author's note. This story fits in with a larger headcanon I've adopted for Bard and his wife, whom I've named Grethe. In my mind they knew each other since they were kids (roughly - Bard's a bit older) and were married after her family home collapsed into the lake, killing all occupants. Grethe was out with Bard at the time and thus spared the tragedy but she was left homeless and penniless, marrying Bard just a few days later. Unfortunately, I am terrible at writing anything over a few thousand words. Someday the entire story may come out, but in the meantime I found that this part is capable of standing alone.

I'm sorry to say that this story is very, very sad. It deals with the sensitive subject of the loss of a child, something I've been fortunate enough not to experience, and I've tried my best to do it justice.

Bard's known Percy since he was a lad - taught himself his letters and ciphers on the back of old handbills while his father shared a pot of ale with the gatemaster after a day on the lake. Percy works for the Master, but he's a good sort, lets Bard duck inside his warm hut when his hands are frozen solid and doesn't look too closely at his papers. Percy's wife Runild is one of the midwives in town, nothing official but she'd attended hundreds of births. She'd been there to usher Bard into the world twenty-six years ago, and when Bard's own babes were due to be born his wife would have no one else.

Bard blows on his chill hands to warm them as he thinks of his little family, Sigrid and Bain and his beloved Grethe. She was carrying his child again, her belly swelling like a round basket. She had conceived the year after Bain was born, only to have it slip away two months later in a tidal wave of blood that nearly killed her. This new babe would be a blessing - late at night when she thought her husband was sleeping, Grethe would lay both her hands on her belly and talk to it. Be strong, little one. Be strong and grow.

Bard's smiling as he guides his barge to the gate. Winter is finally thawing and he found a few snowdrops out in the barrens - he'd dug one up, root and all, to bring a smile to his wife's face. Percy steps out of the hut and Bard greets him with a hearty 'hullo.'

Percy doesn't return the grin. There is something in the elder man's eyes that Bard hasn't seen in many a year, not since Bard's own da was laid to rest. "Come inside," he says to the bargeman.

Bard's eyes adjust to the dark, and then he hears a familiar sniffle, and realizes that there's a little figure tucked close to Percy's warming stove. It's Sigrid - she's only four, what's she doing out without her ma - and three-year-old Bain is cuddled close beside her. "Children? What are you doing here?"

Sigrid doesn't answer, only raises her arms to be lifted into her father's embrace. She's a big girl but she still fits on his hip. With his free hand, Bard strokes the curls atop his little son's head and looks to the gatemaster for answers.

"Your wife called my Runild out after you left this morning," Percy says quietly. "I thought to take the children off their hands. They shouldn't have to witness - that."

Bard's hand comes to his mouth and his eyes grow wide. His gut roils, threatens to deliver a load of fish stew all over the gatehouse floor. "No," he says finally, "it wasn't her time yet. Late spring, she said. It wasn't her time."

Percy moves to retrieve the little girl from Bard's hip before he can drop her, but Sigrid clings tighter to her da's chest. "It happens that way sometimes," he says. "I'm sorry."

"And my wife? Is she alive or dead? Tell me."

Percy shakes his head. "I don't know," he admits. "But Runild promised she would send word if there was - news. There is yet room for hope, Bard."

"Hope," Bard echoes hollowly. "What of hope?"

Percy clasps his hand to the other man's shoulder. "Go," he says. "I'll look to your barge, and your bairns 'til you're ready."

Bard nods his thanks to the older man, gives his little ones three kisses apiece, and he is off.

Runild stops him at the door. "The babe never lived," she says quickly. "It was too soon."

Bard tugs at his hair in desperation. "I know that," he says, his voice rising in pitch. "Do you think I don't know that?" He's had the whole way back from the customs gate to think on it - that the babe is dead, and his wife very likely also.

Runild gives him a pitying look. "Quiet, lad. Your wife needs her rest."

Bard staggers against the lintel. "Then she lives? Will she yet live?"

Runild has seen to her share of births, and she has learned not to give false hope, desperate though a husband may be. "She may yet," Runild tells him. "The labor itself was no hardship - the babe was small, an' your wife's body is fitted to the task."

"But -"

"But her heart is broken," says Runild. "'Tis not an easy thing."

"No."

"Comfort her, Bard, as best as you can." Runild takes Bard's arm - gently, for she is fond of the lad - and leads him to his own bedchamber.

Grethe is curled facing the wall on their marriage-bed, legs tucked high against her body, and doesn't turn to face him. A bloody clot of wool is between her thighs, her breasts tightly bound to stanch the flow of milk. And her arms are empty. Empty, where a mewling bundle should have been tucked. The windows should be thrown open to a warm breeze and not closed tight against the still cold and mocking sunshine.

