I
Hobbiton, Westfarthing. Halimath, September 11, 1419, S.R.
Six Weeks and Six Days Before.
"Show me."
Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. Across the room, there in the blackened window glass, his reflected eyes looked up to meet her own. His long fingers, rough and cold on her small wrists, stilled against her bindings but did not lift.
"Show you what?" His low voice fell heavy against her ear, and she could feel the heat of his chest at her back. It was a dark, calculated tease, she realized, meant to bind her to the chosen course.
"My father," she choked. How quickly her resolve had crumbled there at the threshold of her new prison, unable to accept the thought of him she loved languishing in his own. But her captor made no response.
"Where is he?" she asked as he moved again, slowly, to untie her hands. But there was only the rustle of taut fabric, the pounding of blood though her body, and the desperate rushing of memories—his watery eyes and liver-spotted hands, his bent back and creaking knees, the deep hacking of his cough, the slow shuffle of his old swollen feet across the floor.
She swallowed hard. "What will you do to him?"
There was a sudden release of pressure at her wrists. The floors creaked as Lotho shifted behind her, wrapping the fluttering ends of her bindings about his hand. And then his impassable eyes rose again to hers.
"I won't have to do anything," he said simply, watching the tears stream anew down her ashen face, and closing the door behind her.
II
Budgeford, Bridgefields, Eastfarthing. Blotmath, October 30, 1418, S.R.
Estella,
I write to you on behalf of my Aunt Esmeralda, who cannot bring herself to write this letter. Thank you for sending the sweet cakes. They are, as you know, Aunt Esmeralda's favorite. They were Merry's favorite, too.
It has been five weeks since Merry and Pippin left. We have been beside ourselves with an unshakeable worry that I fear shall become an eternal grief. Will they ever return? Hope fades upon the hour. At long last, it seems, they have found an adventure too big for them. It has swallowed them up, and we shall never see them again.
I shall be leaving Buckland soon, and hope to see you on my journey home. I hate that I must go. I hate to leave my Aunt and Uncle alone, with no one. The loss cuts deeps. Time and nothing will be the end of them.
This last part I must add at my Aunt's pleading—
Do you know? Did Merry tell you? Will Fredegar say anything?
I am certain the answer is no. But my Aunt believes, and I suppose it is true, that if Merry were to tell someone—someone other than Fredegar—it would be you.
She extends, for you and your family, eternal welcome in Buckland.
As for Tookland, I extend the same.
Forever your friend,
Pervinca Took
III
It must have been near midnight when he returned. The signs of his approach were unmistakable: the echo of his footsteps down the hall, faint at first but clearer growing—the spill of lantern light through the crack beneath her doorway—the slow turn of the lock—the creaking of the hinges—then at last the blinding explosion of light.
She was hastily pulling Lobelia's old housecoat over her older-still nightgown when the door was thrown open and he—a dark, undetailed silhouette against the blaze—tossed her a heavy bundle that turned out to be a traveling cloak. She fumbled quickly with its buttons and looked up with cautious obedience upon fastening the last.
He had set the soft-burning lantern on the chifferobe by her doorway, and drawn from his coat pocket two long pieces of fabric. The light played prettily against their tattered ends, hanging loose and low in the still night air. She knew instantly what he meant to do with them, and with no lack of bitterness lamented to herself how commonplace the trappings of bondage were becoming.
And yet they stared at one another for several moments longer—she waiting for some motion, some command—he waiting with a greater patience for something she could not then guess. But nothing came. There was only her shallow breathing, and the flicker of flame and shadow across his half-obscured face.
The realization sank slowly, like ice water dribbled down upon her head, seeping through the thickness of her hair to freeze in rivulets against her skull. It was all a tease—the same dark, calculated tease—designed to make her internalize her own submission. She almost vomited, almost cried out, almost threw herself against him with every ounce of rage and power she still had left in her body—
But the image of her father stopped her. She swallowed hard. She blinked back the tears and the fury.
Lotho watched the soul-shattering sacrifice of her dignity with unblinking indifference, as though it were some inevitable tedium she ought to hurry on with. Shame burned ever harsher in her breast as she closed the space between them. When she found herself squarely beneath his gaze, the tip of her nose inches from the firm line that was his frown, she turned slowly, unclenched her fists, and drew her wrists together behind her back. She half-expected her willing degradation to be acknowledged with some comment—
Don't we learn quickly?
Or perhaps—
There's a good girl.
But Lotho made silent work of it. He started with the blindfold—slowly draping it across her eyes—wrapping it once, twice—pulling it just so until her vision was entombed in darkness again. Then, just when she expected the rough brush of linen against her arms, she found instead the warm touch of fingers on her neck.
Her breath caught as the bile rose again in her throat. Had she so grossly misjudged the reason for his coming?
His touch trailed down below her cloak to graze her collarbone, then lifted carefully at the hem of her thin nightgown. Her heart was pounding feverishly and an anxious sweat had begun along her brow when she felt it—the cool press of metal against her skin, and a soft rhythmic ticking at her breast. Whether it was a cry of relief or anguish or shock that threatened to escape her, she stifled it. Focus, she commanded herself. Focus.
And so she focused, focused until Lotho's presence had all but melted away, focused until the sharp tugging at her wrists and the numbness of her hands was but a pinprick, focused until the darkness that surrounded her swam with color and all the motion in her body and in her universe was the beat of time and her father's pocket watch—her pulse, her blood, her heart.
Focus.
And then she was moving, and a voice was speaking.
"Not a word," it said, as her feet carried her onward, and time beat back.
IV
Budgeford, Bridgefields, Eastfarthing. Forelithe, June 16, 1419, S.R.
E,
Leave. Leave at once, before they take the roads. Buckland will not last the month. Eternal welcome awaits you and your family here.
P
