by The Barrow-Wight
Chapter 5 - Barimac's Discovery
"A what?!" shouted Gorbadoc, looking at his older cousin incredulously. He had heard many tales from Barimac, but this one sounded more far-fetched than most. And he had heard a lot of them over the years.
"Where is it?" asked Longo excitedly. The idea of a pile of Dwarven gold sounded marvelous to him.
"Yeah! Where is it?" repeated Bingo, dodging as Longo's left foot suddenly shot out.
Barimac gave a sly grin and looked around to see if anyone else on the docks might be listening, but there were no other hobbits in sight. "Like I said, I've found a Dwarven burial chamber, at least what's left of one. It's up on Grummage Island, and I mean to open it!"
Bingo pranced about on the wooden dock. "Oh, that's great!" he shouted. "I'll bet it's full of treasure!"
Barimac grabbed him roughly around the neck and shook him, dragging him down to the wooden planks of the dock. "Be quiet!" he hissed. "Do you want every boat-hobbit on the Brandywine to hear you?"
Bingo slapped his hands over his mouth and looked around to see who might have heard, but there were only the five of them to be seen. A hush came over the group as they stood looking at each other wondering if Barimac was setting them up for some kind of terrible prank.
Isengar broke the silence. "Grummage Island?" he asked. "I've never head of that."
"Of course you haven't," said Barimac gruffly as he stood, pulling Bingo up beside him. "There's a lot down here in river-land that you hill-climbers haven't heard of, but Gorbadoc knows where it's at, don't ya Gorby."
Gorbadoc's head nodded up and down slowly. "Yes. I know where it's at, of course, but I've never been there." He looked at his cousin strangely. "And as far as I know, no one has been there, at least not in generations. What were you doing on Grummage Island?"
Barimac looked around again and turned back to the listening hobbits. He spoke directly to Gorbadoc in a voice so low the others had to move closer to hear his story.
"As you know," Barimac began, "I've been working for old Carpy Fishbanks all Summer long." He looked a bit embarrassed but admitted, "My dad says its time I start working for a living instead of only standing around on the docks."
"Sitting around in the inns is more likely," laughed Isengar. "I hear The Brandy Keg has a reserved stool with your name on it."
Gorbadoc snorted a quick laugh, but Barimac ignored him and continued his story.
"Like I was saying, Fishbanks has me out every morning setting and checking nets in the west narrows along Girdley Island away north of the Stone Bridge. Brandy Hall serves fish twice a week, and with deliveries from the Havens being short of late, they have been making extra demands on the Brandywine fishers."
"Now, old Fishbanks is a true Bucklander alright," explained Gorbadoc, "but he actually lives on his barge year-round, if you can believe it. He don't hardly ever set foot on dry land, especially through the Summer. Except for Overlithe. He don't miss an Overlithe celebration, being as fond of Buckhill's finest brews as most good Bucklanders are."
Isengar got suddenly dizzy thinking of such a water-bound lifestyle and had to grab the nearest post to steady himself. Gorbadoc smiled at him and went on with his story.
"Last week, right after that big storm we had – you remember the storm, Gorby – well, old Fishbanks sent me out to the nets as usual but the water was a muddy mess and it was full of floating debris. He has been keeping his barge anchored up towards the north end of Girdley, so I was approaching the nets from the north, and I had a time getting to them. But when I finally got to where we had set them, it was worse than I had imagined. Half the nets were missing and the rest were hanging useless on the river banks.
"I took off downstream as quick as I could paddle to see if I could salvage any of the missing parts, and I soon cleared the southern end of Girdley without a sign of the nets. So, I kept rowing until Grummage Island came into sight. It's not far from Girdley, and though it is a much smaller island, the river narrows there, so I though the nets were likely to be hung up there."
"Sure enough, when I got close to it I could see a tangle of wood and net washed up in a pile of other storm debris on the northern tip of the island. A huge pile of logs and limbs had come up against a tall wall of rock, lodging against it in a terrible knot. It looked like it might be impossible to get all of the nets out of that mess, but I wanted to save as much as possible. It's much easier to piece together a net than to have to make a new one from scratch."
