The herbmistress.
.oOo.
At the sign of the Drunken Goose…
Sat deep in an old chair near the hearth, a large Hobbit was holding forth, from time to time pulling a puff from his luxurious enameled pipe. His large overweight plush character confirmed his confident tone of clan chieftain, that brooked no contradiction:
- "Of course nay! That is Tobold Hornblower, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, who invented the art of smoking pipeweed, nearly some two hundred years ago in Southfarthing! The best plantations lay obviously there, from Longbottom to the banks of Brandywine, around my family mansion."
Harold Hornblower was full of praise for his glorious ancestor, who had developed methods for cutting, drying and preserving herbs, while inaugurating a genuine Hobbit art of living. Every generation, a careful selection of plants allowed an increase in the quality of the leaves, and sometimes led to some famous innovation, like the roll of pipe-weeds.
This was a secret technique to roll several leaves on themselves with an elaborate overlapping – leaves of exceptional quality and subtly matched varieties. The subsequent leaves-roll made it possible to smoke pipeweed… without pipe, but with an incomparable refinement. Still it was necessary to cut the end of the roll with understanding, and to own the adapted leaves-cutter, since an incorrect cut ruined the pulling of the invaluable object. At the time of Finran and Gigolet, the leaves-rolls were an amazing luxury, that Master Hornblower kept for his personal reserve.
But tonight, sat in the hall in the middle of large white fumaroles, Harold glorified another ancestor, Tobold's mother.
.oOo.
The Shire, Southfarthing, The Far Downs…
Sitting under bundles of herbs hanging from the beams of her shop, the robust Hobbit healer glared mockingly at her patient:
- "So, Agenor, you married young Daisy?
- Oh, for sure, she's a nice girl... And vivid with that!
- What folly took you, you old stag? You don't marry a young girl at your age!
- Ah, with all due respect, affection, that may be neither rushed nor denied!
- Affection! Now that's all you can wait for, you old weasel!
- As a matter of fact, if you would kindly oblige me...
- What is it you want exactly? I'm warning you, I shall not give thee any love philter!
- I would not presume that! Now I thought about some little pick-me-up... You know, whatever cheers the heat up down there in the right time, if you follow me..."
Alchemilla Hornblower had pretty well understood. She sighed ruefully to the farmer from Frogmorton, a confirmed bachelor who finally, it seemed, had found a use for his fortune.
- "And what does Daisy think about this cheering-up?
- Ah well, she is not reluctant... For sure... Since she would fancy petty hobbits... And me either... So if you could fetch me some herbal cure of yours...
- I'm afraid in your case, herbs are worthless! Agenor, you need something more… invigorating. Now here is what you're going to do... "
At the back of her shop, Alchemilla searched on the shelves, putting aside clay pots and jute bags, which held her herbalist treasures. She was not abused by the alibi of the offsprings, but she gave her patient, two leather bags connected by a cord:
- "Here are wild boar testes, dried and powdered. You have to dilute two pinches in the broth of an old rooster. And then, Daisy and you swallow the broth, every full moon fasting: children will be born at home every nine months! "
.oOo.
At the Green Dragon Inn, in Bywater, a lonely and tipsy ploughman was trying once more, to extort her secrets from mother Alchemilla.
- "Herbs to fight an "idyllic coma"? What next? I'll give you one secret!"
The solid Hobbit, half amused but feigning anger, grabbed the fellow by his collar and dragged him into the yard, where he finished in the pigs trough.
- "You see? When you drink too much beer, no need of herbs, just pour lots of water on!"
.oOo.
A small hobbit was curling up on his straw mattress, watched over by the family gathered under the thatch. Painful whistles accompanied the cloth that went up and down on his frail chest. Alchemilla smiled reassuringly in response to the worried child's look, crushing between her rough palms, some dried bright blue flowers, over a bowl of boiling water:
-"Do not worry! You should breathe this every time your throat whistles! And next moon, there will be less pollen, you will get better! "
.oOo.
When Alchemilla reached her sixties, people had begun calling her "well preserved". Indeed she wasn't uglier than she had been at twenty! Her unsightly, energetic and reassuring face, had not aged. A refrain on her lips, she strode across the Shire's moors, in search of rare herbs, or serving the needy and the sick.
Naturally, the healer's juvenile endurance was accounted on behalf of herbs and complicated ointments, patiently brewed in her hole. But the irascible herb mistress always refused to confide her secrets of youth.
.oOo.
Leaning on her patient, Alchemilla Hornblower exclaimed cheerfully:
- "So now, pretty Melissa, you feel weak and you want a "food compliment"? Well here's one: Congratulations, because you're pregnant! No wonder you are constantly hungry despite your bounced belly! "
The herbalist care in the Shire, often meddled with midwifery and healing. But what Alchemilla liked above all, was her self-proclaimed function of nagging marital disorders.
.oOo.
The Brandybuck squirmed before Alchemilla, nervously manipulating his hat. The dreaded Hobbit healer had a reputation for eccentricity and authority. But she knew her plants better than anyone.
- "You want to become a herbalist? And how can I make a trustworthy herbalist, with a wealthy and idle Brandybuck cadet? "
The young hobbit, sheepish and red as a beet, was about to withdraw, when the irascible Herb Mistress changed her mind:
- "By the way, you have access to the portal of the Old Forest, haven't you? Then I'll give you a chance!"
Young Galadoc Brandybuck was sent to forage beyond the Brandywine, because it is said rare species could be found under the trees near the Withywindle...
.oOo.