Bard wants to scream. He wants to rail against his ancestors, the midwife, at himself for putting her in this predicament. He wants to tear the house down to its foundations, to burn the whole of Lake-town down to the waterline, to inflict the pain on the whole world that Fate has chosen to inflict on his dear wife.

But he cannot. Instead, he climbs onto their bedstead and takes her carefully into his arms like a fragile piece of china. "Love," he whispers into her sweat-damp hair. "Oh, my dearest love."

Grethe lets out a wail, a high unearthly keening that sets dogs to barking all up and down the block. "Why," she demands, over and over, "why couldn't I keep him?"

"I don't know." Bard wishes he knew the right thing to say. A pang of regret shoots through his own heart - it was a boy. A little brother for Sigrid and Bain. Their son, conceived in love, would have been heartily welcomed into this little home. The loss becomes more real to Bard in that moment - that he was a he and not an it.

Grethe turns on him with anguished eyes. "Why couldn't I keep him?" she says again. "I would have loved him. Did I not deserve him?"

"There's no reason why," Bard tells her, knowing his words are a cold comfort. "You deserved him." He tries not to think of Sallow Mag down by the docks, saddled with her eighth bastard by as many men; tries not to wonder why his own wife is less worthy.

"Am I not a good enough mother?" Grethe spits, bitterly.

"You are a fine mother," Bard says. His own tears are flowing freely now. "A fine woman. I know you loved this babe."

"But it was for naught."

"You love was not wasted. Know that - that your love is the finest thing in the world." He bends over her. "I would take this grief from you, if only I knew how."

"But you cannot," Grethe says in a very small voice. "No one can. Oh, Bard - don't put him in the lake! I couldn't stand the thought of him down there, all dark and cold. Tell me you won't put him in the lake. Swear it."

It's been the custom since the days of Erebor to return the dead to the lake from whence their living came. The tradition had always frightened Grethe since the day her family home had been swallowed by its waters, trapping all inside but Grethe, who had been away from home. In the first years of their marriage she'd been prone to nightmares, and though the dreams have lessened, Bard well understands that this is the most important thing in the world to her now. "I won't," he promises. "I'll find him a nice quiet spot on the mainland, and I'll bury him there, and when you're strong again I'll take you to go see him."

Presently Runild returns with a flagon of something warm. "I've prepared an herbal," she says quietly. "To prevent fever, and ease her sleep. She won't take nothin' from me - mebbe you can get it down her."

Bard pulls his wife to sitting, and it takes only a little pleading to get her to down the concoction. Presently her eyes grow heavy and she slides unwillingly into sleep. Runild watches the scene with pitying eyes, and after she's checked over Grethe's sleeping form, she presses a small wrapped bundle into the Bargeman's hands.

"She made me promise -" Runild starts, and then her own voice chokes in her throat. "She wants you to see 'im, the poor innocent." The aged midwife squeezes Bard on the arm in comfort, and ducks respectfully from the room.

To Bard, who's grown used to the solid heft of a toddler on each hip, the wee bundle weighs no more than a bundle of dried reeds. He lays it reverently on the foot of the bed, paces the floor for a good five minutes until he's worked up the fortitude to examine it more closely as he knows his wife wishes. Tugs anxiously at his hair, stops and starts several times before he can finally unwrap the little one's face.

He was a beautiful boy, with his father's ink-dark hair and his mother's rosebud mouth. Eyes that never opened, skin as thin as tissue. Tiny nails like pearls at the end of each finger. Perfect in every way, except that he was too small to have lived. It's a mockery to Bard, a thing so fundamentally wrong that it makes him want to scream.

He was a beautiful boy.

Bard takes his barge out the next morning at dawn; it's quiet and misty, and Percy raises the gate without a word, only a sympathetic nod. Where there would be barrels of fish or casks of wine is only a small bundle, carefully wrapped in Grethe's finest embroidered table-linen and tucked in a willow basket. It's the smallest cargo this barge has ever carried - the smallest, yet somehow the heaviest. The barge seems to move more slowly, the water lapping mournfully at its sides.

Bard has a place in mind: he thought on it last night, after he'd retrieved the children from Percy's and fed them and tucked them abed. He hadn't slept at all; instead he sat staring by the fire, rousing only to give sips of water or Runild's herbal to Grethe when she roused. He steers his barge to the mouth of the river, ties it at the shore and walks half-a-mile inland.

There's a little hollow in the ground home to a stand of yew trees, tucked away where no one would be likely to stumble across it by accident. Bard has taken refuge here before when sudden rainshowers threatened to drown him - he brought Grethe here to picnic when they were younger. He's never seen another living soul here, which is the primary consideration - he won't have their son's grave made fodder for curious eyes.

The ground is still frozen here, sheltered as it is from all but the most direct sunlight. It's no small task to dig even a small grave, deep enough that the poor wee babe's bones won't be worried by wild animals. Though the bargeman's hands are roughened and used to work, still they are blistered and bleeding before he is satisfied. Yet he welcomes the pain as a sacrament.

