Last of the Ring-Bearers.

And all shall be well,

And all manner of thing shall be well…

- T.S. Eliot, 'Little Gidding'.

T

'Go now.'

Rose lifted her grey head from her pillow and fixed Sam with tired and tear-filled eyes. He was hunched over on a chair close by her bedside, holding her hand gently as he had done so often throughout her illness. He raised his gaze at meet hers.

'What's that you said my dear?'

'You will go won't you?" she said, smiling at him faintly.

'Go where Rosie?

'To the Havens Sam'

Soft and beseeching; the voice was Rosie's but the words seemed to rise from somewhere else, out of memory and the distant past. He stared at his wife but her eyes were tired and her vision failing. She closed them now and turned her head away to rest in the soft pillows. Her breathing which had been heavy and labored now came in soft gasps, her cold fingers tightened on his hand. He sat up straight and clutched at her, a sudden and horrible anguish seizing his heart.

'Oh Rosie me dear,' Sam cried, his voice suddenly strangled, 'I don't want to loose you! Please… please don't!'

'I must' she whispered and her grip relaxed. 'Dearest, Sam.'

Night fell quickly that day and though it was midyear the air seemed cold and wintry. As if he had been turned to stone Sam sat there, as the light from the bedroom window at Bag End dwindled and fled into the shadows. All night long he sat there, feeling her cold limp fingers in his hands, sick at heart and choking with tears that would not come.

********************

'He wants to go over the Sea to see Mister Frodo again.'

'Of course he does Ellie, but there's plenty as wants what they can't get.'

Fastred of Greenholm was sitting with his wife in their kitchen sucking industriously on his pipe. His father-in-law had arrived earlier that day unexpectedly and the news Elanor gave him as to the purpose of the visit troubled him greatly. He was a reasonable hobbit, something he prided himself on, and he would not have wished to obstruct his wife's happiness for all the world. But this was ridiculous. Mister Gamgee was old and frail; a journey to the Sea might well kill him. Of course Fastred had heard all about his Mister Gamgee's earlier life from Elanor. Strange stories she remembered from childhood, about magic rings, great battles and folk out of nursery rhymes and songs. That was all very well, as far as it went, and he had never been one to deny his wife her wilder flights of fancy. He was seldom so happy as when he saw her relating some tale her father had told with rapt countenance and wide eyes. She plainly adored such things and Fastred had seen no harm in it. But now she wanted to let her old father ride off to the Sea on the strength of some half-baked stories the old hobbit had once heard, and heard from Elves of all people.

'It's not right nor proper, that's my opinion! I daresay your father believes it completely, but he's old Ellie and there's plenty of folk as will believe whatever seems most comfortable to them when they get to that age. Your father was always much too inclined to trust to what people told him. He's lucky no real harm came of it before now. Take that Mister Frodo of his: he was a Baggins, half-mad from what I've heard. Went off for a long time and came back different they say. Folk tell the queerest tales about him.'

'Fastred! You know I told you before not to believe all you hear from people.'

'Now Ellie dear I'm only thinking of what's best for your father. It's not likely that all the Shire is mistaken, is it? Of course I'm not saying your father's lying, but he was awful fond of that Frodo Baggins and well, Ellie, there's plenty folk as can't see the wood from the trees, as they say, when they're that friendly with someone. He took a boat off into the West. How does your father know he wasn't just wrecked in some storm? There's not been sight nor sound of him since.'

'But the Elves, Fastred…'

And that's another thing, all this talk of Elves. I don't hold with going around with these foreign folk. 'The lost road' indeed! Naught but pretty pictures out of children's stories, that's what I say. 'Course stories are alright, in their proper place - but when it comes to believing in them? Oh Ellie, its medicine your father needs, not tales! And in any case, how does he expect to get across the Sea once he reaches it? From what you've told me that ship his Mr. Frodo went on was the last to go. What is he going to do when he gets to the Sea? Shout across the ocean and hope someone will hear him and come back for him? It's not natural, Elanor, leastways I can't see it. I think you should sit him down and try to talk him out of it. It's only right that you should.'

