...as kind as summer. —The Hobbit
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the next three days Frodo hardly slept. He kept to himself, not setting foot outside his former sickroom near the front parlour. On the fourth morning, about nine o'clock, the dreaded summons came at last. He put on the dress-up clothes they'd left him, hand-me-downs so big the sleeves hung past his hands, and with his chest hurting and his head down he slunk into Rory's sitting-room.
Bilbo had not yet arrived. Rory and Aunt Mennie looked extremely uncomfortable in their official wedding-and-important-visitor clothes, their stiff starched collars and cuffs contrasting mightily with their callused, work-worn hands. They nodded when Frodo came in but they didn't say anything, and he wondered if they weren't every bit as apprehensive as he was.
He sank onto the hearth and sat there cross-legged, his elbows resting on his knees, his face in his hands. He had no idea what to expect. He hardly knew Bilbo at all, except by reputation. Rory preferred it that way. Like most hobbits, Rory preferred things set out fair and square, with no contradictions. And Bilbo embodied contradiction: he was rich, and a Baggins—the most respectable name in Middle-earth, according to Dad (who winked when he said it). As such Bilbo was envied and revered. But he was also despised and feared: the subject of endless lurid conjectures and vicious rumours.
The door opened and Bilbo breezed in, still adjusting a glinting collar stud that did not seem to want to remain closed. He was so dapper, so fit, and so extremely young-looking that by contrast Rory and Mennie suddenly appeared as wrinkled as storeroom apples. His brown hair was only lightly flecked with grey, his face was ageless and smooth—except for tiny creases of laughter at the corners of his eyes, which were the jolliest brown-green.
The grown-ups exchanged polite greetings and took their seats. Frodo wondered what the great Bilbo would make of this wretched young nobody Baggins who was in trouble too big for him. For he was great, Mum had said so, and it had made no difference to her that Rory thought he was mad.
"Hullo, Frodo," he said pleasantly. Then, as a splendid second breakfast was brought in, he set right to it.
There were scones with jam, buttered toast, cold ham, pickled eggs, applesauce, and, to fill in the corners, fresh buckberry tarts with cream. Frodo wasn't hungry. He sat very still, trying not to attract attention. Mennie shoved a heaped tray in his lap and fixed him with an intense look that quite clearly conveyed, We-are-taking-excellent-care-of-you-and-just-to-prove-it-you-had-better-finish-every-bite. Trying to be obedient, he picked miserably at his breakfast.
There was a deal of quiet if somewhat strained conversation until the dishes were removed and the pipes lit, at which point Rory launched into a litany of woes concerning Primula's boy. Bilbo nodded, and from time to time he would glance at Frodo. He said very little except to ask occasional questions, some of which concerned Frodo and some of which did not.
From Bilbo's questions Frodo learned a great deal about his elder cousin: was baby Merry sleeping through the night yet? Had the Puddifoots and Mennie's people, the Goolds, succeeded in draining that stubborn low spot down near Willowbottom? Did Saradoc think the troubles near the Bounds had anything to do with the greatly increased westward traffic of Elves and Dwarves along the East Road? Bilbo knew all about the weather patterns over Buckland and the Marish, and he was up-to-the-moment on the agricultural prospects. He knew about the trouble with the Eastfarthing folk and about the incursions of strangers from the South. He knew as well all about the excesses of hobbit youth. He knew what was acceptable (and expected), and what was not.
At last Rory wore himself out. Then, as Frodo had dreaded, Bilbo looked across the parlour to him. "Well, lad, you've not said a word."
Frodo didn't reply.
"Come and talk to me. Here, take a chair."
Slowly he made his way to the empty place between Bilbo and Rory. In spite of Frodo's best efforts Bilbo caught his eye, and Frodo had to return that keen glance, because it was unthinkable for a younger hobbit not to respect an elder in such a way.
"So," Bilbo said. "This is a serious business, what your uncle's telling me. What have you got to say for yourself?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Nothing at all?"
"No, sir."
There was a long silence. Frodo resumed staring at the floor, wishing he could stare a hole right through it and throw himself in. He thought Rory might start in again, but he didn't. This time it was Aunt Mennie, wringing her hands.
"At first he never hurt anyone but himself," she said theatrically. "But that was only the beginning. Rory and I wondered how much of it was just teenaged mischief and how much was something worse. We raised two boys, you know. We think that by now we know boyish high spirits from darker, more dangerous moods, and to tell the truth we can't see all that much difference in the lad."
