~~~~~
Black came a cloud as a night-shroud.
Like a dark mole groping I went.
—"The Sea-bell," from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They never meant to forget about him, to plough him under like so much shepherd's purse or kingsfoil. But in a ramifying warren filled with children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, in-laws, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, farmhands, nursemaids, housemaids, cooks, gardeners, stable-hobbits, and assorted "relations" who stopped for tea seventeen years ago and never left, one small teenager was easily overlooked.
At first Frodo spent his nights in the Great Room, finding some comfort in the closeness of his cousins. But it was not the same. Melba and Reginard and the rest were kind but wary, made uncomfortable by his new status as the one who had something terrible happen to him. He had become a stranger, even to himself. After some time had gone by he thought he might feel better, more natural, if he went back to his own bed, even though Mum and Dad were no longer cozy and comfortable in the next room.
But when he got to that now-closed round door he found he could not bear to think of the absence on the other side. He sank to the tunnel floor, his knees drawn up and his cheek pressed against the worn wooden panel. How long had it been? Weeks? No, it must be months now; while he'd been stumbling about lost and empty the weather had turned cold, and his aunts had begun decking the Hall with pine boughs. Soon it would be Yule. The feasting and singing would be subdued this year because of the loss of Drogo and Primula. Yet the Sun would return as she always did, making hearts grow lighter with the lengthening days. Already there were smiles and wisps of laughter here and there as time passed and folk mourned their fill.
But time had brought no healing to Frodo. He found he could neither rage nor weep, laugh nor feel hope or joy in anything. Nor could he sleep. Sleep exhausted him. He dreaded the strange overwhelming images that had filled his dreams since the accident, and he dreaded waking up to some new disaster. But dreaded or not, sleep finally caught up with him, there on the tunnel floor. The next thing he knew Aunt Mennie was shaking him awake and squawking, "Get away from here! Get away! Get away! You shouldn't be here!"
"Why not?" Esmeralda said, coming up behind on her way to breakfast. "These rooms have been Frodo's home since he was born."
"Because we must respect the dead," Mennie said. "Because we ought to leave them—and their things—in peace for a decent interval. Because all this moping isn't natural. Now get on down to the Great Room, lad. It's almost time for second breakfast. Come on, then."
She dragged him to his feet. Frodo knew that Mennie never meant to cause him pain, yet she jerked him about so roughly that she'd bruised him time and again. He never had the heart to protest.
But Esmeralda saw, bless her. "Auntie, don't! You're hurting him!"
With a gasp Mennie let him go so abruptly he fell backwards. "Oh, save me! I didn't mean it, Frodo! Oh, dear, I never know what to do. Here, get up, lad. Dear me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"It'll be all right," Ezzie said. "Here, you go on, Auntie. Go on, now! I'll see he gets his breakfast. Both his breakfasts."
When Mennie was gone, Esmeralda got down on the floor with Frodo and gathered him in her arms. Timidly, slowly, his own arms crept about her. He adored Ezzie. He was half in love with her, in fact, although she was much older, a grown-up. But she was so like Mum, so soft yet so fierce, as only the Took women could be.
"Frodo," she said, "this is dreadful. I'm only a guest in Brandy Hall, but you are not. You belong here. And if this were my smial I would quickly set some things to rights!"
She rocked him gently. He felt safe with her. He wanted desperately to cling to her and not let go until all the anger and sorrow had left him. But the fires of his anger were smothered, and as for the sorrow, he had gone for so long without weeping that he had quite forgotten how.
~~~~~
Well, they couldn't have Frodo poking about in there, getting into things and making himself miserable. There was too much else to worry about that winter—rumour of ill-natured Big People bothering folk in the Southfarthing, and the Old Forest mounting a particularly vicious attack on the Hay. And so, on Aunt Mennie's advice, Uncle Rory sealed off Mum and Dad's rooms and locked them.
Few doors inside Brandy Hall had ever had locks to begin with, and the keys to most of those had been lost for a hundred years. Rory placed a stout latch on Mum and Dad's door and put a thick chain through it, then secured it with a fat padlock of the sort used on leaf warehouses down by the southern Bounds. Such a lock would pose a challenge to the cleverest hobbit youth. No doubt Rory was counting upon Frodo having neither the heart nor the will to attempt it. If so, he was right. Lock-picking was a fine art, requiring brains in top of form. Brains fraught with grief and loss were of no use.