Barimac looked around one more time and then started right back into his tale. He had been getting more animated as he went on, and his voice had started to rise. But now he began to whisper again.
"Like I was saying, I climbed out of my boat and up onto the huge pile of limbs and logs and started untangling and cutting the nets free. It was hard work, so hard it took me a couple of long hours to get what was savable into the boat. By that time, it was midmorning and there was no chance I would get back to Fishy's barge by lunch, so I decided to have lunch right there on the little island.
"Now, I'd rowed by Grummage many times before but never set foot on it until that day. No one had, as far as I know, because Grummage island isn't like Girdley, not at all. Girdley slopes gently out of the water and has nice, muddy beaches to wade in. It's got nice fields, and a few people have even been known to stay there in better weather, a kind of vacation spot for Bucklanders who want to get away from the crowds of Hall and Hill."
"I remember picnicking there as a young hobbit," said Gorbadoc thoughtfully. "Girdley Island was always a great place for a game of tag or football."
"Grummage isn't like that at all," Barimac said loudly, "It's all stone and steep banks poking straight out of the water and covered with thick brush and tall trees. Normally, it would be nearly impossible to climb up on to the island, but the pile of fallen trees had formed a kind of ramp which I use to climb most of the way up to the top of the cliff face. From there I could scramble to the top, and I was nearly 30 or 40 feet above the water. I sat up there atop a boulder bigger than the Three-Farthing Stone."
He raised a hand high above his head to demonstrate the size of the boulder.
"Really, the place I had climbed to was quite high and was probably the highest place on the whole island, even higher the trees that lined the Brandywine. I could see for miles and miles around. To the south, a few leagues away, was the Great Bridge, and further on was the rise of Buck Hill, and beyond that the lowlands of the Marish, though really I couldn't see that far. Westward, the Water was shining like a bright ribbon, and I could follow it all the way across Bridgefields.
"I sat there for a while eating my lunch and enjoying the view, but the sun was getting hot, and I knew the boss would be wondering where I had got to. So, I gathered up my things and prepared to climb back down to the boat when I heard the strangest tapping noise behind me. It was very faint and sounded like when the Yale farmers are breaking rocks in their fields across the river. You know the noise I'm talking about Gorb?"
"Sure," answered Gorbadoc. "The farmers in Yale swear the rocks grow faster than the crops sometimes. And when they are 'harvesting' them you can here it for miles around."
'Right," said Barimac. "That's kind of what it sounded like. It was an odd, distant kind of sound that echoed off the boulders around me. And I noticed that below me was a narrow lane between two boulders that created a kind of natural path leading downward between several boulders larger than the one I stood on, its bottom hidden in a grove of tall trees. But as I looked, the tapping stopped.
Gorbadoc paused dramatically for effect and finally looked at Gorbadoc.
"I stood there for several minutes wondering if I should investigate. You know how I love to investigate."
Gorbadoc rolled his eyes.
Barimac went on. "Well, I was just about to leave when suddenly the tapping started again, and it really sounded this time as if someone was banging with a hammer on a metal plate, somewhere just below me in the trees. I thought that someone had to be down there, so I crept down the stairs to see what was going on.
"The boulders on either side became carved stone walls, and the stairs themselves soon turned from rough rock to even steps obviously carved with great skill but now rounded almost smooth by many years of rain and wind. I went deeper down what was becoming a hallway of rock with the midday sun shining directly down upon me.
"After more than 100 steps I came to a level platform that had to have been as low as the river. Before me was a low stone archway, and inside, no more than ten feet, was a stone door on great metal hinges. The door hung slightly ajar, open only a few inches, and it was swaying back and forth, tapping the stone portal it was set in.
"Above it, carved into the stone but hard to read from long years of weathering, were what had to have been Dwarven runes."
He drew the markings in the air with his fingers.
R ^ B I Y