"Certainly cause for concern, I'd say," Bilbo remarked.
"Yes. Yes." Mennie took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. "So sad. Sulking, paying no mind to his appearance, ignoring the cousins he's played with all his life, defying his uncle who's given him food and shelter, setting out on the River so carelessly it's almost as though he wanted to fall in himself. I don't believe he cares about anything any more." She sighed deeply. "Bilbo, I would never have thought that anything, not even such a terrible tragedy, could keep this boy's natural joy under a barrel for so long. I did all I could to help him come out of it. I just don't know what's gotten into him."
"I believe I do," Bilbo said thoughtfully.
"Well, if you know what it is, I wish you'd tell us."
Bilbo looked at Frodo, and his eyes were kind and sad. "The Dúnedain call it melancholy," he said. "The Elves probably have a hundred names for it. They have after all been known to spend centuries at a time in that very state."
"Oi, I knew it wouldn't be long before he was off on Elves!" Rory said, rolling his eyes.
"But among our people it's rare," Bilbo went on, sidestepping Rory's remark. "In point of fact, I have never seen another hobbit come down with such a fine case of it—besides myself."
"And what is the cause of this melancholy?" Mennie said.
"You really don't know?"
Mennie shook her head sadly. Rory sat unmoving.
"It comes of looking past the edges of the map into the blank spaces beyond."
"I don't follow you," Mennie said.
"And I don't know what in the Shire you're talking about," Rory declared.
"Don't you? The boy lost his parents. He misses them desperately. He wonders on some level where they might be, and whether he will ever be with them again."
Rory sat back and lit another pipe, relaxing a bit. "Well, you both saw us putting them in the ground over by Newbury. If you ask me, that's where they are."
"Where they are, yes. But not where they are, if you understand me. And that's what concerns the boy."
"So it does," Rory said. "And so it does anyone who loses a loved one, and all do, later or sooner. But then there's work to be done and no more time for dwelling on what can't be changed anyhow."
"That's right," Mennie said. "You have to get on with it, Frodo dear. You can't pine your life away. It isn't how hobbits do things."
Frodo put his face in his hands, trying to swallow the painful lump in his throat. Why couldn't he get on with it, anyway? He felt very bad and wrong.
"Has he had a good cry about it?" Bilbo said mildly.
"No, thankfully, there's been none of that," Mennie said.
"But, Mennie, there is nothing wrong with tears. They are painful to have and unpleasant to watch, of course. And for those like you who are called upon the tend the grieving when you've got a thousand other things to do, they're a confounded nuisance. But in a world marred by evil and the fear of death, tears are a gift."
Rory bristled. "Well, now, if you think we've not treated the boy in the right way—"
"My dear cousin, I think nothing of the sort. You are in fact one of the most generous hobbits I know. As Mennie reminded us, you have sheltered your nephew, clothed him, kept a hungry teenager fed—no small feat, that."
"No, indeed," Rory said. "Thank you."
"And I've taken him to visit their graves, twice since it happened," Mennie said.
"I was sure you had."
"So what are you getting at, then?" Rory said.
"I presume you called me here because you wished for my views on the matter."
"It was Saradoc's idea, not mine," Rory sniffed.
"I see."
There was a long uncomfortable silence.
At last, pushing back his chair in his best you-are-dismissed manner, Rory rose, saying, "Perhaps there's nothing more to discuss, then."
"Well, perhaps not," Bilbo said.
Frodo felt his heart sinking.
"But half a moment!" Bilbo had shown no sign of leaving. "I say, Mennie, you've given me a splendid idea. It's time for another visit, isn't it? The thirteenth August is day after tomorrow. This time let me take the boy up to Newbury. It's been far too long since I paid my respects to Primmie and Drogo. And he'll be out of your hair for a day or two. Give things a chance to cool down a bit. Yes?"
Uncle Rory and Aunt Mennie said nothing, but they managed to look at once abashed, annoyed, baffled, and intensely relieved.
"Very well, then. Frodo, get your things together, lad. We'll leave after elevenses."
~~~~~
They were off by three, not bad work for a pair of hobbits. Frodo felt calm. He feared nothing. He hoped for nothing. There was no letup in the huge lump of pain in his chest, nor any breach in the layers of cotton-wool that blanketed it, but this at least was something different.
