The Lord of the Rings (169 page)

Gandalf laughed. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘if they are afraid of just five of us, then we have met worse enemies on our travels. But at any rate they will give you peace at night while we stay.’

‘How long will that be?’ said Butterbur. ‘I’ll not deny we should be glad to have you about for a bit. You see, we’re not used to such troubles; and the Rangers have all gone away, folk tell me. I don’t think we’ve rightly understood till now what they did for us. For there’s been worse than robbers about. Wolves were howling round the fences last winter. And there’s dark shapes in the woods, dreadful things that it makes the blood run cold to think of. It’s been very disturbing, if you understand me.’

‘I expect it has,’ said Gandalf. ‘Nearly all lands have been disturbed these days, very disturbed. But cheer up, Barliman! You have been on the edge of very great troubles, and I am only glad to hear that you have not been deeper in. But better times are coming. Maybe, better than any you remember. The Rangers have returned. We came back with them. And there is a king again, Barliman. He will soon be turning his mind this way.

‘Then the Greenway will be opened again, and his messengers will come north, and there will be comings and goings, and the evil things will be driven out of the waste-lands. Indeed the waste in time will be waste no longer, and there will be people and fields where once there was wilderness.’

Mr. Butterbur shook his head. ‘If there’s a few decent respectable folk on the roads, that won’t do no harm,’ he said. ‘But we don’t want no more rabble and ruffians. And we don’t want no outsiders at Bree, nor near Bree at all. We want to be let alone. I don’t want a whole crowd o’ strangers camping here and settling there and tearing up the wild country.’

‘You will be let alone, Barliman,’ said Gandalf. ‘There is room enough for realms between Isen and Greyflood, or along the shore lands south of the Brandywine, without any one living within many days’ ride of Bree. And many folk used to dwell away north, a hundred miles or more from here, at the far end of the Greenway: on the North Downs or by Lake Evendim.’

‘Up away by Deadmen’s Dike?’ said Butterbur, looking even more dubious. ‘That’s haunted land, they say. None but a robber would go there.’

‘The Rangers go there,’ said Gandalf. ‘Deadmen’s Dike, you say. So it has been called for long years; but its right name, Barliman, is Fornost Erain, Norbury of the Kings. And the King will come there again one day; and then you’ll have some fair folk riding through.’

‘Well, that sounds more hopeful, I’ll allow,’ said Butterbur. ‘And it will be good for business, no doubt. So long as he lets Bree alone.’

‘He will,’ said Gandalf. ‘He knows it and loves it.’

‘Does he now?’ said Butterbur looking puzzled. ‘Though I’m sure I don’t know why he should, sitting in his big chair up in his great castle, hundreds of miles away. And drinking wine out of a golden cup, I shouldn’t wonder. What’s
The Pony
to him, or mugs o’ beer? Not but what my beer’s good, Gandalf. It’s been uncommon good, since you came in the autumn of last year and put a good word on it. And that’s been a comfort in trouble, I will say.’

‘Ah!’ said Sam. ‘But he says your beer is always good.’

‘He says?’

‘Of course he does. He’s Strider. The chief of the Rangers. Haven’t you got that into your head yet?’

It went in at last, and Butterbur’s face was a study in wonder. The eyes in his broad face grew round, and his mouth opened wide, and he gasped. ‘Strider!’ he exclaimed when he got back his breath. ‘Him with a crown and all and a golden cup! Well, what are we coming to?’

‘Better times, for Bree at any rate,’ said Gandalf.

‘I hope so, I’m sure,’ said Butterbur. ‘Well, this has been the nicest chat I’ve had in a month of Mondays. And I’ll not deny that I’ll sleep easier tonight and with a lighter heart. You’ve given me a powerful lot to think over, but I’ll put that off until tomorrow. I’m for bed, and I’ve no doubt you’ll be glad of your beds too. Hey, Nob!’ he called, going to the door. ‘Nob, you slowcoach!’

‘Now!’ he said to himself, slapping his forehead. ‘Now what does that remind me of?’

‘Not another letter you’ve forgotten. I hope, Mr. Butterbur?’ said Merry.

