Below the Stars, A Quiet Night

Below the Stars, A Quiet Night by Saoirse
How did Merry, Pippin, Sam and Freddy, or a combination of at least two of these hobbits, form their conspiracy?

A/N: Pippin is 72, Merry 80, Sam, 82 and Freddy 82

The character Apple, or more precisely, Appleberry, that is mentioned once briefly in this story is of my own creation. She is Merry’s eldest daughter.


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Below the Stars, A Quiet Night
Great Smials, S.R. 1462


They all sat on the porch around the back of the Smials, outside of one of the private doors of the Thain’s apartments. No one could come out to disturb them, even if they wished it, for the only way to get to the hidden area was by walking directly through the Thain’s study, which no one would ever do, except perhaps Diamond, but she wasn’t there to do it, anyhow.

The sky was a deep navy, like a dark velvety blanket draped above them, bespeckled with the shining of precious jewels – lamps glimmering in the distance of night.

It was beautiful, and as they all sat slowly rocking back-and-forth in their creaking chairs, not saying anything to each other, but enjoying the company all the same, they were all struck anew at the immeasurable of beauty of the world that hung above them. It seemed to stretch and go for dimensions, so vast, that the farthest reaches of their imaginations could not fathom what was beyond it, though each had his own idea, and seemed to be lost there, wandering the paths of their fantasies, as they smoked their pipes in companionable silence.

Someone sighed, and the other three did not know who had done it, and did not guess.

Pippin thought of his recently departed wife, as he gazed up at the sky. Gone already though she was still quite young, taken by a fiery fever that had melted the frozen heart his love could not. The stars’ cold and distant beauty reminded him sharply of her, as they appeared to glimmer and laugh only since he couldn’t reach them. And surely enough, he knew the deep void of loss in his heart, left in place of some time-quelled bereavement, grew larger for it, as the cool breeze seemed to sigh around him.

Sam was reminded of the twinkle in his grand-laddie’s eyes when he’d shown him Sting upon his daughter’s most recent visit back to Bag End from the newly pioneered West March. He’d thought for sure that the moment he’d seen that eager glint, there was something Tookish buried deep inside the boy, somehow, and hoped that he’d be around to see it, glancing sidelong at Pippin.

Freddy mused on the barley harvest, for he had never been all too much of a vast-minded thinker, and moved to better fit inside his chair, until something very bright caught his eye, and he pointed, his voice seeming strangely loud, breaking the silence around them, saying, "What’s that there?"

The other three looked to him, and then upwards, and then Pippin was the first to sigh, almost in exasperation.

"Freddy! We’ve told you more times than your belt is wide – which is quite a lot," and Sam chuckled, only for his laugh to turn into an awkward cough upon a glare from Freddy, and Merry smiled. "It’s Earendil!"

"With the shining rock?"

"The Sil-maril, yes," said Pippin.

"I always seem to forget," Freddy shrugged and paused so long that his companions thought him finished, but then said, "It’s a wonder that you can see it every place you go," and continued gazing up with star-brightened eyes.

They were quiet again for a long while, the sounds of night buzzing a low murmur out across the green country they stared out at, filling the silence between them with its comforting hum. The moon shone brilliantly, its argent sparkle so bright that it gleamed down with the light of a laughing smile, and seemed to cast a white pathway down into the fields, like a road continuing forever into the distance, white and fair in the darkness of night. And the moonbeams shone and touched their hair, bringing out the silvery-grey more, perhaps, than the sun even could.

And as they gazed out in the distance, they all felt something stir inside, a lust long-quelled. In some deep, nostalgic place in their hearts, they wished to take up pack and song, and go – go merrily down that moonlit path, as if they were still young and hail as they had once been. Though, they were not as young as they had once been, and they all knew it, and even Pippin with his unquenchable energy seemed to grow tired quicker than he used to.

The grassy hills far before them seemed an ocean of dark green, swaying back and forth like the waves of the sea in the rushing breeze. Merry was silent as he watched this, and thoughtful, as he sat in the shadow of the doorway.

"Do you remember the Conspiracy?" Merry whispered a little while later, as if they all didn’t, and as if it was still a thing to be silent and secretive of. They all did, of course, but said nothing, waiting for him to continue, but he didn’t, and they let it go. Merry was like that sometimes.

But a moment later Merry began to laugh, and Pippin frowned and looked at Sam who shrugged.

"Wot’s the matter?" asked Freddy, earnest and clueless, as usual.

