour of its name. Eventually this led to him telling of his return last night and all of the plans which he and Twoody had laid at the Inn of the Four Greenfields. Just as he had always done, he told her all. For he was bold by nature and Gondo knew that with Alaura, to be bold meant that one had to be honest.

   ‘Whatever do you mean “leaving today”?’ Alaura asked with shock and surprise. 

   ‘What could you possibly mean by that? Gondo, you have only just returned!’ 

   They were alone in the gardenhouse now as Clooty had made a quick and cautious disappearance once his sister had arrived. Alaura had poured out the sweetmilk and had passed out the cakes. They were together now after nine months of being parted and she was, once again, spending her mornings planning for her future. Alaura, Tinyfoot or Fairheart or however we should think to call her, had always believed in the building of a new home for all hobbits in the new lands. She had shaped that future together with her friends and was ready to leave her present condition and begin it at heartbeat.

   But then she heard that Gondo was to leave that very morning to do the same without her, and the dish fell from her lap with a resounding crash.

   ‘Alaura,’ Gondo said, stooping to pick up the remnants of the shattered plate, ‘there are hundreds of hobbits waiting down there to be led into the new lands-’

   ‘And you must be the one to lead them? Of course, you must,’ she said with a sour voice of resignation, standing and putting her back to him to make her anger all the more obvious. ‘Why would I believe anything else of you? Of course you are leaving again. And dragging poor Twoody along with you again, no doubt. How long will you be gone this time, I wonder?’

   ‘I do not mean to ever return,’ Gondo said quietly, putting the broken shards and wasted cake on the bench, still on his knees before her.

   ‘What was that?’ Alaura said, turning back to face him. ‘What did you say?’

 

*****

 

   Surely she would marry the one of them, Gondo or Twoody but, to Alaura, on that morning and in those days, this decision was still unknown and far off. She had known it to be true long before either of them did of course, but she had not seen any reason to worry about such a matter as so many other possibilities were laid before them. And she loved them both very much and knew that her choosing would be hard on each of them; why complicate all of their lives with such matters when the planning of a whole new world was so much more exciting for the three of them together? Best to let such confusing matters as marriage and children wait, she thought, while there is important work to be done. For they were all still young and their lives were now filled with great opportunities. She would marry one or the other, of course she would, but the work they were all doing together was simply more important to her than a decision about the triviality of who she would marry.

   Or so she might have said.

   Alaura did not fear that choosing one of her friends over the other would spoil all their relationships. Such an idea would be pure foolishness; for they had all been so close for so long that she could not believe that something as practical and conditional as marriage would ever harm the friendship which they all three had shared. She realized that boys (and bucks) viewed marriage with less frankness than she herself did, but she believed that the three of them together were stronger and had a love which was deeper than such a romantic silliness as jealousy. Whether she chose Gondo or she chose Twoody simply did not matter, their friendship would always remain. She never spoke to either of them about this, but she never doubted it.

   And while she had known for years that such a decision would eventually be coming it was not simple procrastination which put it off; for procrastination was not a thing Alaura Fairheart was ever known for. Perhaps she did consider and even list the merits of one partner over the other; as if measuring the impending problem could make her choice seem based upon the logical and reasoned arguments which she had become known for. As none of her journals have survived we will never know. But certainly Alaura knew herself well enough to not be swayed in an important decision by the vanity of her ability to argue one point over another.

   And it was also not her arrogance as an individual (something which she took great pride in) which kept her from deciding. Alaura always knew that she would be married and have children. She always knew that she would have a partner and together they would raise their youngsters to be unique and individual thinkers just as she and both her suitors were. She loved her own time to write and to think and she defended it harshly. But whomever she chose as a partner, she knew that together they would raise their children in this same way and to teach them to defend their own individuality. Part of her ambition in life, from her earliest days, was to make a home which represented her own unique way of thinking and would nurture and respect the individuality of her children. Beyond the simple choice of a husband she believed this to be her fate; she was meant to leave the Bree-land and discover a better home for her family and for all hobbits who might follow.

 

   ‘“Anar” we have called Her for some time,’ Alaura’s mother Celedine told her one early morning when she came to find her daughter on the side of Bree-hill. She pointed toward the Sun and smiled, her whole body seemingly caught in the morning light. ‘And She travels far, daughter, far and farther than hobbits do, but still brings Her light to all places. She touches my gardens here as She does all others and, under Her light, all things grow.

   ‘For plants who seek “Anar”, who climb and grow and want, my garden is a confinement; they would follow Her light far and farther while my rows and flowerbeds might only offer a narrow space to tend their needs.’

   ‘Yes,’ Alaura replied, aware at even a young age that they were not really talking about plants. ‘But you water them and nurture them and keep away other plants which might choke them out, Maw. You protect them.’

   ‘Yes, I do when they will allow me to,’ her mother had replied. ‘But many would rather seek “Anar” than suffer from unfulfillment in the protection of my garden.’