Bilbo proved to be good company, silent and talkative by turns, just when Frodo needed him to be. Their ponies, laden with grave-offerings, kept a sedate pace through the green-tunneled lanes of Bucklebury and the scattered farmsteads beyond. The countryside became open and rolling, a rich green cross-hatched with hedgerows of deeper green, dotted with copses and grey stone outcroppings. The sky was fair above them, the birds wheeling and crying, the clouds flat and grey beneath, gleaming white-gold above. They cast vast moving patches of shadow as the wind sent them scudding eastward into lands unknown, blank lands beyond the Shire's safe bounds. To the east the High Hay loomed, an ever-nearer wall of darkness.
They went slowly, stopping often. That night they camped near a chattering brook that ran westward toward Brandywine. The morning was sunny but chill, with a heavy dew-fall, and it wasn't until noon that they passed through the quiet village of Newbury, where the grave-tenders dwelt. Here the Hay filled half the sky. It was a rampart against the wild forest and at the same time the Brandybuck clan's greatest (and perhaps only) work of art: an immense wall of trees and shrubs, tangled and chaotic yet orderly, with mingled tiers of different hues and textures ranging from the pale flat glittering leaves of poplar, to feathered yew of a green so dark it was almost black, to the gleaming leathery straps of fire-thorn. Wherever the Sun lingered, on Her daily voyage across the sky, wild roses covered the Hay in a pink froth; and there were blackberry brambles tangled about its feet, a final defense against the hostile trees and strange creatures of the Old Forest.
Here, for some miles, a river of grass ran alongside the Hay, at its widest as wide as Brandywine. It had been planted long in the past and had grown along with Buckland, serving as the cemetery for all Bucklanders, Masters of the Hall and ordinary folk alike. Its length rippled with low mounds, not like the huge sky-blotting things of the Barrow-downs of evil repute, but gentle undulations like ripples in the green river.
They entered the cemetery at a point two miles due north of the village, where the Hay curved sharply westward, and where two sombre stone gateposts indicated a gravel path into the expanse of curving turves. The path ended after a short distance. They made their way around the carven grave markers sprinkling the grass until they came to the place, right up against the dark tangled feet of the Hay, where a single flat square of chiseled marble lay over Mum and Dad:
"Drogo Baggins of Hobbiton, late of Brandy Hall.
Taken by Brandywine, 13th August 1380.
Primula Brandybuck-Baggins.
Beloved youngest daughter of Master Broadbelt and Mirabella Took.
Taken by Brandywine, 13th August 1380."
They dismounted on the path, and Frodo ran ahead. He fell to his knees beside the stone, flinging his arms over his head as though that could protect him from the unutterable sorrow and incomprehension welling up inside. Most of the time he felt dull and dead, but here the loss pierced him like knives.
"Oh, lad," said Bilbo, hurrying to his side. "You shouldn't have to face this place alone. I'm sorry; I was fooling about, getting the ponies squared away, and I let you get ahead of me. Here, now. Here, now." Frodo's hands were clutched so tightly he was pulling his own hair. Gently Bilbo pried them loose. "Now, then, lad, you'll only hurt yourself, doing that. Anyway, you can't protect yourself that way. All the darkness and horror is inside you, you know. Which is just as Melkor intended," he added softly.
"Who?"
"Take a deep breath, lad," Bilbo said. "All in good time." He held Frodo's hands firmly. Frodo took a great gulping chestful of air, which broke the spell. When his ragged breathing became even again Bilbo loosed his hands.
"I think you need a spot of tea." Cheerfully Bilbo busied himself building a small campfire of twigs and bits of broken brush. He produced a chubby copper tea-kettle and went to find a stream to fill it. Soon it was singing merrily.
But Frodo, seated on a corner of the flat stone, felt it, and himself, going cold. When Bilbo roused him and placed a steaming mug in his hand, Frodo felt as though he were being called back from a distant dark land.
"Don't go to those places," Bilbo said. "No need to think about anything right now but the tea. Here, I crushed some lovely mint in it. Brought it with me from my garden back home at Bag End. My gardener makes things grow better there than anywhere else on Middle-earth. Just breathe it in as it cools. You'll find it clears the cloud-wrack from your mind."
"How did you know?" Frodo said.
"How did I know what?"
"About the cloud-wrack."
"Only a guess," Bilbo said, smiling sadly. He brought his own tea and settled right there on the stone beside Frodo and fell silent, just as Frodo needed him to be.