‘Now, now, Mr. Brandybuck, don’t go reminding me of that! But there, you’ve broken my thought. Now where was I? Nob, stables, ah! that was it. I’ve something that belongs to you. If you recollect Bill Ferny and the horsethieving: his pony as you bought, well, it’s here. Come back all of itself, it did. But where it had been to you know better than me. It was as shaggy as an old dog and as lean as a clothes-rail, but it was alive. Nob’s looked after it.’

‘What! My Bill?’ cried Sam. ‘Well, I was born lucky, whatever my gaffer may say. There’s another wish come true! Where is he?’ Sam would not go to bed until he had visited Bill in his stable.

The travellers stayed in Bree all the next day, and Mr. Butterbur could not complain of his business next evening at any rate. Curiosity overcame all fears, and his house was crowded. For a while out of politeness the hobbits visited the Common Room in the evening and answered a good many questions. Bree memories being retentive, Frodo was asked many times if he had written his book.

‘Not yet,’ he answered. ‘I am going home now to put my notes in order.’ He promised to deal with the amazing events at Bree, and so give a bit of interest to a book that appeared likely to treat mostly of the remote and less important affairs ‘away south’.

Then one of the younger folk called for a song. But at that a hush fell, and he was frowned down, and the call was not repeated. Evidently there was no wish for any uncanny events in the Common Room again.

No trouble by day, nor any sound by night, disturbed the peace of Bree while the travellers remained there; but the next morning they got up early, for as the weather was still rainy they wished to reach the Shire before night, and it was a long ride. The Bree folk were all out to see them off, and were in merrier mood than they had been for a year; and those who had not seen the strangers in all their gear before gaped with wonder at them: at Gandalf with his white beard, and the light that seemed to gleam from him, as if his blue mantle was only a cloud over sunshine; and at the four hobbits like riders upon errantry out of almost forgotten tales. Even those who had laughed at all the talk about the King began to think there might be some truth in it.

‘Well, good luck on your road, and good luck to your home-coming! said Mr. Butterbur. ‘I should have warned you before that all’s not well in the Shire neither, if what we hear is true. Funny goings on, they say. But one thing drives out another, and I was full of my own troubles. But if I may be so bold, you’ve come back changed from your travels, and you look now like folk as can deal with troubles out of hand. I don’t doubt you’ll soon set all to rights. Good luck to you! And the oftener you come back the better I’ll be pleased.’

They wished him farewell and rode away, and passed through the West-gate and on towards the Shire. Bill the pony was with them, and as before he had a good deal of baggage, but he trotted along beside Sam and seemed well content.

‘I wonder what old Barliman was hinting at,’ said Frodo.

‘I can guess some of it,’ said Sam gloomily. ‘What I saw in the Mirror: trees cut down and all, and my old gaffer turned out of the Row. I ought to have hurried back quicker.’

‘And something’s wrong with the Southfarthing evidently,’ said Merry. ‘There’s a general shortage of pipe-weed.’

‘Whatever it is,’ said Pippin, ‘Lotho will be at the bottom of it: you can be sure of that.’

‘Deep in, but not at the bottom,’ said Gandalf. ‘You have forgotten Saruman. He began to take an interest in the Shire before Mordor did.’

‘Well, we’ve got you with us,’ said Merry, ‘so things will soon be cleared up.’

‘I am with you at present,’ said Gandalf, ‘but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you.

‘But if you would know, I am turning aside soon. I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time. He is a moss-gatherer, and I have been a stone doomed to rolling. But my rolling days are ending, and now we shall have much to say to one another.’

In a little while they came to the point on the East Road where they had taken leave of Bombadil; and they hoped and half expected to see him standing there to greet them as they went by. But there was no sign of him; and there was a grey mist on the Barrow-downs southwards, and a deep veil over the Old Forest far away.

They halted and Frodo looked south wistfully. ‘I should dearly like to see the old fellow again,’ he said. ‘I wonder how he is getting on?’

‘As well as ever, you may be sure,’ said Gandalf. ‘Quite untroubled and I should guess, not much interested in anything that we have done or seen, unless perhaps in our visits to the Ents. There may be a time later for you to go and see him. But if I were you, I should press on now for home, or you will not come to the Brandywine Bridge before the gates are locked.’

‘But there aren’t any gates,’ said Merry, ‘not on the Road; you know that quite well. There’s the Buckland Gate, of course; but they’ll let me through that at any time.’