So Frodo waited until dark, then silently clambered up the warm, breathing shoulders of Buck Hill, into which Brandy Hall was excavated. He'd done this dozens of times before, usually with a cousin or two. Rory didn't like them doing it, of course; it was hard on the creeper-covered turf that served as both wall and roof to the smial within. Nor did the aunts and uncles who lived there enjoy glancing out their high round windows of a fine evening only to unexpectedly come face-to-face with a rowdy young Brandybuck. But Frodo disturbed nothing and no one. Quickly he found his window, and with a few well-placed blows with the edge of his hand and a good jiggle or two, he worked the casement open. Then he slipped inside.
Darkness and silence engulfed him. He drew back the stiff greying curtains, once bright yellow, just enough to let in the lamplight from below. The rooms were untouched. Mum's gown lay crumpled, just as he had left it the morning after she died. He flung himself on the bed and buried his face in it. The gown had been fresh and soft then, lightly scented with lavender, as though Mum herself were just around the corner. Now it was dingy, brittle and lifeless.
Loss and sorrow descended upon him then, filling the room like a searing wind. For a long time he clung to the bedclothes, cowering, hiding his face. It left him dry to the bone, aching with thirst and longing. Tearless, eyes burning, he roused himself at last, and went dumbly from room to room, exploring the silent tomb of his life. On the mantlepiece in the parlour, amid a dry scattering of pipeweed crumbs, Dad's pipes stood in their rack in a jaunty row, with strange and lovely tobacco-jars of Elven make, gifts from Uncle Bilbo, standing sentinel on either side. On the dining-table Mum's silver spoon and her favourite tea-cup, painted with tiny violets, lay upturned on a linen towel, waiting for her to return for her tea. She had set everything out before she left. In her silver tea-ball the leaves still held a hint of fragrance. But the water in the stout grey kettle was long since gone to vapour.
Numbly, silently, he wandered into his own bedroom. He'd left his trundle made up neatly for once, his toy dog Laddie standing guard on the bolster. Aunt Asphodel had made Laddie for Frodo years before from scraps of fabric. He had a motley, comic little muzzle, limp knitting-wool whiskers, and black buttons for eyes. But his once-shiny eyes were dim with dust, and his coat was faded and dull. Gently Frodo brushed him off, then tucked him under one arm. He would need Laddie's courage to help him face entering the sitting-room.
Here he ventured a little candlelight. He felt Mum's absence most acutely in this room. It was her special place, where she kept her books and her writing desk, the latter built for her by Uncle Saradas when she was a lass, exquisitely carved and painted. It closed up and locked with a tiny silver key, through which Mum had tied a green ribbon. Even though Mum always left the key in the lock, Frodo had never dared to look inside.
Reverently he opened it. All Mum's treasures were there: the dozens of letters that had passed between her and Dad when they were courting, tied in bundles with fading ribbons; and her poems, a lifetime's worth, neatly lettered on parchment, sewn and bound in calfskin. Mum's poems mostly sang of her parents, her brothers and sisters, the seasons, the green countryside, and of course of Dad and Frodo himself, fair as an elf-child. But some sang of grander, stranger matters. Mummy always said that there was far more to Middle-earth than the Shire-folk cared to think about: there was a glorious long history filled with war, triumph, and sorrow, still richly ringing with the music of a greater world beyond. Frodo never understood that part, but whenever Mum got to talking about it her eyes shone and she seemed far away, beyond their rooms in Brandy Hall. Then she would go off for hours and write poetry. Dad was in awe of her. He would shake his head and say, "Ah, Frodo, how did such a lady end up married to dull, ridiculous me? Well, no matter. I'm awfully glad she did. Let's you and me go out and visit the ponies, and we'll let her do her work."
