Hearing at Brandy-Hall
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This fic is my participation for the Poney Fringuant challenge "A picnic".
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At the sign of the Drunken Goose…
Harold Hornblower, a pint in his hand and a chicken pestle in the other, remembers some gastronomic anecdotes about Buckland.
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Brandy-Hall…
A mixed crowd of hobbits of both sexes and all ages massed from the vestibule to the reception hall of Brandy-Hall. Respectfully lined up under the austere gaze of the ancestors framed between the joists, they scrutinized and eagerly tilted their ears in the direction of the room where the Master of Buckland sat. A solid farmer had brought a gigantic pumpkin, rolling it before him on the lustrous floors of the ancient manor. Behind him, a hobbit woman with red cheeks cast eloquent glances at him, without noticing that an urchin was chomping at an apple in her basket. A little farther on, a stout fellow, his tools hanging from his belt, was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief with an anxious air. A young maid was fluttering from one to the other, bringing a refreshment to an old man, or a stool to a pregnant hobbit, unable to answer the question that everybody asked her: "When is it my turn?
Indeed, the clan chief - Garbadoc, the Brandybuck1, master of Buckland - held an audience every morning during the week, and watched protestors and complainants processing before him. His authority was recognized on both sides of the Brandywine, from Stock to the swamps of Deephollow, and the slightest neighborhood dispute was obviously submitted to his arbitration.
But today the mob was losing patience. A cousin by marriage of the Brandybucks, who had come to pay an old debt in kind, held in his arms a turbulent piglet, which smell and ardor gave way around him. When his standing repayment kept quiet, it was the cousin who grumbled with as much ill-humor as propriety permitted him to manifest.
Car la file n'avançait pas. Les requérants faisaient le pied-de-grue depuis le petit matin, attendant le bon vouloir du maître de maison. Déjà la mère Lactance avait réclamé une banquette, où elle donnait son imposante poitrine à ses petits derniers, au grand soulagement de tous, car la tétée avait fait cesser les braillements des petits affamés. Passée l'heure des deux petits déjeuners et de la collation du matin, le gargouillement des bedaines vides devenait insistant le long de la file d'attente. Marmousets et adultes jetaient d'indécents regards d'envie sur les paniers et plateaux, que les contestants avaient amenés à l'appui de leurs requêtes.
For the line was not advancing. The applicants had been making the crane since early morning, waiting for the goodwill of the householder. Mother Lactantia had already demanded a bench, where she was giving her large breasts to her little ones, to the great relief of all, for the feeding had stopped the braying of the hungry babies. After the two breakfasts and the morning snack, the gurgling of the empty bellies became insistent along the queue. Marmosets and adults threw indecent looks of envy on the baskets and trays, which the contestants had brought to sustain their requests.
The situation had become critical. The private audience of an old Weasel seemed to drag on - Weasel is the name of an elderly hobbit, of course. So the young maid ventured to the door of the court-room, and politely scrawled on the walnut burr.
...
No answer.
...
New scratches.
...
Not better.
…
The maid turned round to the long line of the applicants, whose insistent eyes all converged towards her pretty white taffeta cap, now quite unmade. Under the popular pressure, she slowly opened a door and glanced.
Immediately the young hobbit girl hurriedly closed the door and, pale and a little trembling, faced the visitors:
- I ... I'm going to get help!
As she slipped out of the corridor, the applicants looked at each other in amazement.
Shortly afterwards, the servant returned, with her short, pressed step, followed by the hushed stride of M. Gorbulas, who held the charge of "Manor Mayor", that is approximately a butler.
The nephew of the clan chief, in his turn, opened the door with the unctuous discretion he was known for.
After a brief glance, he closed it as fast as the servant had done. Having recovered his countenance, he announced with the honeyed and sententious tone of a palace-clerk:
"Dear visitors, please do not falter! We shall soon remedy such a distressing situation!
And he rushed in turn in the corridor, followed by the maid. This time, regards and murmurs of astonishment became tinged with a little commiseration.
Then came the sturdy strides of Mr. Rorimac himself, son and heir of the Brandybuck, carrying in their wake the obsequious steps of Gorbulas and the breathless trotting of the servant.
Rorimac opened the wing, risked a look and closed the door. After a short consultation with his acolytes, he turned with embarrassment towards the visitors, cleared his voice with dignity and declared:
"Still a little patience, that should not go on forever."
