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There is movement and bustle in the kitchens and Estel shrinks from it, though the glances he receives are kindly. I draw him to a quieter space and sit him down at the large table which is laden at one end with provisions. He perches on a stool while I take the old, worn chair.
"Milk, sweetened with honey," I say, and the cook nods. "And some porridge. When did you last eat, child?" I ask as the cook moves away.
"Last night. I think it was last night. We looked and looked all day and forgot to take anything with us. Papa - why do you put finding the pony above answering my questions?" He will not look at me, choosing instead to push some crumbs on the table into a small pile.
I forget sometimes how he has grown, and how quickly he matures. It took Elladan and Elrohir much longer to discover the distraction trick. Honesty is the best policy here.
The cook brings his milk in his favourite cup and Estel drinks hungrily.
"You needed time to calm down and think of other things, Estel. You know that is so. You need the food, too. What you did, it draws strength from all of you. That strength must be replenished quickly at your age."
"I don't understand why!" he says, the wildness still in his eyes. He is discovering a great reserve of persistence in himself – no, it was always there but it has not been used in this way before.
The porridge is placed before him, and a small jug of cold milk. I see a way to try to explain what is happening to him and stay his hand, which has grasped the spoon.
"The porridge is too hot without the milk. The milk will cool it – or you can leave it to cool in its own time."
Estel, puzzled, takes hold of his porridge bowl with his left hand as if it has suddenly become a creature that will run away if he does not hold on to it.
"Now, I can pour the milk like this," and I demonstrate, pouring all the milk so fast that it spills over the edge of the bowl, taking some of the porridge with it and creating a fine mess. Estel pulls his hands away quickly and protests with a grunt as the milk threatens to soak his sleeves. Not so long ago, little hands would have played with the spill but now Estel is less carefree.
"What do you see?" I ask when he turns to me for guidance.
Estel is half-smiling and very thoughtful. His brothers started training him when he was six not just to look but to think while he looked. He successfully tracked his first snake last summer.
"The porridge – I'd have to scrape most of it off the table if I wanted to eat it." He watches a ribbon of milk as it runs and drips from the edge of the table. "And lick some milk off the floor," he says, laughing in earnest now.
"Yes? And what else?" I am attempting to hold to the serious lesson I am trying to teach but the image of him kneeling on the floor, lapping the milk up like a cat is making it difficult to proceed.
"The jug is empty now," he says, damming another flow of milk before it reaches him.
"It is. And watch," I say, taking the jug and rapping it hard against the edge of the table. A piece of it breaks off. I draw one or two looks from those who pass by but no one will interfere in this important lesson. I set the jug on the table.
"Now it is no longer even a jug," he says, reaching across and running his finger around its rim. "It could be mended but you could never really use it as a jug again."
"Clear up the mess, Estel. Begin again."
He fetches a cloth and a bowl, and wipes till the table is clean. He puts the jug in the waste bucket and asks for another bowl of porridge then comes to sit back next to me. The wildness is subsiding in him, replaced by a keen interest in the story I am telling him with the help of his breakfast.
Another bowl is placed before him, and another jug with some milk. He says nothing for a minute, then gently picks up the milk and pours it in a thin stream onto his porridge, just enough to cool it without spilling any. "I couldn't do that, not long ago. When I tried, I poured milk everywhere and Elladan laughed because you'd only just dressed me and I was soaking wet again." He grins at me. "I remember, Papa. I think I understand."
"Tell me, then," I encourage him, amazed he remembers something that happened six years ago so clearly.
"Elladan is the porridge. I shall tell him that later," he says, on the edge of laughter. "He burns, and he is no use to anyone because he is too hot." He takes a mouthful of porridge and mimes the expression and the actions of someone who has just recognised it is too hot to eat. The imitation is exact and I begin to laugh myself.
"The milk is me. And I tried to pour myself too fast and it made him wake and then I went everywhere." His hands go out across the table, fingers spread, and I see the milk again as it spilled a few minutes ago.
"Yes, that is just how it was. You would have done both yourself and him great harm if we had not pulled you away."
"Empty," he says. "I would have been empty and useless." I half-expect him to lose his humour but it is still there as he takes another spoonful of the porridge and wolfs it down. "I see, Papa, I see."
"I will train you to pour the milk wisely, Estel but you will have to be patient. And eat your porridge more slowly – you'll give yourself hiccoughs."
Too late. We have to pause while he holds his breath and waits for his diaphragm to stop jumping.
"How long?" he says at last. "Oh! I forgot my seedling tree!"
He is about to jump from his seat but I place a warning hand on his shoulder. "Patience, Estel. Food, tree, pony. Understand?"
He settles again and nods as he begins to eat his porridge more sensibly. But he has not finished his questions yet.
"Legolas hurt his arm. He showed me. Why didn't I try to heal him? Why Elladan?"
"Legolas is elven, child. He will shield himself from you unless his need is very great. The wound was minor. And I believe it may be because the ties of family run deeper than the ties of friendship at your age." The truth of it is that I am not sure why Elladan should rouse in my youngest such a fury of desire to heal, nor why it should happen now, without a sign of such a gift before. He has much to learn but I have as well. I will have to go to my books as soon as we find the pony and see what I can find out.
Estel raises his eyebrows and seems on the point of another flood of questions but I forbid him and insist that he eats all his food. He is looking better by the moment, his flesh tone more natural and the sweat gone from his hands and his brow.
In a short while he is finished and sits, waiting for me to speak. Patiently – he is doing his best to sit patiently.
"May I ask you something, Papa?" he asks, with a wheedling tone drawn from his repertoire of ways to influence me.
