The War of the Ring (50 page)

The next day still no commands came from Denethor. 'He is full of cares and busyness,' said Gandalf, 'and for the moment you are out of his mind. But not for good! He does not forget.

Make use of your leisure while you can. Have a look round the City.'(23)

Beren was on duty and Pippin was left alone; but he had learned enough to find his way to the hatches at midmorning.

For the rest of the time until noon he walked in the sixth circle, and visited Shadowfax, taking him some morsels that he had saved, which Shadowfax graciously accepted. In the afternoon Pippin walked down the ways of the City to the lowest circle and the great East Gate.

People stared much at him as he passed, and he would hear calls behind him, and those out of doors cried to others within to come see Mithrandir's halfling; but to his face most were courteous, saluting him gravely after the manner of Gondor with outstretched hand and a bowing of the head. For who he was and much concerning him was now noised through Minas Tirith.

He came at last by windy ways and many fair alleys and arches to the lower circles where there [were] many smaller houses. And here and there he saw children - and he was glad, for to his eyes it had seemed that too many of the folk of Minas Tirith were old. He passed a larger house with a pillared porch and steps and boys were playing there. As soon as he saw him one of the boys leapt down the steps into the street and stood in front of Pippin, looking him up and down.

'Well met,' said the lad. 'Are you not a stranger?'

'I was,' said Pippin. 'But they say I am now a man of Gondor.'

'Man! ' said the boy. 'How old are you, and what is your name? I am ten already and soon shall be five feet high. Look, I am taller than you. But then my father is a soldier, one of the tallest.(24) I shall be a soldier too. What is your father?'

'Which question shall I answer first?' said Pippin. 'My father is like me a hobbit not a man, and he owns the land and fields round Whitwell near Tuckborough on the edge of the Westfar-thing in the Shire. I am 21 years old (25) so I pass you there, though I am but four feet four, and that is reckoned a good height in my land, and I do not hope to better it much. For I shall not grow upward much before I come of age; though maybe I shall thicken and put on some weight, or should, if food were plentiful for travellers in the wild places.'

'Twenty-one,' said Gwinhir, and whistled. 'Why, you are quite old. Still, I wager I could stand you on your head, or lay you on your back.'

'Maybe you could if I let you,' said Pippin with a laugh. 'We know a trick or two of wrestling in my little country. But I do not much like standing on my head; what, if it came to a sicking point, and nothing else would serve, I have a sword, master Gwinhir.'

'A sword, have you?' said Gwinhir. 'Then you must be a soldier. Though you don't look like one.'

'I am and I do not indeed,' said Pippin. 'But when you have seen more than 10 years, if you live long enough, young friend, and survive the days that are coming, you will learn that folk are not always what they seem. Why, you might take me for a kind-hearted fool of a stranger lad. But I am not. I am a hobbit and the devil of a hobbit, companion of wizards, friend of Ents, member of the Company of Nine of whom your lord Boromir was one, of the ... of the Nine I should say, and I was at the battle of the Bridge of Moria and the sack of Isengard, and I wish for no wrestling or rough play. So let me be lest I bite.'

'Ai, Ai,' said Gwinhir. 'You do sound fierce, a ferret in the garb of a rabbit. But you have left your boots behind, master, maybe because you have outgrown them too quickly. Come on, good ferret, bite if you like,' and he ... up his fists. But at that moment a man came out from the door and sprang down into the street and grabbed the lad by the back of his tunic.

'What is this, Gwinhir, you ruffling young fool,' said the man.

'Will you waylay anything in the street that seems smaller than yourself? Will you not choose something larger? Shame on a son of mine, brawling before my doors like a young orc.'

'Nay, nay, not like an orc, Master Thalion, if that be your name,' said Pippin. 'I have seen enough orcs and all too close to be in any error. Here is nothing but a warlike lad spoiling for something to do. Will you not let him walk with me a while, and be my guide? For I am new come and there is much to see while the sun still shines........'