"It’s just funny is all...we had no idea what we were getting into." He sighed, the laughter gone. "No idea at ‘tall."

"What had gone and made you think of it, then, Merry?" asked Pippin lightly, turning to his cousin and seeing in his eyes that fathomless look. The look of his cousin’s merry soul descending into a darkness that outmatched the shadow of night around them. Pippin longed then, when he saw that look, to go to Merry and grasp his hand, but glanced at Freddy and Sam, who could not see this in his cousin. He stayed himself, waiting for Merry to answer.

"Apple had done it. She asked me... the other day, ‘How’d it come about Papa?’ ‘How’d you come to form it? Who had done it?" Merry said, looking out thoughtfully into the night. His voice was a haunted one, though is only sounded quiet. "She was just wondering," he said, and thought then of what he had told her.

There was never any discussion to it, in the beginning at least, never any plan to start it up, but it had somehow formed, wrought by the utter and unquestionable devotion they all had for their dear cousin. And it took form maybe, in the beginning, as a prolonged gaze, an innocent inquiry, a kind offer to take a walk, or do the dishes, or sing his favorite song.

But it soon began to change, this gentle concern of theirs, as time wore on and their cousin began to laugh less than the leaves blown by the wind in the trees, an ever-watchful, almost – worrying, look in his clear, blue eyes. A look like someone was ever-after him, and may have been lurking in the shadows around the corner up ahead or far behind, or both. Though they laughed this off, it was an absurd notion, after all.

Though later, afterwards, when Merry had spied Bilbo vanishing into thin air, as he had, that one day on his so-far uneventful stroll, he knew whatever was stirring his intuition deep inside was far more serious than loneliness or melancholy, far more serious than he had first thought.

And upon his exiting of that famed birthday party, when that wry old devil had given them all the slip, leaving shock and outrage in his wake, sparkling like the fireworks he had lit off (as he would have been pleased to know), Merry paid one instant look to Frodo’s stricken face after cousin Bilbo disappeared, orphaned once again, and his mind was abruptly made up.

Rushing over to his cousin, amidst the sudden bustle and clamor of the party, he stopped when he saw Sam, just as dumbstruck as he himself had been that first moment, but only his concern for Frodo jolted him into action. With a strong hand he pulled Sam aside from inside the crowd, and brought him close, saying in a quiet, pressing whisper, "Watch him, Sam. And tell me everything you learn." Sam looked up at him, hesitant a moment, but his gaze then travelled to his master, who sat unmoving then, right where he had been during the speech, an expression too lost to describe etched onto his fine face, and then Sam heard Old Rory Brandybuck holler somewhere in the background for Frodo to bring about more wine. He watched as small Pippin tugged on Frodo’s sleeve incessantly, as his cousin sat motionless, worry in his green, young eyes – though the little Took knew not what for. Then Sam looked back to Merry, who still held him in his steady, unwavering gaze, and nodded once surely, in agreement.

And of course, Merry eventually told Pippin, for his growing fear that Frodo would one day up and go off without him increased with every look his older cousin gave down that dirty path from Bag End, to some place far, far off into the distance; with every quiet sigh, or lonely smile, as he raised his glass to Bilbo every September 22; and every slowed step he would make as he passed the old adventurer’s empty study, all his papers left still on the desk as they had been the day he vanished, and the chair pushed slightly sideways, as if he had simply got up to get himself a drink of water, and would be returning to finish a sentence in just a moment.

It became sort of a more formal awareness when Fredegar Bolger (another one of Frodo’s closest friends) had approached Merry one night at Brandy Hall, voicing in his normal blithe manner his concern for Frodo’s distant, quiet behavior, after a visit Frodo had paid to Budgeford. Saying his removed gaze always seemed to be "seeing something far and unpleasant," but then the look would change to smiles and grins with the jostling friends. Though that unnerving regard would always slowly slip back in time, and his friends (the ones with the eyes and hearts to see it) would always notice – even if Frodo himself seemed not to.

But it had truly begun that one night in the tavern, that time when they had made a pact officially, if such a thing can be said of it. They did not need to talk or discuss, they all knew, the concern for Frodo was heavy in each of their gazes. The worry laying pressingly on their hearts which manifested from many days spent with their bookish cousin, where he seemed to be taciturn and studious.

