The Treason of Isengard (10 page)

'Do you need it? I thought you had made up your mind about me already! If not, you ought not to have let me stay; and you certainly ought not to have read that aloud to me.'

'I haven't made up my mind,' said Sam suddenly. 'And I am not going to see Mr Frodo made fun of and put upon. Let's see that letter, or Sam Gamgee'll take a hand!'

'My good Sam,' said Trotter. 'I've got a weapon under my cloak, as well as you! And I don't mind telling you that if I was not the real Trotter, you would not have a chance, not all three of you together. But steady there!' he said, as Sam sprang up. 'I have got a letter, and here it is!'

Onto the table he tossed another sealed letter, outwardly exactly like the other. Sam and Folco [> Pippin] looked at it, as Frodo opened it. Inside there was a small paper in Gandalf's hand. It said:

All that is gold does not glitter;

all that is long does not last;

All that is old does not wither;

not all that is over is past.

This is to certify that the bearer is Aragorn son of Celegorn,(15) of the line of Isildur Elendil's son, known in Bree as Trotter; enemy of the Nine, and friend of Gandalf. ...................: (X):-.

Frodo stared at the words in amazement. 'Of the line of Elendil!' he said, looking with awe at Trotter. 'Then It belongs to you as much as to me, or more!'

'It does not belong to either of us,' said Trotter; 'but you are to keep it for a while. For so it is ordained.'(16)

'Why didn't you show this to us sooner? It would have saved time, and prevented me, and Sam, from behaving absurdly.'

'Absurdly! Not at all. Sam is very sensible: he doubted me to the last, and I think he still does. Quite right, too! If you'd had more experience of your Enemy, you would not trust your own hands, except in broad daylight, once you knew that he was on your track. I had to make sure of you, too. That was one reason why I delayed. The Enemy has set snares for me before now. But I must admit that I tried to persuade you to take me as a friend, for my own sake without proofs. A hunted wanderer wearies sometimes of distrust, even while he is preaching it.(17) But there, I fear my looks are against me.'

There follows the ill-judged intervention of Folco/Pippin - 'Handsome is as handsome does we say in the Shire', which had remained unchanged from Odo's original remark in VI.155; then follows: Folco [> Pippin] subsided; but Sam was not daunted, and he still eyed Trotter dubiously. 'You could make yourself look like you do, if you were play-acting,' he said. 'What proof have we had that you are the real article, I should like to know?'

Trotter laughed. 'Don't forget Butterbur's letter, Sam! ' he said. 'Think it out! Butterbur is certainly the real Butterbur, unless the whole of Bree is bewitched. How could the words all that is gold appear in Butterbur's letter and in mine, unless Gandalf wrote them both? You may be sure Gandalf did not give a spy a chance of knowing that Butterbur's letter existed.

Even if he did, a spy could not know the key-words, without reading the letter. How could that have been done without Butterbur's knowledge?'

Sam scratched his head long and thoughtfully. 'Ah!' he said at last. 'I dessay it would have been difficult. But how about this: you could have done in the real Trotter and stolen his letter, and then popped it out, like you did, after hearing Butterbur's and seeing how the land lay? You seem mighty unwilling to show it.

What have you got to say to that?'

'I say you are a splendid fellow,' said Trotter. 'I see why Gandalf chose you to go with your master. You hang on tight. I am afraid my only answer to you, Sam, is this: if I had killed the real Trotter, I could kill you, and I should have killed you already without so much talk. If I was after the Ring, I could have it - now! ' He stood up, and seemed suddenly to grow taller. In his face there gleamed a light, keen and commanding.

They did not move. Even Sam sat still, staring dumbly at him.

'But I am the real Trotter, fortunately,' he said, looking down at them with a sudden kindly smile. 'I am Aragorn son of Celegorn, and if by life or death I can save you, I will.' There was a long silence.

