Chapter Eight
Mistand the darkness before dawn came to SalteBlock farms, and the little Bobbin everyone called Tappert MaCrow entered the kitchen down inside the old, and really evenancient, abbey from which his lovely tower rose near a corner in what remained of the wall. Quickly, Tappert MaCrow fell to the business of starting the copper kettle, grinding the coffee, and selecting two fat strips of his choicest cured bacon from the herd that fed on acorns up in the high hills, for the first of the several meals Littles would regularly have throughout the day.
Bacon, as it was simply known.
Normally, Tappert would always have one single strip of bacon for this first meal of the standard Little dining schedule of meals and snacks throughout the day. Bacon wasusually at this standard time of pre-dawn darkness and the quiet before birds and their songs, but today was already off to a bad start and it was a wonder that even bacon was possible.
But Tappert needed a moment to think. Problems abounded and troubles smelled like they couldn’t be too far off. Hadn’t old Ned Thom, his gardener, said his elbow was,“a’hurtin’ something powerful,” just yesterday. That had been a clear warning if there ever was one.
Tappert MaCrow had a stranger bleeding in the guest cottage near the old storage shed which was next to the unused smithy inside of what remained of the ancient wall that all bobbin called Salteblock Farm. So far none of Tappert’s skills in binding wounds, or even simple medicine, had been enough to stop the wicked little wound the strange man had received from continuing to trickle blood in a slow yet constant stream. So… being a Little, two strips of bacon were exactly what was needed at this moment, thought Tappert as he impatiently watched the bacon sizzle in the cast iron skillet that was as old as the MaCrow occupation of the old abbey. As this took place, he waited for the coffee to be ready and sat staring at the glowing coals inside the much renowned oven of the farm.
His beautiful little kitchen with all its copper pans and pots, things he had paid great money for via the occasional dwarven cobbler who passed through, or even importing from Indolién itself, gave Tappert no real comfort this cold misty morning with the early soft light of blue dawn creeping through the leaded window in the kitchen.
“Problems and problems…” whispered Tappert to himself as he sat on a stool, listening to the bacon and thinking what to do.
A man was bleeding to death. This was clearly a result of violence out there on the roads late in the night last, and Tappert was now responsible for him.
Somehow. He wasn’t really sure of that part other than to accept the responsibility that if one was out wandering in the night, exploring, then what happened was one’s responsibility.
This wasn’t necessarily an adventure. Or what derisive Littles called, “a’wanderin’.” But it did feel close to one.
So, there was that.
Tappert turned the bacon. The kettle was ready to brew. He sat back down.
“Problems and problems…,” he softly whispered again.
This was not a burden, not exactly… but it was bothersome to a degree. Tappert had written, in his tiny cursive beautiful script, an entire schedule for today and now that schedule was clearly not going to be met. Not in the least.
Not at this rate.
He checked the bacon, removed it from the heat just like he liked it, considered frying a yellow duck egg and perhaps even some toast with rich creamy butter and a nice big swath of fig jam, thought better of that, and held the ground coffee in the grinder to his nose, inhaling it.
Every morning he did the same thing. At this point. This was the ritual.
“Today…,” he whispered to himself. As he did every morning. “…an adventure will happen.”
The bleeding would not stop despite best efforts and even now the stranger was beginning to turn white, if not gray altogether. Perhaps that was just a trick of the light in the room there. But then again, he remembered he had gone to great lengths regarding the lighting in the cottage, wanting it to be cheery and rosy for any guests who stayed the night there after some fine meal Tappert had put on. No one ever really did. But he was ready. And ready was a thing Tappert prided himself on. Being ready that is.
Tappert had done his best to keep pressure on the evil wound that had a definite air of poison smell to it. The man who’d only given his name as Walker. Now he was keeping pressure on the wound as best he could, though Tappert expected some kind of delirium might not be far off.
So how long could that last?
And what about that schedule for today?
“Problems and problems…”
Tappert liked his bacon crispy and yet barely cooked. He brewed the coffee and gobbled, not his preferred way to eat Bacon, quickly. He was, he had decided, going to have to do something to assist the man. And that meant going out quickly. He was going to have to run out before the sun even came up and get himself down to Wiseman Sorley Barters. The wiseman was the Bobbin stitcher of bad wounds acquired during farming, and a wise old, if not silly, Bobbin much skilled in healing. He was off down the hill from the farm, off toward the crossroads from there, and then up Apple Road to the small little village of underhill homes near the big meadow most just called the Acres.
Tappert drank the coffee faster than he would have liked, again, not his usual manner of such things, stacked the cup unwashed, worried what this would do to his schedule for a brief moment, sorted himself that Miss could see to it when she came up to work with Ol’ Ned Thom for the day, and then resolved himself to do something helpful.
“Bother that schedule,” the little Bobbin thought and dashed back across the quiet yard of the old abbey, making his way to the guest house he’d set up near the old storage shed that had once been the smithy. This was near the corner tower where Tappert kept all his books and all his precious maps.
Tappert’s tower, as all the Littles called the old rebuilt abbey tower, and thought it an unseemly thing for a Bobbin to be messing about in, lay in the corner of what remained of the wall where the old abbey had once been. It was, in fact, all that remained of the old abbey no one really knew much about. Above ground that is. Beneath the hill much of the old abbey was still quite… there, as some say.
