The Green Dragon Inn #11 - The Last Chapter

[Rose]

Rose looked from Miz Violet and back to Lilly. ‘My goodness,’ she thought to herself ‘the lasses down here in town were bold! “Forward” her Gran would say.’ She wanted to excuse herself from the whole venture, saying she had business to see to. But Lilly had been so kind to invite her to their table. And even Miz Violet thought it alright to go sit at the stranger’s table.

Stealing a quick glance at Fordogrim’s table, she caught him looking her way. She blushed and ducked her head as she turned quickly back to her lunch companions. ‘I suppose it will be alright,’ she said. ‘But I can’t stay long to chat. I really must see Miz Vinca Bunce about the Faire that’s coming up. Some business my mother’s sent me on.’

The tray was quickly loaded with bowls, baskets of bread, butter, honey, and jams, and cheese of course. Lilly led the way with Miz Violet following, her cane tapping along on the wooden floor. Rose brought up the rear, her eyes darting from side to side, in case any opportunities for escape might suddenly appear.

[piosenniel]

‘Get that misbegotten cat!’ yelled Cook. She lay on the floor gasping and flapping as she tried to raise herself up on the slippery boards. With an ungraceful heave, she turned to her belly and leveraged herself up to her knees.

Her hair had straggled out from her headband and she pushed it back with an authoritative motion – daring the curls to stray out of place again, almost. A figure whizzed by her, on the run, heading for where the cat and his prize were struggling to get out the window.

‘Grab the thief!’ she hollered again. And was rewarded as a hand clamped firmly about the puffy white tail.

[Folwren]

Wren had been left in an upstairs room, rummages through an old wardrobe in search of proper stockings and shoes for that evening’s party. It had taken her quite some time, for she tried on what pairs of shoes she could find and also sought for stockings that might match the dress Ginger had carried off with her.

After some time of such work, she finally found shoes that would fit at least decently, and stockings that would match. She put everything back where it belonged and closed all the drawers and doors and tops of everything and left the room as undisturbed as she and Ginger had entered it earlier.

She reached the bottom of the stair way and dodged across the common room as inconspicuously as she could possibly managed and pushed the kitchen door open carefully. The sight that met her eyes caused her to stop in the doorway where she stood. The door closed softly behind her and she remained rooted in her place.

The cook, who was no longer on the floor, looked absolutely furious, and she was wet, no less. Ruby was in the act of pulling a cat back into the kitchen through the window by its tail.

It had been Cook’s appearance that had first shocked Wren, but when her eyes clapped to the cat being dragged back against it’s will, her little heart went out to it and she started forward with a cry of indignation, dropping her burden as she went, her young eyes flashing.

“Don’t hurt the poor cat! Don’t pull it’s tail! Leave it alone! What did he ever do to you to deserve that treatment! Give him to me.”

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Fordogrim stood up grandly from his table as the lasses approached with their grand dam, motioning to Gerdy and Fatty to rise as well. His cousins’ eyes were as saucers as they got to their feet, for they were bachelors both, and shy around lasses. Like most hobbits, they looked forward to settling down someday, but as yet their minds had not wandered too far from their work. For his part, Fordogrim enjoyed the company of a pretty maid but had little inclination toward marriage, enjoying, as he said to his friends repeatedly, “the leisure to eat my second breakfast and elevenses whenever and wherever I please, and the freedom of popping out to the local for an ale at any hour.” So it was with a purely aesthetic and somewhat disinterested enjoyment that he gazed upon Lilly and Rose as they approached.

Stepping forward from the table he dropped them a bow that would have been grand in someone of more normal height, but being as he was but barely 24 inches tall, it merely emphasized his extreme smallness. Standing erect once more he addressed the women in as polite a tone as he could muster. “Thank you very much for accepting of our invitation, ladies, for we are three strangers to these here parts. What is more, for all that we are unfamiliar with this part of the Shire, we’re all too familiar of each other, having spent so much time together that there’s little new to say. It will be a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” And with that he bowed once more. Before anyone could recover from this display, tiny Fordogrim leapt toward the extra chairs that Tim had smartly provided and held them out in turn for each of the ladies. As he seated them he introduced himself and his cousins (“This here is Fatty, whose name, you’ll note, doesn’t fit him – not yet at least, but we’re hoping to get him fed up on this trip a bit more! And this is his brother Gerdy – a right good worker, and as steady a fellow as you’d like to meet!”). When he had pushed in all three chairs (and spent, if the truth be told, a little longer doing so with Rose and Lilly than with Violet), Fordogrim sat himself at the table and called out to Ruby for more food, “so as we three can keep you three better company.”