And the trio went up the hall. This time a hint of anxiety could be seen in the visitors' gaze. A baby began to cry.
But soon there was a tinkling in the corridor, the energetic and jerky stumbling of Mirabella Took's shoes and cane. She was the wife of Gorbadoc and mistress of the manor. Son, nephew, and maid followed her, half reassured by the presence of a superior authority, and half frightened by what might result. Mirabella, her brows furrowed, had the doors wide open.
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Slumped in his large audience chair, Gorbadoc, the venerable Brandybuck dean, was gently snoring in his august sleep. The complainant seemed to have fallen asleep too, bending on her stool. Doubtless both had fallen into abysmal reflections, where fatigue had surprised them. The applicant, a renowned herbal mistress in the Shire, had a somewhat fiendish reputation, to hold secrets of youth. In fact she had come to claim the Brandybuck should grant her access to the Old Forest, to collect herbs that grew only there.
An embarrassed silence ensued, when the visitors discovered what the clan chief was devoting his private audiences. All of them noticed a small vial, on the low table within reach of the Brandybuck. Apparently the treatment of youth needed a lot of sleep! Some tense smiles were sketched on the lips of the most irreverent, but none dared to laugh openly or to cast gibes. Yet the rumor was spreading towards the rear of the mob, which massed at the entrance of the seraglio.
Only Mirabella seemed really comfortable. It must be said that the daughter of the Old Took, one of the famous triplets2, had always held her rank among the Shire's public affairs. She went up the room to her husband's arm-chair, and loudly struck the slab with her cane.
The Brandybuck opened a lazy eye. He perceived the crowd of curious hobbits massed at the entrance of the court-room, full of gifts and armed with requests. There was a blacksmith who had come to obtain a delay for his debt, several of his farmers bringing their tithes to him, masons whom he had summoned to reinforce the crossbow bridge, and many allies of his family, he felt a little shaken in their confidence in his authority. The livid and petrified air of his maidservant, the stilted posture of his majordomo, the contrite face of his son, and the smug smile of his wife, told a lot about his household's disappointment. He felt he would have to channel this mass of people and deal with their demands with flying colors.
- "I was meditating… deeply… on the case of Mother Alchemilla," he said, in order to gain time, while standing up a little in his chair.
As a matter of fact, he had gone asleep on a problem of conscience: to allow the herbmistress to enter the Old Forest was no problem for him, but he had to ensure the safety of the old Weasel. 3 And the worm-eaten strains of the Withywindle sometimes made jokes ... totally inappropriate. The old lady, very authoritative and independent, refused any form of escort: "I must be able to look for any plant, precisely at maturity, whatever time of the day or phase of the moon, without dragging with me one of your Brandybuck heavyweights!" She insisted. How could he ensure access for her, and remove unwanted creatures away from the hay?
- "And have you finally ruled, Most Dear, on the case of Mother Alchemilla?" his wife told him, with a certain decorum, not without irony.
Gorbadoc's pupil shone with a brilliance of intelligence, chasing away any remaining of drowsiness:
- "Absolutely!" He yelped with a jolly air.
Mirabella gave him a broad smile, this time without any irony:
- "Maybe now we should take care of the others..." she whispered
- "But I already gave a thought to that!"
It goes without saying he had not thought about it at all. According to his intuition of the moment, he raised his tone, standing up like the Mayor of Hobbiton at the tribune:
- "I order a large picnic on the bank of the Brandywine, at the clearing of Haysend!" Let the ban of my debtors proceed and join who's pleased!
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Immediately the entire household began to move. The maid told the kitchens, the butler levied the pantry, and Rorimac summoned the family, while the invigorated crowd emptied the place.
Soon a continuous line of wagons and armored cars had been formed and was moving southward, constantly reinforced by families who joined the procession, some with hams and sausages, others with loaves and buns, and the more modest with loads of vegetables from their gardens. As Gorbulas passed the great gate of Brandy-Hall, driving a cart loaded with pots, cheeses and a few very promising barrels, Gorbadoc charged Rorimac with a rather special errand under Mirabella's knowing glance.
The joyous cavalcade, augmented by a few families at each farm, reached the end of the road at Haysend. The hedge of hawthorns and brambles, which separated the bocage from the Old Forest, joined the river almost at the point where the Withywindle River was pouring its living waters into the muddy stream of the Brandywine. On the greasy lawn of the bank, a picnic-in-the-countryside was improvised, one of the most memorable during the reign of Gorbadoc.