'I have already heard that the halflings are courteous of speech, if that one that came hither with Mithrandir is a sample,' said Thalion.(26) Yes indeed, the young ruffian shall go with you if you wish. Go now and keep a fair tongue in your head,' he said to Gwinhir, giving him a smart blow on his seat.

'But see that he returns ere the closing hour and the dusk.'

'I wanted a game,' said Gwinhir to Pippin as they set off.

'There are few lads of my age in this quarter, and such as there are are no match for me. But my father is stern, and I was near to a beating just now. When he says "orc" 'tis an ill omen for one's back. But you got me off very finely, and I thank you.

What shall I show you? '

'I do not know,' said Pippin, 'but I am going to the East Gate, and we shall see.'

As they drew near the East Gate there was much sound of running and bustle, and Pippin thought he heard horns and trumpets blowing. For a moment his heart beat for he thought it might be a signal that war had begun. But Gwinhir cried out.

'They are come. Some of the folk from beyond the walls that have been rumoured. Hasten now, they'll be riding [?in by] the East Gate.

Here the draft ends, abandoned. Why my father rejected this story one can only surmise; a clue is perhaps to be found at the point in the text where Pippin, at the end of his first day (6 February) in Minas Tirith (spent in the company of Beren and other men of the Guard),

'after the manner of Gondor soon went to his bed' (p. 283). Here my father added a note on the manuscript in pencil, reminding himself to look up what had been said of the weather in the story of Frodo and Sam in Ithilien, and saying that 'if possible' the sunset of 6 February should be 'ominous': 'Darkness began next morning, a fiery haze.'

When he wrote this he may have intended to rewrite the story only to the extent that Pippin should see the 'ominous' sunset as he went back to his lodging on the first night, and then when he woke next morning the great pall should have overspread the sky: in deepening darkness he would make his way down to the Great Gate, and encounter the aggressive Gwinhir. Or it may be that it was when writing this note that he decided to change the structure of the story, and abandoned the draft. At any rate, he evidently decided that it would be better to compress the whole story of this chapter into a single day, concluded by the first presage of the Darkness approaching and the smouldering sunset at the closing of the gates, when the last of the men of the Outlands had entered the City. Chronological considerations may have played a part in this.

He now turned back to the point where Beren invited Pippin to join his company for that day, and began anew. This new drafting was written in soft pencil at great speed, and would be hard indeed to interpret and often altogether illegible were the new text not so close to the final form: the story becomes that of RK in virtually every point (27) and largely in the same words. But it peters out shortly before the end of the chapter, at the words 'But the dying sun set it all afire and Mindolluin was black against a dull smoulder' (RK p. 44).

Beren now becomes Barathil, changed in the course of the writing of the text to Barithil; his father's name does not appear. His son was named Bergil from the first. The Street of the Lampwrights has the Elvish name Rath a Chalardain (Rath Celerdain in RK); and Pippin is called Ernil a Pheriannath (i for a in RK).

The 'Homeric catalogue', as my father called it (p. 229), of the reinforcements entering Minas Tirith (28) from the Outlands was written out twice, the first form being jumbled and unclear, and at the second writing (beginning after the arrival of Forlong, at the words 'And so the companies came and were hailed and cheered ...', RK p. 43) it becomes remarkably close to the form in RK. I have the strong impression that the new names that appear here were devised in the composition of this text. Forlong the Fat, however, had appeared several times previously, pp. 229, 262, 276. He was here first said to be, as in RK, 'lord of the vale of Lossarnach',(29) but Lossamach was struck out and replaced by 'the Ringlo away in Lebennin' (see Map III in VII.309). Yet this is immediately contradicted in both Eorms of the text, where we find just as in RK 'the men of Ringlo Vale behind Dervorin, son of their lord, striding on foot: three hundreds.' In the first form the vale is called Imlad-Ringlo. Duinhir and his five hundred bowmen from the Blackroot Vale (Morthond Vale and Imlad Morthond in the first form) is named (but not his sons, Duilin and Derufin in RK). After them come the men of 'Dor-Anfalas [changed from Belfalas], the Langstrand far away': see again Map III in VII.309, where 'Belfalas (Langstrand)' is the region afterwards named Anfalas.