‘There weren’t any gates, you mean,’ said Gandalf. ‘I think you will find some now. And you might have more trouble even at the Buckland Gate than you think. But you’ll! manage all right. Good-bye dear friends! Not for the last time, not yet. Good-bye!’

He turned Shadowfax off the Road, and the great horse leaped the green dike that here ran beside it; and then at a cry from Gandalf he was gone, racing towards the Barrow-downs like a wind from the North.

‘Well here we are, just the four of us that started out together,’ said Merry. ‘We have left all the rest behind, one after another. It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded.’

‘Not to me,’ said Frodo. ‘To me it feels more like falling asleep again.’

Chapter 8
The Scouring of the Shire

It was after nightfall when, wet and tired, the travellers came at last to the Brandywine, and they found the way barred. At either end of the Bridge there was a great spiked gate; and on the further side of the river they could see that some new houses had been built: two-storeyed with narrow straight-sided windows, bare and dimly lit, all very gloomy and un-Shirelike.

They hammered on the outer gate and called, but there was at first no answer; and then to their surprise someone blew a horn, and the lights in the windows went out. A voice shouted in the dark:

‘Who’s that? Be off! You can’t come in: Can’t you read the notice:
No admittance between sundown and sunrise
?’

‘Of course we can’t read the notice in the dark.’ Sam shouted back. ‘And if hobbits of the Shire are to be kept out in the wet on a night like this, I’ll tear down your notice when I find it.’

At that a window slammed, and a crowd of hobbits with lanterns poured out of the house on the left. They opened the further gate, and some came over the bridge. When they saw the travellers they seemed frightened.

‘Come along!’ said Merry, recognizing one of the hobbits. ‘If you don’t know me, Hob Hayward, you ought to. I am Merry Brandybuck, and I should like to know what all this is about, and what a Bucklander like you is doing here. You used to be on the Hay Gate.’

‘Bless me! It’s Master Merry, to be sure, and all dressed up for fighting!’ said old Hob. ‘Why, they said you was dead! Lost in the Old Forest by all accounts. I’m pleased to see you alive after all!’

‘Then stop gaping at me through the bars, and open the gate!’ said Merry.

‘I’m sorry, Master Merry, but we have orders.’

‘Whose orders?’

‘The Chief’s up at Bag End.’

‘Chief? Chief? Do you mean Mr. Lotho?’ said Frodo.

‘I suppose so, Mr. Baggins; but we have to say just “the Chief” nowadays.’

‘Do you indeed!’ said Frodo. ‘Well, I am glad he has dropped the Baggins at any rate. But it is evidently high time that the family dealt with him and put him in his place.’

A hush fell on the hobbits beyond the gate. ‘It won’t do no good talking that way,’ said one. ‘He’ll get to hear of it. And if you make so much noise, you’ll wake the Chief’s Big Man.’

‘We shall wake him up in a way that will surprise him,’ said Merry. ‘If you mean that your precious Chief has been hiring ruffians out of the wild, then we’ve not come back too soon.’ He sprang from his pony, and seeing the notice in the light of the lanterns, he tore it down and threw it over the gate. The hobbits backed away and made no move to open it. ‘Come on, Pippin!’ said Merry. ‘Two is enough.’

Merry and Pippin climbed the gate, and the hobbits fled. Another horn sounded. Out of the bigger house on the right a large heavy figure appeared against a light in the doorway.

‘What’s all this,’ he snarled as he came forward. ‘Gate-breaking? You clear out, or I’ll break your filthy little necks!’ Then he stopped, for he had caught the gleam of swords.

‘Bill Ferny,’ said Merry, ‘if you don’t open that gate in ten seconds, you’ll regret it. I shall set steel to you, if you don’t obey. And when you have opened the gates you will go through them and never return. You are a ruffian and a highway-robber.’

Bill Ferny flinched and shuffled to the gate and unlocked it. ‘Give me the key!’ said Merry. But the ruffian flung it at his head and then darted out into the darkness. As he passed the ponies one of them let fly with his heels and just caught him as he ran. He went off with a yelp into the night and was never heard of again.

‘Neat work, Bill,’ said Sam, meaning the pony.

‘So much for your Big Man,’ said Merry. ‘We’ll see the Chief later. In the meantime we want a lodging for the night, and as you seem to have pulled down the Bridge Inn and built this dismal place instead, you’ll have to put us up.’