At this place the Hay, behind them, was dominated by an impenetrable barrier of yew, its feathery boughs seeming to whisper with the voices of the dead. It was a gentle, comforting sound, and it soothed Frodo liked the tea and the fumes of sweet mint. He felt close to Mum and Dad again, closer than he had felt since Mum's words went up in flames. I miss you so. I love you so. He hoped that Bilbo would let him linger there, if only for a little while. Aunt Mennie never would. "Won't help," she'd say. At the first sign of weeping she'd cuff his ear and drag him off. "Won't bring 'em back," she'd say.
But Bilbo had been different from the moment they set forth from the Hall. "Better now?" he said.
Frodo nodded.
"Very well, then. First things first, eh, lad?" They unloaded the ponies: Mennie's intricately-worked straw garlands, and bunches of sun-flowers and end-of-summer roses tied with ribbons, with sprigs of heather and dried lavender especially for Mum. For Dad Bilbo drew forth several flat oval leaves half as tall as Frodo, still wick at the centre but withering around the edges, as they dried giving off that heady odour that reminded Frodo so sharply of summertime, and laughter....
"It's Southlinch," Bilbo said. "Your dad could discourse for hours upon the subtle distinctions between Old Toby, Southern Star, and the rest, but leaf from Bree was his favourite, the one luxury he allowed himself. He always said he needed nothing more in life than Primmie and Frodo—he was so fond of you, lad, and so proud—and after that, good food, good red wine, good leaf."
After they had reverently decorated the mound over Mum and Dad, Bilbo spread a blanket near the gravestone. He sat down cross-legged and took out a long slender pipe, not of clay but of some milky white stone, with carving so intricate it had to be Elvish. He soon was wreathed in a sweet pungent smoke that made Frodo miss Dad so dreadfully he stifled a cry of anguish and turned away.
Bilbo gestured for Frodo to come and settle beside him. "When the time comes I'll show you how it's done, Frodo-lad. You tamp the weed just so, you draw just so, not too slowly or the fire will go out, not too quickly or you'll swallow smoke and cough till you think your tom-fool head's coming off. I know, I made every mistake there was." His eyes crinkled at the memory. "I told my dad I'd never be doing that again, meaning smoking. 'Oh yes you will, boy,' he said, and next thing I knew that pipe was right back between my teeth, and it was draw and do it properly or choke to death. You may be sure I did! And now it gives me deep, deep joy. I couldn't go a day without it. You'll find out, one of these days when you're a bit older. I was twenty-five or so when my dad taught me. That seems about right, don't you think?"
Smoking was only one of the rites of passage that Frodo had come to realize he'd no dad to help him through. At Bilbo's words his eyes got blurry, and a single tear rolled down his face.
Bilbo didn't seem to notice. He was silent again, gazing in the fire thoughtfully. Frodo hugged his knees and put his head down. He was so near Mum and Dad here! And this time no one was dragging him away because it wouldn't help, wouldn't bring them back. In her gruff way Aunt Mennie was kind to him, and he loved her. But she was wrong. It did help. It didn't bring them back, but oh, it helped.
After a time Frodo found he needed Bilbo to talk again. He didn't even have to ask. "Your parents were very dear to me," Bilbo began. "They met at midsummer, you know, seemingly for the first time, although...."
"...they'd known each other all their lives," Frodo said, remembering Mum's precious account of how she came to marry Dad.
"Yes, you know the story, of course. Primmie was such a smart girl, a thinker and a questioner. And she was a Took all the way, like her mother, even though her father was a Brandybuck. Good folk, the Brandybucks, if a bit rustic and odd. Kind and generous as the day is long. But not much for the books. Much more for the hunting and fishing—and the farming. Primmie was their baby, a dark-haired blue-eyed lass as fair as an Elf-maiden, beloved by all and cherished especially by her dad, old Gorbadoc."
Bilbo remembered Mum as a bright and beautiful hobbit-girl. He remembered Dad as a young rascal with cheeks like apples and a reputation for leaving no pie cupboard unpilfered. Frodo felt his heart spilling over with questions, and Bilbo had no end of answers and tales and digressions, during all of which he somehow managed put a tea before them, followed by a dinner and a splendid cold supper. Beyond their fire the world grew utterly dark and filled with the sounds of night, and they talked on. Frodo had gradually drawn close to the older hobbit and was soon leaning on Bilbo's shoulder, as content as little Merry in Ezzie's arms. Bilbo slipped an arm about him and drew him closer.