A flicker of doubt passed over Elanor's brow and she sat still for a time gazing through the kitchen door at the figure of her father huddled in an armchair. He was fast asleep.

'No.' she said at last, very softly, turning her blue eyes to meet her husband's. She got up from her seat and went to take the pot of soup off the fire.

'Well if you won't talk to him, I will,' declared Fastred, rising and putting aside his pipe.

Sam sat by the fireside facing into the dancing flames. The cast shadows leapt across his face and his wrinkles seemed lost in the red glow. For a fleeting moment as she watched him, Elanor fancied she saw her father as he had once been, long ago, when she was young and he was young and no grief marred their lives. As she approached he stirred and opened his eyes. Then he turned his face towards her and the illusion departed. It had been three months now since her mother's death and she had seen her father grow more frail and sorrowful every day. It was as if the last line that had held him to his life had been cut, and now he had no one left to live for and nothing left to do.

She placed a bowl of soup in his hands and knelt beside him.

'Thank you for having me, Elanor me dear. It's a wet night out and no mistake.'

'Oh father' she exclaimed 'As if you could ever be a burden!' She laid her head in his lap and, putting aside the bowl, he began to stroke her long golden hair, as he had done so often when she had been a child.

'Father,' she said at last, 'Fastred and I were talking about what you told me earlier; about going to the West.'

'Yes my dear?' said Sam, looking sleepily at his daughter.

'It's like this Mister Gamgee,' began Fastred, coughing and stepping forwards. 'You're tired, sir, and heaven knows what you've been through the past few months. But there's no call to be running off like this. Them as hasn't seen what they're told about, is wiser to not to believe what they're told, as they say. There's none who know what's out beyond in the West. That Mister Frodo now, he had nothing to go on but what Elves and all them queer folk told him. I'm sure he was a fine gentlehobbit, Mister Gamgee, and I'm not saying he would play anyone false, but he was queer - folk all say it, had his mind filled with strange tales that no sensible folk would ever have listened to. I'm not saying it was your Mister Frodo's fault, what with him having such a strange life and all, but I've no call to be thinking so many respectable hobbits could be mistaken. Please Mister Gamgee, I'm not trying to upset you but I only want what's best for you, sir, and Ellie too. Don't you see its all nonsense?'

Such a comment would, many years before, have elicited an angry and impassioned response from Sam, but now his reply was firm and gentle.

'I don't know Fastred. I'm no good at arguing about such things. But my head, as I've often said, was never the best part of me. There's other parts I listen to with more reason, if you take my meaning.  I don't believe even Mister Frodo was certain that he was right in thinking the ship would leave when it did. But he went anyway. Because he had to; because something inside him he couldn't argue against told him it was right.'

Fastred groaned in pity and exasperation. He dearly loved his father-in-law and it pained him greatly to see him throw aside the counsel of those around him. And poor Ellie! Fastred dreaded to think how she might react if ill came out of this. The death of her mother had affected her deeply; another blow so soon and so needlessly would shake her to the core. But the old hobbit was stubborn and it was impossible not to feel sorry for him. He had nothing left now but the fading memories of an old friend and the pitiful delusion that he could see him again.

Fastred persisted, but in vain, for no amount of reasonable arguments could dissuade old Mister Gamgee. Eventually he gave up. And when Elanor followed him to bed that night, after seeing that her father was well taken care of, he smiled at her fondly. She was as naive and as trustful as them came, but somehow he felt he loved her all the more for it. If Mister Gamgee left she would cling doggedly to the conviction that he had in fact passed over the Sea. He only hoped that she would never have any reason to loose the comfort of that belief.

********************

And so Samwise Gamgee left the Tower Hills behind on a grey September morning and, for only the third occasion in his life, rode out from the Shire, this time never to return. Before he left he took Elanor into a side room.

'Here,' he said, reaching into his old pack, 'I want you to keep this for me.'