Bard reverently places the bundle in its neat grave. The first spadeful of dirt he turns over it is an insult, and when the grave is covered over completely he has to pause in his work and sob for a good five minutes. But the task isn't finished, and he allows his tears to dry on his cheeks as he hauls stones from the river. He piles the grave over with the finest stones he can find, worn smooth by the currents of a thousand years or more. It's a pitiably small mound, but it's enough. A passing stranger stumbling across this glade will never suspect the tragedy that it contains, but Bard and Grethe will always know.

Grethe lies abed for more than a week. She has no kinswoman so the neighbor wives look after her, bringing stews for the children of which Grethe won't touch more than a mouthful. But for a slight fever she is healthy. Runild sends over herbs and Bard repays her with a brace of wild rabbits shot fresh in the barrens. He stays close to home as much as he can, but there are loads to be ferried if he is to feed his family. He is at home when the Master's man comes around, ten days after the birth, and for that he is grateful - he shudders to think what would have happened if he'd been gone from home when it happened.

"Tax collector," the visitor identifies himself. He's an ugly little toady of a man, and not one Bard has seen before. Bard idly wonders why anyone would want to move to Lake-town if they had the choice. "I'm 'ere for your household tax."

"Household tax?" Bard remembers the stir it had caused in the poorer quarter of town, this new initiative of the Master's. Tax them the minute they're born - as if they aren't taxed when they die, and every day in between.

The tax man licks his lips and nervously glances around the room. If he's noticed that there isn't a cradle by the hearth or a string of nappies hung out to dry, he keeps it to himself. "Was your wife not delivered of a babe not a fortnight ago?"

Bard's voice is low - dangerous, if the foolish little tax collector had but known. "Do you see a babe in this house?"

The tax man draws himself up to his full insignificant height. "Pity that it died, bargeman, but the law's the law."

Though Bard is not a man of hot temper in general, his blood boils so hot that he can scarcely see. In no time at all he's got the tax collector pinned against the wall, Bard's forearm at his throat. The little man's eyes bulge and he tries to protest, but all that comes out is a squeak. "He never drew breath," the bargeman snarls. "He never lived, so no tax is owed. Ask the midwife if you don't believe me."

"Bard." A voice comes behind him in the doorway, one he knows - and loves. "Leave him be. He's only doing his job."

Bard drops his forearm from the tax-collector's throat. He backs away, hands raised in innocence, though his eyes are yet dark with rage. "Never darken the door of this home again," he says in a low voice.

The little man draws himself up, affronted. "I should think not."

Bard doesn't even watch to see him leave. He's at his wife's side in an instant. "Shouldnt you be sleeping?"

"I have slept plenty," she says. Her eyes are ringed with dark shadows and her hair is mussed, but he believes her. "I am done."

She looks cold. "Come here." He enfolds her to his breast and buries his face in her hair. "Are you all right? You shouldn't have had to see that."

Grethe's voice is muffled by her husband's chest. "I will survive it, I think."

Sigrid and Bain had ignored the tax-collector, being wholly engrossed in their wooden blocks, but they can't fail to notice their mother. Grethe finds her calves assaulted by a pair of small children and her ears by joyful shrieks. She pulls away from her husband and sinks to the floor, the better to be covered by sticky kisses. "Come here, my little chicks," she says. "Come to your mama."

Grethe's smiling and even laughing a little. Bard has been trying for the last ten days to coax the smallest smile out of his wife, with no success. His children succeed in a minute where he has failed - yet he doesn't grudge them the privilege one bit.

A few days after that. Bard and Grethe leave the children with a neighbor and take to the lake. Bard steers the barge in near silence while Grethe looks out across the bow. It's hardly a social call, but the day is sunny and promises warmth and they are able to make a little conversation. Bard finds his barge glides through the water more willingly than it did on that other, terrible day.

He ties up his boat ashore and helps his wife down with an assisting hand. She follows him through the barrens to their little hollow and takes it in with approving eyes. "This is good, Bard," Grethe says quietly. "This is right."

They stand in silence, shoulder to shoulder, looking down at the tiny grave though neither has a tear to shed. At length Grethe puts her hand to her husband's, and they are ready to go.

On the first anniversary they return; this time they bring a picnic and let the children play among the trees. And later that year, in the fall, Bard comes ashore by himself. "You have a new sister," he whispers to the quiet pile of stones. "Tilda and your ma are doing fine, just fine."

A few years after that, near blinded by tears, Bard digs out a larger grave and piles it chest high with stones, sobbing for the pain of his broken heart. The only thing - the only thing - that gives him even a hand's-breadth of comfort at that moment is that their boy is with his ma.