A Traveller Comes to Supper

(corresponds to Chapter 9 of Book 6)


Two years ago, a reasonably well-off family like that of Odovacar Bolger might have turned up their noses at a prospective winter of eating little more than salted pork, plain bread, and jarred apples 'n onions. Now it seemed that they could never get tired of these simple foods, partially for the sheer joy of not feeling real hunger anymore, but mostly because Fredegar was home again.

"Though it'll be a good while before he's got proper meat on his bones again," Rosamunda commented, bustling about to fry rashers of pork while Estella set the table.

It was a cold night, but not bitterly so for the month of Blotmath*, so they had a good fire in the kitchen and another across the hall in the sitting room where the men were smoking their pipes so that the whole of the Bolger house was bright and warm and cheerful. Estella hummed a half-remembered song Uncle Bilbo had taught her long ago as she laid the plates and forks and things on the small wooden table in the kitchen which they used for dining when there was no company. The Shire was not quite back to normal - food was not abundant, and folks had to share and eat only two or three times a day - but it was certainly on its way, though it had only been two weeks since the Battle of Bywater. Her mum and da had found their smiles again and even Fatty cracked jokes and pulled her hair as he used to.

Estella herself had almost recovered from those horrible two years when Lotho was Boss and then Sharkey had made it a hundredfold worse. It was not always in her mind now. She remembered Sharkey, or Saruman, or whatever his right name was, and his mocking pale ghost sighing in the wind while a knife protruded from the back of his ghastly corpse. She could recall that poor wretch Wormtongue wailing as he was brought down by hobbit-arrows. But the memories had done little to taint the present time of peace, and what the Shire hoped would be a plentiful harvest next year. The only constant reminder of the dark times was the little silver chain and blue jewel from the Barrows, which she rarely took off. She did not want to forget completely.

While she mused thus - and consequently put all the forks on the wrong side - a knock sounded at the front door of their one-story farmhouse. "Good gracious, what can Azalea want now?" Rosamunda exclaimed impatiently. "Essie, my love, do go and see what she wants to say this time, but on no account ask her to stay to supper!"

Estella snickered a little as she ran off to answer the door. But it was not Cousin Azalea. A tall hobbit, taller than any she had ever seen, stood on the threshold. He wore fine mail and his jerkin, tunic, and breeches were made of velvet and fine linen in rich foreign colours. A sword was girt at his side and a green shield with a running white horse was slung across his back. His eyes were bright and alert and his face was thin for a hobbit, but it suited him in some way; it made him handsome. Taken altogether, he was a magnificent figure, a lost hobbit-lord out of old tales.

She suddenly remembered that she was wearing her roughest old dress and that she had pulled her curly hair back into an unbecoming braid, and that she had not washed her face that morning. She flushed crimson as she ducked her head a little. "Won't you come in, Master Merry? What a pleasant surprise."

"Hello, Stella; you're not going to start all that 'master' nonsense again, are you?" he laughed as he came in, jingling his mail-shirt. "I've come to see old Fatty, if he's up and kicking."

"He is. I mean he's up. Won't you stay to supper? He did kick a settee today. He didn't see it coming and it banged his toes a good bit. He says it kicked him." And having thus fairly mangled her invitation betwixt a backwards recounting of her brother's clumsiness, she turned and ran for the kitchen. "Mum!" she hissed, ducking through the doorway. "Merry Brandybuck is here and we've got nothing for supper but pork!"

"Goodness me! Well, set an extra place for him - no, better move supper to the dining room altogether. And rummage in the cellar for any preserves for the bread, but Essie, it's not as if there's anything better to be had this winter. He'll be eating similar stuff at home in Brandy Hall, I daresay. Do stop fluttering, dear."

"You act as if he was a normal lad just dropped in to sup!" her daughter said between her teeth as she gathered up the plates with an impressive amount of rattling. She was not quite over tween hysterics and she felt that she could not have looked dowdier if she had rolled in the mud of the pigpens. Consequently she looked flushed and nervous and cross and altogether nearly as unlovely as she thought when she carried the pewter forks and coloured glass plates into the proper dining room across from the parlour and suddenly remembered that she had left their honored guest standing alone in the front hall.

"Drat!" she muttered, dropping the things pell-mell onto the table, which was as close to swearing as she knew how to come. "Drat, bebother, and confound it!" She straightened her skirt as best she could, ran her fingers over her braid - as if that would magically make it straighter or better suited to her freckled face - and pasted on a smile. Then she returned to the hallway and dropped a slight curtsey. "Sorry; Da and Fred are in the sitting parlour; I'll show you in, if you please."

The Hero of Buckland looked both amused and mildly horrified by this speech so she could only assume that she looked a worse fright that she had thought. Her cheeks burned with the humiliation of it as she conducted him into the sitting room and blurted out, "Here's Merry Brandybuck to see you, Fred," before darting past said Brandybuck into the safety of the dining room, there to muddle the place settings more than ever.


*November in Shire Reckoning