 

   So Alaura had learned to trust in her understanding of the world and her place in it. She knew that the power of her own argument was not the decider of her fate. She knew that she would eventually leave the Bree-land and that her fate was somehow caught in that idea. Of course she would marry either Gondo or Twoody, and that this decision had for years lain somewhere ahead of her. Like all matters of fate, one day it would lay spread before her. She had convinced herself, before that morning on Bree-hill, that the moment of her fate had not yet come.

   But now, in this moment, Gondo was kneeled before her, proclaiming his intentions to go forth into the new land. Behind her, and from higher on the Hill, Alaura heard the call of a nightingale. It was just past dawn. It should have been the family of larks singing to her from the old stand of trees high on the Hill where she had first learned to read and write. ‘It should be larks,’ she thought, ‘and the dawn of a new day now, with him, with my choice. It should be the call of larks.’

   But no, for Alaura knew birdcalls well and read her destiny in them. On the morning of her betrothal to Gondo, Alaura Fairheart heard the song of Nightingales calling to her and knew her heart as well as her fate.

 

*****

 

   That moment, when he kneeled before her, was forever frozen in Gondo’s memory. Under the shade of the canopy gazing up to her alongside the Hill. The Sun was on the lawn behind her only and all around her only. He could not see her face well but saw the blue of her dress which the strong light of the Sun behind made to look black and white in contrast. It was Alaura. She was standing straight beside her chair, looking down at him, listening to something. Gondo was surprised at her stillness and strained his ears to listen also. But he could hear little save the noise of laughter and dispute in Isengrim’s house beside them and, perhaps, a few notes of a bird’s voice singing.

   He kneeled still in the canopy’s shadow, trying to catch the melody of that birdsong and gazing up at Alaura. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol for something which he could not read. And he asked himself, ‘Now what might a hobbit-doe, standing on a hill in shadow, listening to the distant call of a bird, be a symbol of?’ He would ask himself that same question for many long years of his life. ‘If I was a painter of portraits,’ he thought at that moment, ‘then I would paint her in that attitude. Her blue dress would show off the luster of her skin in cool shadows and the blaze of the Sun’s color on her luxuriant black hair. If I were a painter,’ he thought at that time, ‘I would call that picture ‘“Distant Music.”’10

 

*****

 

   None of the letters or journals of their days together survive, no evidence of this moment recorded in their own hand has ever been found. We know of the importance and vitality of their relationship only through scattered fragments in the diaries and writings of their relatives and friends. The best account is said to have been in the original version of "The Tale of the Bucks and the Tooks" written by Deidre Took, though there is some doubt as to when these few surviving fragments were written. The original poet of that ley was undeniably close to the lovers and her own view on the matter is therefore biased. But we have this much at least:

“With fair Sun in morning he came 

To Celedine’s Garden on the Hill. 

Fairheart and promise to reclaim,

A breeze amid leaves shimmering. 

Sun shone on rose and daffodil,
As shadows sank away in shame 

Along with mists in morning’s chill, 

On hair and garments glimmering.

 

“The Buck was kneeled at her feet 

‘Neath Celedine’s green canopy,

For promise in her eyes to meet;

His hope like flowers quivering. 

There in Fairheart’s stillness he

Saw his new vows made incomplete 

And his wanderings a vanity;

So both stood still and shivering.

 

“Bright Sun behind Fairheart still shone 

Casting warmth on Celedine’s lawn. 

Her dark hair like a riverstone

Around her head Sun’s gold glistening. 

In hope of Promise like his own

To her dark eyes the Buck’s were drawn. 

But her gaze was hard, far and gone. 

Warmed by Sun, she stood; listening.

 

“To her from far he had returned, 

‘Neath distant stars he’d wandered lost, 

To bring a Promise reconfirmed; 

Bowed proud in his love unwavering. 

O’er Brown river -four times crossed- 

Again return’d. He assured

His wandering ways now all quashed; 

Their Promise now his favouring.

 

“But then beneath the canopy,

Her shadowed face admonishing, 

She heard him say, so callously, 

That he must go; unsorrowing.

Her joy now gone acknowledging 

Her Childhood’s Love’s new fantasy. 

And so she must; abandoning

Stay or go; always following.

 

“‘How can this be?’ Fairheart asked, 

Though what was said remains untold. 

Old arguments have long since passed 

Since that day they spoke untroubling. 

There in Garden did pledge unfold

As morning Sun pushed shadows past.

Light on Fairheart’s skin bright as gold 

While birds did call; voices bubbling.”11

 

   Try as we may to sift through rumour and legend we cannot know the truth. Without letters or journals we cannot offer much about Gondo and Alaura as individuals beyond what our own conjectures as historians might offer to the rich tapestry of stories that have been told, whether through song or gossip, of the many difficult decisions the two lovers each made in their lives.