At the very back, in a small wooden chest inlaid with jeweled runes, he found her journal-books. No one, not even Dad, had ever touched them. They were so precious and so personal he thought he should leave them unread, do as Mennie would urge and leave the dead in peace. But his heart would not allow it. Mum was there, in those books, or at least a vast and important part of her was there, and he missed her so desperately. He set the chest on the floor, removed the lid, and for a long while sat cross-legged on the rug just looking at them, his hands in his lap. At last he chose one at random. It was bound in soft buttery leather and tied with faded blue ribbons. Eagerly, yet with exquisite care, he opened it, and Mum's elegant handwriting spilled out across page after page, flooding his eyes and his spirit. Her script was interspersed with little drawings of birds and trees and the faces of her cousins and friends. She had made notes in the margins in letters so tiny he could hardly read them. Pressed between the pages were flowers, snips of ribbon, bits of cloth—captured fragments of her long-ago days and years. She had recorded her coming-of-age ambitions, her bemusement at the attitudes and antics of her immense family, her impatience with the absurd ways of hobbit-kind, and—Frodo's heart quickened—her astonishment when she discovered she had fallen in love with Drogo Baggins:
"I have known him all my life, but never until now have I paid the least attention to him. There's nothing particularly remarkable about him. Fellows are fellows, after all—loud, rude, and ribald more often than not. They all eat too much and they all get stout. They all tipple a good deal more than they should. And most of them give more attention to the distinctions between this variety of pipeweed and that than they do to the health of their aging mothers. Drogo's a fellow like the rest.
"Yet he has a laugh like nothing I ever heard—deep as the sky and joyful as sunshine. And his heart is so great that the entire Shire would fit inside it. I never thought I'd find ten minutes' worth of anything to say to him or any other Baggins (besides cousin Bilbo, of course). And yet yesterday I sat talking with him all day and half the night. I never thought anyone would look at me the way he does, as though I were the radiant queen of the North-kingdom. I never thought I would feel this sweet excitement in my heart. Most especially, I never thought that I, Primula, would ever be writing words like these! Dissatisfied with every fellow I ever met, I long ago resigned myself to an eternal spinsterhood. But over the Lithedays of this enchanted summer of 1366, everything has changed. If Drogo Baggins spoke today I would marry him tomorrow."
Within a month they were engaged, and on a crisp windy day in late September, the leaves golden and the sky high and clear, they stood at the Three-Farthing Stone in the presence of their families—Tooks, Brandybucks, Bagginses, and Bolgers—and vowed to forsake all others and to live together, come what may. From there the wedding-party retired to The Heather and Bees, an eating-house on the East Road. The lawyers from Hobbiton and Bucklebury had already arrived and set up shop. The red ink flowed and the seven witnesses signed seven times that the marriage had taken place.
"It's a serious business," Mum wrote, "declaring before all that you are a family, that you are prepared to take your place in the history and commerce of the Shire. It feels so much more important than I ever imagined watching others getting married. But it's the reason all the relations gather, why the seldom-seen cousins appear, why the wine flows and the food never stops—and why the solemn unending legalities must be endured. We have made both a covenant and a contract with our families and with the future of our people. Our names and our lines will live on. And there'll be young hobbits to till the land until the ending of the world. At least we hope there will. As you might expect, Cousin Bilbo wasn't taking any chances. As we drove off for our honeymoon, he ran up alongside the carriage, flinging at us a bottle of Old Winyards, which Drogo caught, and a basketful of midwives' herbs, which landed in my lap. With a jolly wink he said, 'You'd better get right on it!'"
Mum took her new husband to live at Brandy Hall, and at first she seemed to have a bit of trouble getting used to him: "Asphodel says not to worry about the sudden awkward spells. Married happiness requires patience, effort, willingness to overlook much and to forgive more. But above all it requires time. One can be so, well, familiar with this person by night, and the next morning look at him and think, Who is this stranger, and what is he doing sharing my breakfast?"
Weeks later, she wrote, "My husband is kind and patient. Never once have I seen him lose his temper. My brothers can be so cruel sometimes, behaving like bumpkins even though they come from better and they know it. But Drogo takes it all in stride. 'I don't care about them,' he says. 'I'd put up with dragons at my doorstep every morning, just to spend my days and nights with you, Primmie.'"
And months after that, Frodo felt Mum's happy excitement as he read: "My baby quickened! I was sitting by the River with my dearest Drogo, the lilacs in bloom all about us, and all at once I had the queerest feeling, as though little feet had just found purchase on the inside of my belly and had pushed off swimming. Hours later, and it hasn't stopped. Does every new mother feel such power and joy when her child wakes up inside her?"
Later, "Oh, he is beautiful, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Drogo holds him for hours on end, just gazing on him in stunned adoration. We are besotted with him."
