The wind bangs shutters against walls, tears at clothes, topples buckets brought to sit upon. Men and women frown and huddle, but do not leave. The rough noozle of the gallows swings like a plaything. The guards rub their hands together and stomp their feet.

Mrs. Ferny stands apart from the crowd, hardly feeling the chill. She is old, after all; she is cold all the time. This morning she will watch Bill die, and then go to the market for supplies, and perhaps to the ironmonger's for a new frying pan...

'They're coming, they're coming!'

People turn and point. Necks are strained for all that the wind has no mercy for naked skin. Somebody booes resignedly, and she can understand the disappointment. This is their villain? The one for whom they have left their snug homes on such a wonderful morning?.. They want Saruman the Base or Wormtongue the Back-stabber, not a white-topped, sniffling pest.
Yet when the convinced man shuffles at last to his appointed place, they warm themselves up by waving their arms and throwing spoilt fruit at him, and she shakes her head and burrows deeper into her shawl. People don't change; fools are people, and so keep expecting people to change; the most foolish of them would have people change people. But this has all been decided so many years ago.

The guards very politely let everybody have a shot, then with a few lazy words and understanding snickers calm the indifferent violence. The bailiff reads the scroll of Bill's many crimes (and she doesn't listen to it, she doesn't have to listen to it), and looks up to the too-high noozle.

There's never been so many highwaymen in this town as to build a proper gibbet.

Bill and the executioner, a big lout with the face of a sleepy ox, follow the bailiff's stare.

'So...' says Bill hopefully. 'Let's put it off, eh?'

'Never you mind,' the executioner says, pursing his lips. 'I'll jus' have a cart here in a mo'.'

Bill's shoulders slump, and he sits down. One halberd turns to point at his head like a compass needle.

Mrs. Ferny steps forward, but so does everybody else. She cannot see him for the bodies press closely, and she is quite bent in her dotage, lower than most here, except for a bright-haired lad to the side. Others give him a berth, but she feels like she has a right to meet her husband's eyes on his last day, and hustles in to his side.

She squints and sees this one is a Hobbit, and of course it is only just.

The Hobbit, rather courteously, lets her sit on his bucket. He didn't join in the mutterings and throwing things, but he stares at it all like he wants to remember it forever more.

Bill is crying softly. It earns him scorn and exasperation, and Mrs. Ferny's silence.

Pretty quickly, a cart is brought there. The executioner scratches the pony's ears, prods Bill in the side and makes him climb up. Now the noozle is comfortably level with his chin.

'Last words?' the bailiff offers boredly.

'Lots,' says Bill. 'Er...'

He looks down upon the restless audience, and suddenly meets her eyes.

Meets them for the first time since Billy was taken from them.

'Why, if it isn't my mistress wife.'

Everybody turns to look at her.

'How could you do it?' asks the Hobbit. He's an adult, but in some way he's a kid to her now.

'Do what?' she wonders tolerantly. 'Make him a good man?'

She straightens up, leaning unto the bent wood of her stick, gnarled as her veins and thoughts. She's here for Bill. Bill and her don't need many words, even these many years apart.

'Oh no you don't, wifey!'

And he thrusts his head into the noozle (the bailiff puts a hand on the executioner's shoulder when he would have leapt forward) and puts two fingers to his mouth, and whistles.

The pony startles. The people gasp.

'Good, I couldna make him,' says the widow, watching her husband swing.

'Man, I have.'

Epilogue

When I wanted to find a girl to send to Middle-Earth, I turned to the obvious choice – the Fan Fiction Orphan home, because every being dropped into another world is severed from everything they used to know, and it is kinder to let them have as few initial ties as possible. The lady in the reception room was very kind and understanding.

'Do you have any specifications?'

'Mm,' I thought aloud. 'She doesn't have to be especially kind, you know, or pretty, or brave. Something average would do just fine.'

She kept nodding, and her face cleared gradually.

'We have someone you might want to look at. Not too bright...'

'…that's okay...'

'...isn't into sports...'

'...fine, fine...'

'...a bit wide in the shoulders.'

I waved it off. 'It's all right. She'll have been an Eowyn.'

The lady hesitated.

'This wide.'

'Oh. Well. She'll have been an Eowyn twice!'