   But all the gossipers and historians and storytellers agree that the fate of Gondolpho the Boldbuck and Alaura Fairheart was drawn together on that morning when the pioneers first left the Shire in Year One and a strong belief in the power of fate (or whatever one might call it) was forever after attached to their betrothal.

   Perhaps it is our belief in fate outside of the clear distinction of evidence that is, in part, why we believe that history forgives a good story.

 

end of chapter seven

Chapter End Notes

Notes

 

1)  It is January 3rd, 2024 as I write this section and my wife and I are on a much-needed winter vacation. I don’t really look for people to read my writing while it is still under construction, but this novel has been a long burden that, to be frank, I felt might have started becoming a waste of my time. Having a reader outside of Tolkien fandom is important; it helps give an author a sense of whether they’re truly bringing anything unique into the writing. Outside readers will look for themes and engagements that have nothing to do with fan service. I’m happy to report that my wife found the first Part of this book very engaging and even more happy to admit that she gave me wonderful advice by telling me more of what she would like to see. That is where this chapter comes from; she quite frankly felt that she did not understand Alaura’s choice to wed Gondo instead of Twoody. I had written a strong scene of longing through Twoody’s perspective but, as most of Part One has only Twoody’s interiority, we never see very deeply into Gondo and Alaura’s relationship. So this chapter and its unique structure is my answer to her and to other readers who may feel the same way. We will see more writing, though less interiority, from both these characters later in the novel, but for now I must address the problem Molly Bloom has with love stories; “was she meant to be in love with the first fellow the whole time?”

2)  This might be an addendum to the note above, but the device I’ve used here is to echo the scene of Twoody and Alaura’s meeting from Chapter Two very directly with a missing scene between Gondo and Alaura upon his return to the Shire. There was a LOT of copy/paste done here to make it rhythmically similar.

3)  I spent quite a lot of time during this rewrite trying to sort out gender titles for hobbits; female hobbits are not “women” any more than males might call themselves “men”. “Doe” and “Buck” seem better suited here and take me one step closer to another of my non-Tolkien models for writing hobbits; Watership Down.

4)  Keeping up with Alaura’s way of thinking these two (bastardized) ideas come from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Much of my early idea of Alaura was framed around Woolf and I find I’m returning to that a lot as I write this section.

5)  We come back to strange pronouns of hobbit culture here. I’m not sure where I first read the idea of calling a hobbit-child a “fawn”, but it certainly has stuck with me. It appears in some fanfic that I’ve read and seems to suggest an age between toddler and teen.

6)  This little Easter egg took a while in development but, of course, “Alaura’s Room” is a feed into Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”.

7)  I spent a very delighted and distracted time earlier today (January 7th, 2024) wondering about hobbit breakfasts. To be clear, this meal is closer to an appetizer which one hobbit might serve a guest and so does not qualify as First or Second Breakfast. But the real question for me was in the morning beverage of choice; do hobbits drink tea at this point in the history of Middle-earth? Probably not. I’d like to believe that the discovery of tea in the Shire, as it was in England, is a story for a later day. What I’m picturing here is some kind of steamed milk drink that has other dried herbs added to it, with sugars to give it a sweetness.

8)  This was a difficult sentence to construct. The “Her” refers to the gender of the Sun in Tolkien and not Alaura’s gender. I did not want to make this too overt for early readers of Fanfic, but wanted a version which would make them dive deeper; hence the capital “H”.

9)  Because of the Nightingale metaphors throughout Tolkien I felt it necessary to go a little further in this chapter. The “nightingale and the lark” comparison you will find here is, of course, from Romeo and Juliet, Act III. This continues through the scene wherein Gondo thinks of Alaura’s approach from the east as Romeo does of Juliet.

10)  These two paragraphs of Gondo looking up at Alaura are rather freely cropped from theJames Joyce story "The Dead." It is a scene which I’ve drawn and spoken about many times and was the lynchpin for my writing of this chapter. Obviously this chapter is intended to echo the meeting of Beren and Luthien, reference the Romeo and Juliet as I’ve mentioned above, but also I wanted to make it more my own by riffing upon some of my fondness for Joyce. Gabriel watching his wife Greta on the stair in private reverie is a strong moment of enchantment in The Dead with a slightly different context of powerlessness. This is also one of the joys of writing fanfic; I feel no compunctions against sampling, even outright copying, some of the things I love into something which I simply wish to make.

11)  This poem, while looser in structure than Tolkien’s own, is based on The Ley of Luthien, of course. I do not do it justice, though I tried very hard. One of my happiest moments in life comes from reading part of Tolkien’s poem at an outdoor wedding for my friends Allen and Janice. It was nice to bring my memories of that experience into my work here. (01/05/2025) During the edits of this I have finally gotten around to writing the poem in a form closer to what I would like. I apologize to any of my readers who had to deal with the earlier version but, as alway; “poetry is hard.”

 

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