He turned the pages rapidly, eager to read about himself. "He is no ordinary child. His mind is keen and his heart is as great as his dad's. Some days I am certain he is a hero and a lore-master of the Elder Days, returned to life in the body of my son, my sweet Frodo, my blue-eyed one. Most days, though, he is a hobbit-lad through and through, as rough and tumble as my brothers and with more bruises than a windfallen apple. I would have prevented every one of those bruises if I could.
"But Mennie says you can't protect them from all the world's mischances, and even if you could it's wrong to try. Got to toughen them up, she says. They don't suffer, they don't grow, she says. She means well, but it seems old-fangled to me. My sweet boy is already so Elven-wise, and like his Dad he could not possibly grow any more loving. No, whatever Mennie says, may I never, never see him come to harm. I would die first."
I would die first. His heart stopped at those words, and he was suddenly wrenched out of the living world of the past, the precious past before the horrible thing happened, into the emptiness of the present. "Oh, Mummy," he whispered. "I'm all right. No harm has come to me. But you didn't need to die, Mummy. I wish you hadn't died. Oh, I wish you hadn't."
And kind, jolly Dad, too, with his great heart and his deep laughter—both lost in one of Mennie's so-called mischances, the worst mischance of all. He couldn't read any more. He closed the book and tied the ribbon, pressed a kiss to it and returned it to the chest. Respectfully he put everything in the sitting-room back as it had been. Clutching Laddie to his heart he made his way with sad slow steps back to Mum and Dad's bedroom. He sank onto the bed. There was a long black spell of something whose name he did not yet know, but which in years to come he would know all too well: hopelessness.
But he could not give into it, not yet. He was the only one left. After a long time he roused himself, and with gentle care smoothed out Mum's gown, lovingly arranging each ruffle and ribbon. He went to the wardrobe and took down his favourite of Dad's waistcoats, orange and green, brightly brocaded with sun-flowers and poppies. He placed it beside Mum's gown and set Laddie there to guard them. Leaving the window unlocked behind him, he carefully crept back down Buck Hill.
He knew he would not sleep, not when Mum's words, her voice, still flooded his heart, and the loss was so near, covering everything. All the same he crept back inside the silent Hall and peered in the Great Room, where even in slumber his cousins mumbled and giggled. It was no good for him now. He wandered back out into the cold, made his way down to the embankment and settled himself against the trunk of a massive oak that sent gnarled roots out into the river. It was a friendly tree; roots and trunk had been worn smooth by generations of Brandybucks doing this very thing. But like everything else in Middle-earth at that hour, it was asleep. Nothing was wakeful but himself and Brandywine, who seemed to whisper words of sorrow and remorse as she flowed endlessly past.
There, in the chilly depths of the night, the full weight of it descended upon him: he was an orphan. An orphan! Could anything be more lonely and terrifying? His grief, which before had seemed like a hot wind, shape-shifted now into a vast green wave, a thing that he had never seen or imagined, and yet somehow he knew what it was. And he knew that if he allowed one tear to fall, only one, that wave would break over Middle-earth and everyone and everything would drown, just like Mum and Dad. No one else must die that terrible death! It was up to him and him alone to stop it, to preserve the world. He put up barrier upon barrier of will and determination against that flood.
But every night, for a long time afterwards, he broke into Mum and Dad's rooms. He would take out Mum's books and spend hours by candlelight reading her wonderful words. Then he would leave his parents the small gifts he had brought them: bunches of flowers or dry leaves, nuts or seeds or stones, arranging them carefully upon the waistcoat and the gown. He hoped that wherever they had gone, Mum and Dad would know that he was trying to tell them, in the only way that he could, I shall always remember you—I shall always miss you—I shall always love you.
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NOTES on Chapter Two
"The red ink flowed and the seven witnesses signed seven times that the marriage had taken place..." —Tolkien makes several mentions of lawyers in early drafts of LotR, and of course the firm of Grubb, Grubb, and Burrowes is managing the auction of Bilbo's property at the end of The Hobbit. Tolkien notes the hobbit preference for meticulous legal correctness in "Concerning Hobbits," but doesn't get much chance to show it once the story gets going.
"His grief, which before had seemed like a hot wind, shape-shifted now into a vast green wave..." —Frodo catches a stray bit of Faramir's (and Tolkien's) terrifying recurrent dream of the wave that drowned Númenor.