At last Frodo spoke hesitatingly. 'Did those verses of Gandalf's apply to you, then?' he asked. 'I thought at first they were just nonsense.'

'Nonsense, if you will,' answered Trotter. 'Don't worry about them. They have served their turn.'

'If you want to know,' said Frodo, 'I believed in you before Butterbur came in. I was not trying to trust you, but struggling not to trust you, to follow your own teaching. You have frightened me several times tonight, but never in the way that servants of the Enemy would, or so I imagine. I think one of those would... would, well, seem fairer and feel fouler. You...

well, it is the other way round with you.'

'I look foul and feel fair, is it?' laughed Trotter. 'We'll leave it at that, and say no more about round bellies!'

'I am glad you are to be our guide,' said Folco [> Pippin).

'Now that we are beginning to understand the danger, we should be in despair without you. But somehow I feel more hopeful than ever.'

Sam said nothing.

Afterwards my father abandoned this spider's web of argumenta-tion, arising from there being two letters from Gandalf, and handled the question of the verse of recognition All that is gold does not glitter and Aragorn's knowledge of it extremely adroitly by making Aragorn use the words himself (not having seen or heard Gandalf's one letter) a propos Frodo's remark (already present in this version) about 'foul and fair' (FR p. 184). But the complication of the two letters survived the crucial decision that Gandalf's letter to Frodo was written to be received by him before he left Bag End and failed in delivery through Butterbur's forgetfulness.

After 'Sam said nothing' this version is the same as FR (p. 184), with Trotter's words about the leaving of Bree and the making for Weathertop. But his answer to Frodo's question about Gandalf is much slighter:

Trotter looked grave. 'I don't know,' he said. 'To tell you the truth, I am very troubled about him - for the first time since I have known him. He meant to arrive here with you two days sooner than' this. We should at least have had messages.

Something has happened. I think it is something that he feared, or he would not have taken all these precautions with letters.'

From Frodo's question 'Do you think the Black Riders have anything to do with it?' the remainder of FR Chapter 10 was now attained except in a few minor particulars, the chief of which occurs in Merry's account of his experience. This story now returns to the original version (VI.161-2), according to which the Rider went eastwards through the village and stopped at Bill Ferney's house (whereas in the

'third phase' version, VI.353-4, it went in the other direction to the West-gate); but it differs from FR (p. 185) in that when Merry was about to bolt back to the inn 'another black shape rose up before me -

coming down the Road from the other gate - and ... and I fell over.'

In this version Trotter says: 'They may after all try some attack before we leave Bree. But it will be dark. In the light they need their horses.'(18) For the subsequent history of this chapter see pp. 76 - 8.

Chapter XI: 'A Knife in the Dark'.

This chapter was another of those that my father at this time reconstituted partly from the existing 'third phase' text (the latter part of Chapter X and the first part of Chapter XI, see VI.359) and partly from new manuscript pages, and as with the previous chapters in this form some rejected pages of the older version became separated and did not go to Marquette.

The new text opens with the attack on Crickhollow, which with the change in its date had been moved from its original place in Chapter VII (see p. 36). For the previous form of the episode see VI.328; this was almost identical to the original text, VI.303 - 4. To both of these my father pencilled in glimpses of the story that Odo left with Gandalf as he rode after the Black Riders - a story that seems only to have entered the 'third phase' narrative when the 'Bree' chapter was reached: see VI.336. But in the second version Crickhollow was not empty: a curtain moved in a window - for Odo had stayed behind.

I give first a preliminary draft of the attack on Crickhollow written for its new place in the story.

As they slept there in the inn of Bree, darkness lay on Buckland. Mist strayed in the dells and along the river-bank.

The house at Crickhollow stood silent. Not long before, when evening had just fallen, there had been a light in a window. A horse came quickly up the lane, and halted. Up the path in haste a figure walked, wrapped in a great cloak, leading a white horse.