Sighing, I turn towards him. "One question more. You may ask one question more."
I hold up my index finger and he sighs.
"Is the answer to Legolas' puzzle, that he set me before he went, you know? Oh." He says. He has used up his one question and knows I will not budge just because he made a mistake.
"You must speak to Legolas about that yourself," I say.
He huffs crossly but gives in. "My tree," he says carefully. "I have tended it every morning and it has already put out two more leaves. It is that high," he tells me, measuring the height carefully between his two hands. "It is in the glasshouse and no one is allowed to go near it except me, and the head gardener and Halbarad. And Legolas. And you," he says generously, smiling at me.
"Oh, child," I say, reaching out for him. "I am glad you came here. It has been too long since someone has made me laugh with them as you do."
He jumps up and comes for a hug before he sets off for the glasshouse. I look at him for a moment and then exchange a few words with the cook.
"I am sorry about the jug," I say. "But it was necessary. And the first bowl of porridge."
"My lord," says the cook. "We have tried to keep him still long enough to feed him but he has grown too thin again. I will make him something special for a mid-morning break and then he will have his midday meal under my own supervision. You will not keep him away just to find his pony?"
"No. He will be brought here to eat at regular mealtimes from now on. But don't tell him or he will immediately start to try to break the routine."
The cook nods and returns to his baking.
I follow Estel outside. It is cold and windy, and there is rain in the air. Estel is running round and round the tree which stands in the middle of the greensward, waiting for me impatiently, I suppose. When he sees me he runs off towards the glasshouse in our walled garden. It is built against a wall and in the summer months, it catches enough sunlight to maintain a good heat. In winter, we keep it warm with a fire, enough to keep off the frost, and in that way preserve plants that could not normally live even in our sheltered dell.
I precede my son into the glasshouse and he carefully shuts the door. Someone has been teaching him about this place while I have been away.
He leads me down to a bench covered in small stones. In pride of place, with clear air all around it stands a small clay pot. Right in the middle is a shoot, which bears four leaves and the bud of another pair of leaves at its tip. He takes up a small watering can and pours a little water onto the earth in the pot and onto the stones on the bench underneath.
"You have to be very careful not to touch the stem," he says. "It will need to be given a new pot soon, Papa. Look!" He gently lifts the pot and underneath, through the hole in the bottom of the pot, two small white roots show. "The gardener will help me, and I shall be very gentle with it and make sure I only touch the leaves. He says it is a very rare tree and that I need to make sure every day that all is well with it."
He is kneeling now, elbows on the bench and head in his hands, looking at the tree. I wonder if he has been speaking to it too.
"I shall be here when you move it to its new pot, Estel. I would like to see how that is done. I am too often busy with my papers and books and rarely have a chance to see such things."
"I didn't think it was going to grow!" he says. It seems I am to be treated to a history of this tree of his. "I have drawn pictures of it. I'll show you later."
There is a current of cold air, then Legolas is standing next to me, interrupting Estel's account of the seed-planting.
"It is growing strongly, Estel," he says, and he looks up proudly. "It will be strong enough to be planted out in the summer, I believe, though you will have to protect it from wild animals while it is becoming established."
"Yes – and water it every day, and make sure no insects decide its leaves are good food!"
"Have you thought on my puzzle?" Legolas asks, kneeling down by the boy and gently reaching out to touch the new, pale leaves.
"I have thought but I do not know if I have the right answer."
"Tell me," Legolas encourages. I hope he knows what he is doing. Estel likes to be right.
"This is the tree from which the wood will be taken to make my bows?" he asks, watching Legolas carefully as the elf strokes one of the leaves.
"No, that is not it. You may use many woods to make bows, and I will teach you all I can about that in the next few days, before I must return home."
The rain rattles on the glass. Estel, startled, asks, "Will it be all right in here? Does the glass break?"
"No, Estel. Your tree will be safe in here, never fear."
He relaxes and I suddenly see another new tree, a tiny sapling, carried in the hand of someone unfamiliar to me, a tall man. I cannot see where he is and I do not know the meaning of the picture which comes into my mind but I know that it is important. I treasure the vision but I will keep it to myself. Perhaps, some time in the future, it will come true.
"Estel, the tree will replace any wood you take for your bows. You must take living wood and you must cut it carefully. If you have grown a sapling, nurtured it yourself, you will know the meaning of taking a branch from a living tree."
"Oh," is all he says. But he stares at the seedling even more intently, then reaches out to touch the leaf just as Legolas has done. "I never thought of that," he says. "I will always remember."
"Now," I say. "You have been fed and you have tended your tree. It is time we searched for your pony. But you must go and find your coat, tell Halbarad what you are doing and then we will all go to the stables. We will see if you can track your pony to his hiding place."
"I couldn't do it yesterday! And it is raining – all the sign will be washed away."
"It is not a hopeless task even yet. Will you join us, Legolas, in this quest?"
"Orcs could not keep me away!" Legolas says, grinning. "Though I think it will be a muddy trial. However did you lose him in the first place?"
Estel tells the tale of a pony that would not stand still, and pushed past him as he tried to groom it – I suspect knocking him over as it went by, though he does not say so, for he rubs his hip absent-mindedly while he tells the story. We three hurry back to the house. I think this expedition may take longer than I anticipated, for as Estel rightly said the rain will tend to wash away marks that he could easily see. Well, we must do our best.
I will break the search into small tasks, and we will feed the boy and keep him as dry and warm as we can, for he has had a hard start to the day. But he chases off again, circling the tree three times, for luck, he claims, and his energy and liveliness chases away the gloomy weather.
We will find his pony. We must.