"I remember the night you were born, Frodo," he said. "It had been a fine September, the sky almost as blue as Primmie's eyes, and then the weather broke, with rain coming in over the Marish in a silver-grey curtain. It rained so hard that every road and lane was a river of mud, and the rain-barrels filled up faster than the stable-hobbits could empty them. You missed the first day of autumn and came two minutes after midnight on September the twenty-second, just as I'd been hoping, because then we'd share a birthday.
"Primmie came through it marvellously. She never even cried out. Mennie and Asphodel said it was as though she were birthing her dozenth hobbit, not her very first. They cleaned you up and brought you out to your dad, and pop! those buttons of Drogo's went flying everywhere. Even then you had a mop of wild dark curls, and downy dark hair on your little feet, and we all of us proclaimed loud and long we'd never seen anything so handsome, because we hadn't. I was next to hold you, and it didn't hurt so much that I wouldn't have one of my own, now that you were here.
"Then the women came back and told us it was time for you to nurse. They let Drogo in, and me as well, because Primmie and I had always been close. Primmie put you to her breast like she'd been doing it all her life, and you—what can I say? You had the lustiest appetite of any hobbit baby I've seen before or since!"
Frodo laughed. It came out sounding like a sob.
"Primmie stroked your dear little curls while you nursed, and looked at you with so much love it broke my heart, and finally she said, 'He is a lord and a prince, and he will be the fairest hobbit the Shire has ever seen, the greatest, kindest, most generous.' They say that every mum feels that way, but Primmie knew it. And she was right, of course."
Frodo looked up sharply. How could Bilbo say that, when Frodo had just made such a mess of things? "Uncle Rory wouldn't agree," he said sadly.
"Of course he would," Bilbo scoffed. "You're the apple of his eye, or at least you were until little Merry came along. You know how it is, those long-awaited grandbabies," he said with a wink. "And in any event, Rory may be perplexed by what you're doing—after all, up until now you've never given him the tiniest helping of applesauce—but that makes no difference as to what you are, which is his beloved baby sister's only son. Do you understand me, Frodo?" he said, suddenly serious.
"No, sir. Not completely."
"Well, then, we'll do some more work on it over the next few days. Would you like to sleep here tonight, lad?"
"Here? Could we?"
"Of course. There's naught to harm us. We're hobbits. We're blessed with quiet dead. It's Men, who throughout the long ages of the world have courted evil and chosen dark paths, who have cause to fear their graveyards."
"I never heard that before," Frodo said, wide-eyed.
"Haven't you? Well, don't let it dismay you. No shades of Men are coming here. You sleep now. I'll unpack what we need. And tomorrow I'll tell you more about the Wide World, if you've a desire to hear it."
Before Bilbo returned with the bedrolls Frodo was asleep, his arm curled over his parents' stone. Bilbo gently lifted his head and slipped a pillow beneath it, then spread a blanket over the lad. He paused a moment to smooth Frodo's tangled dark hair and to caress his brow. Then he lit another pipe and sat up far into the night, remembering the good bright days when he and the world were younger, and Drogo and Primula, his favourite cousins, were where they belonged, alive and laughing upon Middle-earth. So much had changed since then, so very much.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTES on Chapter Six
"The Dúnedain call it melancholy...." —Melancholy, meaning "condition of black bile," is a word with Greek roots that I was not altogether happy using in such an Anglo-Saxon-driven story world, but it does derive from the medieval theory of body fluids or "humors" as the source of temperament. Not being expert at rendering English into Sindarin, I decided not to attempt to coin a more accurate-sounding word.
"An immense wall of trees and shrubs, tangled and chaotic yet orderly, with mingled tiers of different hues and textures...." —Thanks to Elwen for her splendid suggestions, in response to a query posted by the author in the Geek Thread at Council-of-Elrond.com, as to what plantings might have constituted the High Hay.
"Beneath the Hay for some miles ran a river of grass...that served as the cemetery for all Bucklanders....Its length rippled with low mounds...." —I had to enlarge considerably upon the meager hints Tolkien gives us about burial customs, particularly among hobbits. For this Karen Rockow's monograph Funeral Customs in Tolkien's Trilogy, my copy published in 1973, was immensely helpful. According to her study, inhumation was preferred by most of the free races of Middle-earth over other funeral practices. Humans, particularly the northern branch of which hobbits were a part, built mounds over their graves. It was strictly my own invention to place the burial ground for all of Buckland in one place. I was thinking of the city of Colma near San Francisco, which basically serves as a cemetery for the entire Bay Area. It is a lovely green place, very serene and not somber at all.