'Oh father, the Red Book! I wondered where it had got to all these years.' Her eyes shone and Sam felt like he would like to catch her up in his arms and place her on his lap as he used to do at storytime. But dignity and his bent back forbade it.

Carefully, he laid the volume on a table, and then, as if he were bidding it farewell, he opened it and ran the pages through his hands one last time. Thin, spidery script on well worn folios flashed past in an instant to be followed by a stronger script that filled most of the book. The brown ink was already fading and the pages yellowing and ragged at the edges. A trace of a smile played across Sam's worn features as he watched the years roll back and his youth run by swiftly before him. He stopped and placed his hand on one page near the end. Here the firm hand ended at last and was replaced by a tighter, less confident one that ran self-consciously over the remaining sheets. Sam marked the transition with his fingers and stared long at the page as if he were trying to imprint it on his memory. Elanor thought she saw tears start in his eyes and he seemed to see scenes and faces long passed away. It was a look she had seen on odd occasions before, though until know she had never known the reason for it. 'He misses him,' she reflected sadly, 'he never really let him go'.

'You will take care of it won't you Elanor? It means a lot to me that you should.'

She nodded silently and, moving towards him, kissed him gently upon the cheek.

He travelled onwards and the hours, the days and the nights seemed to merge around him as he went. He did not feel the need to count the moments, or consider how far he had gone. Then, late one afternoon he tasted it, the tang of salt on the moist air. He raised his head and listened; the call of gulls circling overhead came to his ears and the mournful sound of the swash and backwash of the waves on the sand rose in front of him.

Slowly he wound his way around the ruined buildings and statues that led to the Sea. He could hear it clearly now, a sound never forgotten, bearing in its song many memories of the past. He rounded a corner and then he saw it once again. Shining grey water; it spread out before him like a sudden rupture in the walls of the earth, stretching wide away until it joined the heavens and was lost to his sight.

He dismounted and the pony wandered off in search of fresher grass than that offered by the sandy shore. The shingle crunched under Sam's feet as he paced slowly towards the water's edge. There was not a sound to be heard but the cry of the gulls and the whisper and hiss of the waves as they fell upon the white sand. He looked around him. He could see the spot where the ship had lain that day - but the harbour was deserted now. The place was heavy with the past, but no breath of life seemed left in it now. The waves would come and go, rise and fall forever, unmarked by any living soul and heedless of anything but their own eternal song.

He stood there long. The air grew colder. And presently it seemed that he could hear voices, carried to him on the wet wind.

And I can't come.

No Sam. Not yet anyway, not further than the Havens. Though you too were a Ring-Bearer, if only for a little while. Your time may come.

May come. For the first time the words sounded different. What had seemed a reassurance suddenly became fraught with uncertainty. Frodo had not known. He had not been sure.

Doubt, so long ignored, for the first time began to creep into Sam's thoughts. He sat down heavily by a large, spray-soaked rock.

Once again he could hear Fastred's inflexible but well-meaning voice in his head, and this time he heeded it. What if it was just nonsense? What if all the hope he had held for many long years after Frodo's departure had been in vain? West of the Moon, East of the Sun… the Undying Lands were merely a figment of legend, of the imagination of some long-forgotten bard, searching for a way please his audience. None who departed for those shores ever returned; who was there to say that the blind faith of the Elves was justified? There was no road into the West: only the unfriendly sea and its roaring waves waiting to devour the Elves' light ships. What if Frodo's body had lain at the bottom of a distant ocean for the past decades, lost with all the others when the boat had outsailed the calmer reaches of the water? Fear and horror crept into Sam's mind at these thoughts never before entertained. What was it after all, but a dream? A shred of comfort he had been glad to clutch at when all other hopes for his master's happiness had fled.

How long he had denied the harsh reality, building pretty pictures in his head of far-away enchanted shores. He felt himself laugh bitterly at his foolishness. Rosie had gone where he could not follow. How typical of him that he should delude himself that he could at least follow Frodo. 'You were always too quick to hope when things seemed too difficult for you to accept Samwise Gamgee,' he heard his own voice tell him.