Some even said he lived there, in the tower, which was crass by Littleviews. This was not completely true in the least. Tappert, like all Bobbin, in fact lived in the hill beneath the old abbey which sat atop the hill.
All Bobbin live in underhillhomes.
Old Uncle Gusbert had of course built a proper Bobbin hall beneath the old abbey into the recesses of the wide and sharply steep hill. No one was sure how many rooms there truly were down there beneath the soft green grass and the towering oak that loomed over even the tower. Some of the parts of the Salteblock Hall even reached into the old cellars of the strange and forgotten abbey atop the hill with the broken tower Tappert had paid large amounts of gold coin, his inheritance from his eccentric uncle, to fix up and turn into a proper scholar’s tower not in the least like those of the famed Elven Sages in Indolién. But at least… an homage to… a likeness of.
Tappert was quite proud of it. And yes, there were nights he fell asleep there, in fact, working on his maps and pouring over his books. But he had no official bed there. Just a large, overstuffed leather chair and a blanket Miss always kept for him folded and neat.
And though she was a Little, or Bobbin if you prefer, and that meant much given to the vice of gossip, Miss his faithful keeper of the hall, tidier of books and strange things, maker of beds with fresh linens in all of the fifty rooms, told no one of the blanket she’d sewn and kept there for little Tappert, whom she’d basically raised due to the fact ofhim having no mother, or father, since he was young and came to live with his eccentric uncle.
Tappert knocked quickly and entered the cottage where the man lay sweating. The tall man’s eyes were clean and bright. His features rough and definitely of the wood and road. His old pack and a broken blade lay near the bed.
The man stared at him and for a moment Tappert felt as though he were standing in one of the cold-water streams coming off the distant mountains in the last of fall when the world was silent, and it was best not to be out as everyone knows late fall and winter is when the Warewoofscome down from the old passes and forgotten fortresses in the high reach.
For a moment as Tappert entered,he had that queer feeling there was someone else in the room. For just a moment. But there was no one.
He cleared his throat.
“I was thinking perhaps I might step out a bit and fetch someone who might be better at this than I?”
He asked it as a question.
The man looked down and inspected his wound. The trickle, despite the pressure, continued still. He nodded. Beads of sweat came out on his forehead.
Tappert came forward and held out a piece of bacon laying on one of his finest linen napkins, stitched and pressed.
The man nodded and indicated Tappert should leave the bacon and he would try to eat some if he could.
“For your strength, sir.”
“Walker. Remember that name if I am… gone… from this wound when you return.”
Tappert’s eyes went wide, and he shook his head.
“It’s just a bad scratch… Walker. I’ll be quick and back with a’one who knows what to do. You’ll be right as rain after that and off and on your way.”
Silence as the man listened and seemed to be becoming… distant.
“Yes. I am sure, Tappert.”
Now that was passing queer, as Tappert had never given the man his name. Perhaps he had though. Everything had been in… all a’hurrysince their meeting in the night.
“But if I am not,” continued the man. His head wobbled as though he were fighting off some storm that had suddenly risen and thrust itself into the room. “But… if I am… gone.”
He regained himself and stared at the old worn travelling pack on the floor. Near the broken sword.
“Take those and go down into the… below.”
Tappert wondered how the man knew there was a below. As in… below the Hall.
“Do you know your uncle’s port cellar where he once kept those many bottles he’d taken from the south and the trade winds?”
Now this was simply amazing. How did this man, this stranger… Walker, know of his uncle’s amazing port cellar? There were many cellars down there. But the port cellar was the most distant, the coldest, under the rock of the hill itself, and very much a treasure trove of magical wonders if you considered a fine cheese, like a sharp Hill Hollows Cheddar, or a fine Meadow Ways Blue and a class of curated port, many years old… a magical wonder.
“There is a large barrel down there. Marked with this symbol.” The man raised his bloody hand and drew it in the air and for a moment… the shimmering symbol was real as though it were a thing of light. Just for a moment, and so brief Tappert wondered if he had even seen it, if it had even been real…
“Move that barrel and enter your uncle’s old treasure room. Be careful, there are dangerous things down there. Leave the ruck and the sword there, seal the room, and allow no one access of it and speak nothing regarding it. In time, a man will come, and he will tell you a story. Then… you must give him the pack and that will be the extent of your troubles in these affairs. Do you understand, Tappert?”
The man groaned a little. The wound was becoming worse.
Tappert nodded. Adding an, “I do, sir.”
The man closed his eyes, they fluttered, and then he was asleep, or unconscious. His breathing rapid and shallow.
Tappert hustled himself out of the cottage and was off into the morning mist and blue dawn, running as fast as his little legs would carry him,for he did not want the stranger to die.
He did not know why. But he knew something bad would happen if the man did. He could tell by the way, even in pain of injury, the man had remained calm, patient, and in control. And there was something honorable and noble about that. Something this world that seemed to be getting darker all the time… needed more of.
Tappert ran for the man’s life.
THE TOLKIEN PROJECT CHAPTER 8