He tapped on the door, and at once the light went out. The curtain at the window stirred, and soon after the door was opened and he passed quickly in. Even as the door closed a black shadow seemed to move under the trees and pass out through the gate without a sound.(19) Then darkness slowly deepened into night, a dead and misty night: no stars shone over Buckland.

There came the soft fall of hoofs, horses were drawing near, led slow and cautiously. The gate in the hedge opened, and up the path filed three shapes, hooded, swathed in black, and stooping low towards the ground. One went to the door, one to each corner of the house-end on either side; and there they stood, silent as the black shadows of stones, while time went slowly on, and the house and the trees about it seemed to be waiting breathlessly.

There was a faint stir in the leaves, and a cock crowed. The cold hour before dawn had come.(20) Suddenly the figure by the door moved. In the dark, without star or moon, the blade that was drawn gleamed, as if a chill light had been unsheathed.

There was a blow, soft but heavy, and the door shuddered.

'Open in the name of Sauron!' said a voice, cold and menacing. At a second blow the door yielded, and fell back with its lock broken and timbers burst. The black figures passed swiftly in.

At that moment, nearby among the trees a horn rang out. It rent the night like fire on a hill-top, echoing over the land.

Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! Someone was blowing the Horn-call of Buckland, which had not been sounded for a hundred years, not since the white wolves came in the Fell Winter when the Brandywine was frozen. Far away (21) answering horns were heard. Distant sounds of waking and alarm came through the night. The whole of Buckland was aroused.

The black shapes slipped swiftly from the house. In the lane the sound of hoofs broke out, and gathering to a gallop went racing into the darkness. Behind them a white horse ran. On it sat an old man clad in grey, with long silver hair and flowing beard. His horn still sounded over hill and dale. In his right hand a wand flared and flickered like a sheaf of lightning.(22) Behind him, clinging to his cloak, sat a hobbit. Gandalf and Hamilcar were riding to the North Gate, and the Black Riders fled before them. But they had found out what they wished to know: Crickhollow was empty and the Ring had gone.

The story here must be that Gandalf and Hamilcar left the house by the back door, as Fredegar Bolger did in FR (p. 188), but then waited among the trees surrounding the open space in which the house stood.

A note added to the time-scheme B (p. 11) seems to fit this version: 'The Black Riders creep into Buckland, but too late to see Frodo depart.

They track him to Crickhollow and guard it, and see Gandalf enter.

But Gandalf (and Ham pretending to be Frodo) burst out on night of Sept. 29.'

Another short text, written on the same slip of paper and obviously at the same time as that just given, provided only the end of the episode; and in this text, which was later struck through, there is no mention of Gandalf:

Ham Bolger was blowing the Horn-call of Buckland, which had not been sounded for a hundred years... [@ c. as before] The black shapes slipped swiftly from the house.

In the lane the sound of hoofs broke out and gathering to a gallop raced off madly northwards into the dark. The black riders had fled, for their concern was not yet with the little folk of the Shire, but only with the Ring. And they had discovered what they wished to know: Crickhollow was empty and the Ring had gone.

This perhaps goes with the outline $4 on p. 9: 'Crickhollow scene -

only Hamilcar there. He blows horn...'

The version of the story that appears in the 'fourth phase' manuscript changes again. It begins thus:

As they slept there in the inn at Bree, darkness lay on Buckland: mist strayed in the dells and along the river-bank.

The house at Crickhollow stood silent. A curtain stirred in a window and for a moment a light gleamed out. At once a black shadow moved under the trees and passed out through the gate without a sound. The night deepened. There came the soft fall of hoofs...

The draft text given on p. 53 is then followed closely; but from 'The black figures passed swiftly in' there is a new story: The black figures passed swiftly in. In a moment they came out again; one was carrying a small bundled figure in an old cloak: it did not struggle. Now they leaped upon their horses without caution; in the lane the noise of hoofs broke out, and gathering to a gallop went hammering away into the darkness.