When all were settled he turned to Lilly and Rose (whom he had quite cannily seated directly across from himself, the better to see their faces; Violet he had sat as his right hand, facing the cousins) and asked if they had heard of the party that was to be held at the Inn this night? “For,” he said, “it’s to be a grand affair in celebration of my very own ales and lagers. And there’s sure to be ever so much to do at it. Singing and people as meeting with one another…and dancing, to be sure!” And here he looked at the younger lasses with a decided twinkle in his eye.

‘Now just how did he manage that?’ Barnaby Stonecrop looked up from his lunch and watched the trio of women make their way toward the diminutive Hobbit and his two companions. ‘Some fellows just have all the luck!’

The older woman, he thought he knew, at least by sight if not by introduction. Mistress Greengage . . . Violet Greengage. Lives somewhere up near The Pool, as he recalled. And the light haired lass, he thought might be her niece. She was easy to remember, with her blue eyes, fair hair, and friendly ways. It was her, he thought he’d watched dance near every dance at the last Summer Faire.

The other young woman he could not recall seeing before. Her short dark curls framed a pretty face set with dark eyes that seemed to take in her surroundings in a reserved manner. He watched the two of them for a while, with sly glances toward their table.

Taking a hot bun from the basket before him, Barnaby slathered it generously with butter, followed by a thick layer of honey. He took a large bite and chewed on it thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if the two lasses will be at the party this evening,’ he thought to himself, stealing another look.

[Dunwen]

Widow Rosebank had been washing dishes when a broom had suddenly appeared over her right shoulder and a muddy mass of dingy white fur had dropped like a stone into the dish pan. Like a stone, it had sent a fair amount of dirty dishwater over the edge of the pan and onto her bodice and apron. The mass of fur started yowling and, resolving itself into a very unhappy-looking cat, leapt out of the pan (scattering yet more dishwater onto Widow Rosebank, this time getting her in the face).

At about the same moment, Miz Bunce had appeared, shrieking for someone to grab the cat, only to slip and fall in the puddle at the Widow's feet. For the second time that day, she was nearly knocked off her feet by a hobbit. Blindly catching herself on the counter, she did keep her feet, but nearly fell again when Ruby charged past, determined to follow Cook's order. More shrieks filled the air as little Wren Woodlock entered the kitchen and in the way of small girls, took the cat's part.

The widow, firmly on the side of orderly kitchens, was quick to come to Ruby's assistance. Stepping over Miz Bunce and Ruby, she firmly grasped the angry cat by the scruff of its neck and relieved him of his ill-gotten chicken. Handing the carcass to Ruby, who had let go of the tail once she saw that the culprit was firmly in the Widow's hands, she wrapped the furious animal up in her apron.

"Bad kitty!," she scolded. "Bad, bad, BAD kitty!" The unrepentant feline put its ears back and hissed ferocisously while trying to free a forefoot to claw her. "Pish, tush," the widow replied, wrapping her apron more tightly around the small wriggling body. "If you're going to be such a nuisance, you're going to get the trouble that comes with it."

The cat expressed his disdain for the widow's statement with a series of yowls and hisses and continued his attempts to escape. Disregarding this show of force, the widow tucked him firmly under her arm and looked about the kitchen. Ruby was protectively cuddling a smoked chicken. Miz Bunce was sopping wet and nearly shooting sparks out of her eyes as she glared about. She herself wasn't any drier, and was holding a loudly caterwauling cat in her apron. Wren was demanding the instant release of the creature. All in all, they looked like a collection of lunatics.

The Widow tried. She really did. This was just not the moment, she told herself firmly. But alas, she couldn't help herself. "Well, at least the dishes are clean," she said.

But she couldn't stop the giggle that escaped her. Or the one after that.

[Folwren]

Wren looked in disbelief at the Widow, laughing as if the whole thing was actually funny. The bundle of cat and apron under arm was still struggling like mad. Wren’s hands went to her hips and she stamped furiously, her foot splashing in the water still on the ground.

“Why don’t you let him go?” she demanded. “You’ll hurt him if you keep him like that - or suffocate him, or something. How dare you call him a bad kitty? He only took a bit of the chicken. And then for that, you haul him back in by tail and then pick him up and wrap him as though he were no better than one of the mice that he catches! And then you say that he’s going to get the trouble that comes with it! You can’t do anything to him. Let him go and leave him be!”

Whether it was her place or not to demand the cat’s freedom, Wren didn’t bother to think. Nothing could get her ire up faster and longer than the mistreatment of an animal and she particularly loved cats, of any shape or size. She was oblivious of the Cook’s evident dislike of this particular feline, nor had she been around long enough to know better than to get on her bad side. As for the Widow Rosebank, Wren was more inclined to speak sharply to the woman who’d given her something to worry about than not. So she stood staring up at the widow, a defiant and fierce light in her eyes - a look that did not often occupy Wren’s face.