Melissa's childbirth had been a long struggle. But, in the morning, the young mother was holding a beautiful little hobbit, her cute little feet already covered with brown fuzz.
Alchemilla, arranging her bottles and towels, tossed carelessly:
- "She will be called Pilosella! That will suit her! "
Then, ignoring the stunned and indignant air of the parents, she went out to tour her patients...
The herb mistress authoritatively gave, to the children she helped in this world, names of plants that inspired her. That was her strange and only requirement...
.oOo.
- "Ah, Master Agenor, it's you! I did not recognize you with that wild boar mop of yours! How is Daisy? Her varicose veins not too painful? And how are Artemisia, Bugrana, Marjoram, Burdock, Linden, Bearberry, Chastitree, Hyssop and Celandine? And I forgot the triplets, Asperulia, Astragalia and Agripalma?
- Wonderfully, thanks for asking! But now, Good Mother... You find not, perhaps twelve children, this is enough?"
Alchemilla did not intend to facilitate the old farmer's task. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms sourly. He continued laboriously:
- "Good Mother, I can't sleep any more. We emptied the purses long ago1, but my Daisy is very spirited and... I would like to ask you for a cure... to put things in their former state, so to say."
Alchemilla looked at Agenor with commiseration:
- "And what does Daisy think about that?
- Well, the children tire her a lot, but she asks for more...
- All right, come back to me together; we shall arrange that. You'll get my precious recipe to calm your transport. But where did I store it?"
Some years before, Alchemilla had had to administrate some to her late husband. Maybe she had a little pushed it...
.oOo.
The beautiful young Hobbit lowered her misty eyes. Obviously, it was not even necessary to examine her, she was in "interesting circumstances." Always these embarrassed poor girls turned to Alchemilla, even if they were reluctant to venture to her hut, lost in the moors of the Far Downs.
The healer gently patted the girl's hand:
- "Do not worry, I shall fix that all!
- So you'll give me some herbs? "
Alchemilla nodded, stood up and took her sturdy walking stick, the one with iron heel. Then, turning to the girl, she flashed a glance:
- "Yes, this is for a particular kind of weeds! Wait here! "
And she went out.
Two hours later, Alchemilla came back, pulling a scoundrel by his ear. He was about the same age as the girl. The healer had seen them hang together often enough, to be pretty sure of not mistaking the father...
.oOo.
Alchemilla emerged from under the thatch:
-" Yes that's right! Nasty parasites have invaded your roof... "
The energetic Herbs Mistress ordered a fumigation, with leaves, her son Tobold and her assistant Galadoc collected and withered. The smell persisted long into the cottage. The people were a little inconvenienced, but the parasites did not resist.
.oOo.
Galadoc Brandybuck was returning once again from the Old Forest. This time he brought tender cattail shoots. The day had been very trying. He even claimed that the strains along the Withywindle were doing very bad jokes... 2
The herb Mistress could only clamp down on such a bad faith:
- "No, I shall not tell you what you can cook with these plants! You're not ripe yet!"
Alchemilla, with age, became increasingly authoritarian and secretive, but she seemed to hold a kind of elixir of life, a secret resistance, a mystery of life.
Yet she never revealed it...
Not even, it seems, her son Tobold, who nevertheless shared her passion for medicinal plants.
This rascal had always been her only weakness. Alchemilla often took him by surprise, dreaming about larks, lying on a hillside.
He strolled idly through the woods, returning to his mother, to be forgiven, the plants he could not identify. One summer morning, he returned to the hole, his looks haggard and dreamy. He confessed only to have strayed into a dream, lying on a hillside near Longbottom, in a field of sweet Galenas he was particularly fond of.
Alchemilla watched him closely, and tried to teach him the business more rigorously.
.oOo.
Tobold, whimsical and inventive, hardly gave the impression to assimilate his mother's lessons.
Yet he did not miss a beat, but he updated the inventory of knowledge, in a critical and innovative way, far from the patient and dreary catalog of intractable Alchemilla.
Thus one day, he surprised his austere teacher, by submitting a personal theory. Over the years, analyzing the most effective part of each plant, he had also wondered about the most profitable way to absorb their essence.
Tobold had listed the different modes to administrate remedies, discussing the benefits and limitations of the ingestion of herbal teas or powder incorporated into foods, mouthwashes or gargles, fumigations or inhalations, poultices and lotions applied to the skin, baths.
After many experiments, he had concluded that the inhalation of the medicine in vapor form, assured in many cases the quickest diffusion of the active ingredient.
Only the enema could sometimes compete with this efficiency, but at the cost of insurmountable reluctance among most of their patients...
.oOo.
At the Inn of the Drunken Goose…
- "Then, Master Harold, will you tell us at last the secret of dreaded Alchemilla?
- I wish I could! But all my father was able to discover, is contained in these few lines from the will of my ancestor. Figure it who may:
I can promise the usufruct of my coveted secret, to anybody follows the precepts heretofore: The Herbmaster, scrupulous about rules of his art, will collect and prepare his own herbs, varying their origin to ensure their sustainability, experience any potion without abusing it, and reveal the absence of secret to those he founds worthy of it."3
.oOo.
NOTES
1 The purses Alchemilla had given to the couple, of course !
2 No doubt the reader does she remember Merry and Pippin's woes, with an old willow in the Old Forest...
3 Gandalf, if questioned about this little enigma, would perhaps make the assumption that the only real fountain of youth secret is to love his job, to exercise, to eat a large variety of foostuff, and especially not to imagine there is any other secret.