Pippin had first noticed it when he had asked jestingly if Frodo could stretch his old legs for a walk around the meadow (and Frodo would usually feign a scowl to him and reply, "These legs may be nearly twice as old as yours, you young scamp, but their definitely twice as fast!" and then he’d race him to the Party Tree; then take Pippin for a pint at the Dragon if his Tookish cousin beat him in the race; and more than often he’d take him if Pippin didn’t beat him, as well).

But Frodo had looked up from the table, holding his tea in his hands, which trembled ever-so barely that had Pippin not thought it so odd that Frodo did not jump up and dart, and so look at him more closely, he would not have even noticed. Then Frodo turned to him, and when he spoke he sounded quiet and nearly normal, but Pippin detected a wisp of tiredness in his tone, and for some reason it struck a cord in him that made him very, very sad, as Frodo sighed, "Not today, Pippin," and left him to walk alone.

Sam had first seen it when his master had walked out into the garden one day, and politely nodded to him as he always did, asking him of the day and his family and what he was planting and why, and also what it would look like. That was something he always did, and Sam thought it right-nice, if not at all called for, that he did such a thing, being a gentlehobbit and all. After asking, Frodo had taken his pipe and strolled over to the bench that lay hidden in between two walls of vine and sat down, staring off to the horizon.

Sam had worked all day in the hot sun, and then left, when it came time for him to go. But for some reason, Sam felt the need that night to go back to the garden at Bag End and check on his hydrangeas, and upon doing so, he was nearly startled out of his wits. He saw a shadowy figure, seeming sadly illuminated by the pale glance of the waning moon. It was Mr Frodo, still sitting there, unmoved from that afternoon, gazing out, was it – fearfully? at the stars rising in the distance.

As for Freddy, it was not he who had noticed his cousin acting strangely, but his sister, Estella. She had said to him one day, "Freddy, what has got into Frodo?" and he responded, "Whatever do you mean?" And then she said, knitting her eyebrows, "Hadn’t you noticed? I thought he was sick."

Freddy dismissed her disbelievingly, but then later that night at dinner had noticed with a growing concern rumbling deep in his large belly, when he had jested, "Estella is quite scrawny! I think my girth makes up for her lack-of!" that Frodo did not even smile at his joke.

But as it was mentioned, it was at the tavern that night that the worriment slowly growing inside each of them took form as an impromptu accordance. They all looked solemnly, silently, at one another, quickly quieting after they had laughingly wished Frodo pleasant dreams (without bed bugs – and hangovers) when he had excused himself early, claiming he felt weary. And right then a silent accordance was made, as they all gazed into each other’s eyes and saw their own worry and concern and – fear even, reflected back to them. A silent accordance: to wait, to watch.

And it all fell together, in the end, anyway. It was Pippin in fact who had once jokingly suggested that they give it a name, "The Conspiracy!" he blurted joyfully, feeling quite special and delighted to be let in on something so terribly and wonderfully secret (as he had felt in the very beginning). They had planned their departure with Frodo, (giving much credit to Sam, and his ever-watchful eyes and ever-listening ears, around the windows of Bag End when things of surreptitious nature were not to be seen or heard at all). But it had been Merry’s quick thinking that had suggested Crickhollow for Frodo, and Freddy’s ever-eagerness to help that had devised that part of the plan.

Merry came back to himself then, recalling that last one nice meal they had in Crickhollow, before it had all begun. He remembered thinking that night, while they ate, that this would be the "last of all he had ever known, perhaps," not knowing why right then such a terrible thought had come to him, and how terribly right he would eventually be. He rocked in his chair and took a deep breath of the warm, blowing air.

"Well, what did you say to her? How did you say it came to be about?" asked Pippin’s lilting voice, breaking the silence, and the solitude, as he often did for Merry. And Merry looked over to him, noticing both Sam and Freddy’s eyes on him, as well.

Merry looked back out to the night-blanketed fields and waited a moment. He thought then to himself how very dear Frodo had been to him, and how much he loved him, with a devotion that would not have waned upon the ending of the world (and indeed it hadn’t). He thought of how much he missed him. And knew his ache – the piecing pain of loss – dulled to a blunt ever-present soreness by the kneading of time, was echoed by his companions, just the same. He looked then back to his cousin, and his friends, and taking his pipe from his mouth said, "I told her Frodo; Frodo had done it. He made the Conspiracy. By loving us."

And Pippin seemed to think this over a moment, and Sam, and Freddy, and they all nodded slightly and turned back in their chairs to gaze up at the stars, agreeing.