Their lord is Asgil-Golamir (Golasgil in RK). Then the hillmen of Lamedon, a name that first appears here; the fisher-folk of the Ethir; and Hirluin the Fair from the green hills of Pinnath Gelin, also first occurring here (but he is at first said to be from Erech). The Prince of Dol Amroth, kinsman of the Lord of Minas Tirith, bears the token of a golden ship and a silver swan; but he is given no name.

There is no other initial drafting extant (except for a roughly pencilled slip giving the revised conclusion of the conversation with Denethor, RK pp. 30-1). The first complete text is a typescript: I think it all but certain that my father made this before he proceeded much, if any, further in the narrative.

The title of the chapter as typed was: Book V Chapter XLIV: Peregrin enters the service of the Lord of Minas Tirith. For the most part the differences between the original draft and RK noticed above (pp. 277-83 and notes) were retained in this text: some but by no means all of these were changed in pencil on the typescript. Thus Gandalf's ride still took three nights, not four. The description of the

'townlands' of Minas Tirith remains as it was (pp. 277-8), with the sole difference that the Pelennor now becomes the name of the townlands, and the wall is named Ramas Coren (changed in pencil to Rammas Ephel).(30) On the other hand, the passage cited on p. 278 concerning the River is now present as in RK, except for the sentence 'And there where the White Mountains of Eredfain came to their end' (changed on the typescript to Ered Nimrais). The White Tower remains the Tower of Denethor; and the description of Minas Tirith remains as it was in the draft, with no material difference save in the height of the Tower, here said to be two hundred, not three hundred feet. Thus the great out-thrust pier of rock was still absent, and it was not introduced into this text. On the reverse of the preceding typescript page is a plan of the city, reproduced on p. 290; here appears the name Rath Dinen, and also Othram or City Wall, of the wall of the outermost circle, pierced by the Great Gate.(31)

In the account of the great hall the description of the floor is retained from the draft, and that of the capitals introduced, thus: Monoliths of black marble, they rose to great capitals carved in many figures of strange beasts and leaves; and far above in shadow the wide vaulting gleamed with dull gold. The floor was of polished stone, white-gleaming, inset with flowing traceries of many colours.

This was repeated in the following typescript; but in the final typescript, from which the text in RK was printed, the sentence was compressed: '... gleamed with dull gold, inset with flowing traceries of many colours.' Since there is no indication on the second typescript that any change was intended, it seems certain that this was a casual

'line-jumping' error, causing the 'flowing traceries' to be ascribed to the vaulting.

Denethor now names the father of Mardil Orondil (Faragon in the draft, Vorondil in RK). It is still Gandalf, not Denethor, who speaks the words of the oath which Pippin repeats; but the conclusion of the conversation between Gandalf and Denethor (also found in preliminary drafting, p. 287) is now present, and differs from the form in RK

only in that after Gandalf's words 'Unless the king should come again?' he continues: 'That would be a strange conclusion. Well, let us strive to keep some kingdom still against that event!'

Barathil, Barithil of the second draft (p. 287) is now Barithil, becoming in the course of the typing of this text Berithil; he is the son of Baranor, as is Beregond in RK. The man at the buttery hatch is now Targon, as in RK.

In the description of the view eastward from the walls of Minas Tirith the Anduin is still some seven leagues away, and as it bends 'in a mighty sweep south and west again' it is still 'lost to view round the shoulders of the mountains in a haze and shimmer' (p. 283). The italicized words were afterwards struck from the typescript; the reason for this can be seen from a comparison of Map III in VII.309 with the large map of Rohan, Gondor and Mordor in The Return of the King, where the view of the Great River from Minas Tirith is not impeded by the eastern end of the mountains. The passage in RK which was absent from the draft, describing the traffic across the Pelennor, is now present and reaches the final form in every point, save only that Berithil here says: 'That is the road to the vales of Tumladen and Glossarnach' (see note 29); but this was changed in pencil to Lossamach, and later in the text Forlong the Fat is named 'lord of Lossarnach'.(32)