He stared out to the Sea as the disc of the setting-sun slipped slowly into the water. The gulls wailed and the waves beat upon the shingle in a loud and never-ending lament. Tall buildings, relics of a past age, shivered in the mists around him. They were desolate now, forgotten and obsolete, like the vision of their builders. A great loneliness seized his heart and it seemed to Sam that he was the only living person on the face of the earth.

He laid his head back against a rock. His heart was heavy and he felt hot tears well in his eyes and run down his face to mingle with the salt spray. The chill wind stirred his hair and a bitter coldness crept up upon him from the sea breeze. He sat by the rock, a bent and lonely figure amongst the ruins of a passing world. Thoughts rose up in his head unbidden: scattered memories of the past, many long treasured, some seared indelibly on the brain.

Rosie was there with their children laughing in the kitchen at Bag End. Merry and Pippin on their monthly visits, at first alone and then gradually joined by members of their growing families. The trees of the re-planted Shire whispering in the wind, the parties, the holidays and his speeches as mayor. Everything came back to him now in a stream of drifting images. And then he remembered Frodo. Frodo as he had been before any darkness had come upon them. The thought was now only distant and fleeting, yet more vivid than it had ever been in the long years since his master's departure. He had been young then and Sam could remember how he would laugh at the slightest thing. Clear and loud like a bell, with no trace of worry, pain or anguish yet visible in the light of those eyes. But that light had left him. The old Frodo had been torn from him, eaten away by long darkness and savaged by the claws of a burden beyond the endurance of any creature. Memories of Gorgoroth reared up in his mind. Darkness, desolation and suffering. Always suffering. In all the long years since those days, Sam had never dwelt much upon memories of his own pain. The recollections of Frodo on that journey caused him such anguish that there was little room left in his heart for anything else. No light like of old in his master's eyes, only the horrible tormented brightness of a soul in agony. And yet, Sam recalled, when all was over the light had been replaced by something different; different but still very much Frodo. A deeper radiance: something strange and unearthly that Sam could not define. There was sorrow there, but also peace, and the beauty of the union of the two went beyond anything Sam had ever seen.  

Had Frodo ever doubted it? As Fastred had said, Frodo was different, but Sam had long ago learnt not to underestimate his master's grip on reality. The pain and the hopelessness in those blue eyes, first on the road to Orodruin and later in the relative comfort of the Shire, were forever branded on his memory …it's like things are in the world. Hopes fail. An end comes… there is no escape. Surely no one could ever have desired release more, and yet at the same time been made more sure that no release existed.

Sam ran his fingers through the sand.

Frodo's departure from the world many years before began to look not so much like the last desperate decision of a failing mind; but a great effort of will, a remarkable summoning of belief. A blind faith that, despite all the despair that had visited him in the weary watches of the night, despite the pain and relentless suffering that had been his lot: hope could endure. Life did not begin and end in emptiness.

For someone like Frodo, belief that there was an escape was a struggle, not a refuge.

Sam sighed and suddenly he felt all his doubts depart. He did not know why, but they seemed to have no more power over him now: merely insubstantial phantoms that fade to nothingness when morning comes. He had no new proof that what he had hoped was true, but somehow proof, understanding or reason did not seem to matter any more. He closed his eyes and sensed an icy numbness creep over his body. It was cold, very cold and he was weary and wanted rest.

And sleep came to him from the Sea. Past and present merged into one, and through the mists of his mind he fancied he saw the familiar silhouette of a grey ship rise before him. His vision clouded and he felt his limbs grow light. Unseen hands seemed to lift him from where he lay and bear him up onto the damp breath of the water. Time died away and the sound of the gulls and the memory of the waves grew less. The shadows before him dwindled, until at last, unexpected and unlooked for, he felt a great light break upon his face and sweep through his whole being like a warming liquid.  And he felt himself come to rest and his mind was now untroubled and the heart within him was filled with a great and unearthly joy.

"You're here" he said.