A first snack, solid, swift and unadorned, first restored the declining forces of the applicants who had been waiting all morning long at Brandy-Hall. Then the Master of Buckland gave them a generous speech, which exempted his debtors, for the price of the victuals supplying the picnic. The arbitrations were postponed to a later date, and it is even said that some of the adversaries reconciled themselves around Mirabella's famous pies. But the cunning patriarch also put to work the craftsmen that were there. In a record time, the masons, helped by the numerous Brandybuck, Took, Bolger, Weasel and other cousins, excavated a tunnel and erected a solid door under the hedge. Gorbadoc solemnly handed a key to Alchemilla, while retaining a double for the use of the family.
When the earthwork was over, a real feast was organized. The barrels of beer and wine were drilled, and an open-air kitchen improvised around the pins where some arrears of debts were already roasted, in the form of a pig and a few sheep. The good mood swept across the company like a stream descending from the summits after a period of drought. They ventured to hunt mushrooms on the other side of the hedge, and the whole assembly regaled themselves with a gigantic omelet with bacon and mushrooms, after Alchemilla had sorted the harvest. A certain Bilbo Baggins, one of Mirabella's nephews, an eccentric still unmarried, amused the assembly with his tricks - he disappeared under the table as if by magic, then reappeared behind the barrel of beer, maliciously showing the pocket-watch stolen from the Master of Buckland!
When the Brandy-Hall orchestra began its first jig, an ovation greeted Gorbadoc and Mirabella. A considerable number of hobbits from both shores of the Brandywine had joined the merry company, which made high noise and great feast all afternoon. Games and contests were going well, encouraging unexpected encounters.
At supper-time, the kitchenware and teams of the inns around had been called as reinforcements, for newcomers had swelled the ranks of the party-goers. Lanterns were suspended at the branches of the hedge and aspens along the Brandyvine. The impromptu picnic now looked quite like a wedding feast, though the guests were lying in the grass on the flowery tablecloths of Brandy-Hall.
Then came a tall figure, all dressed in gray. Rorimac had gone to fetch him on behalf of his parents, and had found him at the Prancing Pony at Bree. Stuffed and cheerful, the hobbits were not alarmed by his presence, although his reputation as a "trouble-peace" had long been established. Sat to the right of the Brandybuck, the old man smoothed his long white beard with a dubious air, but his black pupils shone an amused brilliance under his broad-brimmed hat. The wizard puffed strangely evocative smoke rings from his pipe:
- To share the benefit of your debts, to carry your household to the banks of the Brandywine, to dig a second access under the hedge, and all this for Widow Hornblower? What a strange idea...
- The whole neighborhood will benefit from it. And I am pleased to see that the debts I have cancelled, have been spontaneously shared by the beneficiaries. As for Mother Alchemilla, she is a valuable help to my people. We owe her that.
- You killed two birds with one stone...
- I had to re-raise my prestige somehow... Some brilliant action was required!
- You have acted wisely, said the old man, by relieving the poor.
- But Gandalf ... What about the creatures along the Withywindle?
The wizard smoked and breathed a curious volute in the form of a little bearded figure, with a feather in his hat.
-"Oh, if I were you, I would not worry too much," he answered, winking. With the rustle you've made here all day long, I wager that the grumpy old strains have retreated to the heart of the Old Forest! And I shall send a message to old friends who can watch over the tranquility of the river...
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It is said that after this memorable picnic, the Brandybuck did not hide any more from having the restorative naps. These interludes were salutary, he said, to give wise judgments. Occasionally, the naps were prolonged unreasonably, even during public hearings. His entourage let it be, for it is said that right decisions were made at the moment of awakening – anyway who would have dared to interrupt the Master of Buckland's inspiration? Some even suspected he did not always fall asleep, but sometimes observed the attitude of the plaintiffs, behind his half-closed eyelids, which helped him to form an opinion.
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Notes
1 The clan leader is called this way.
2 Mirabella, Belladona and Donamira were a famous trio of shameless hobbit triplet sisters. It is said that the old Took had married a fairy, and that all the fantasy, independence, oddity, and even the magical powers of his wife, had incarnated in the rebellious personalities of their triplets.
3 Alchemilla Weasel, widow Hornblower. You've heard about her.