The Treason of Isengard (14 page)

6 Riders (DEFGHI) go ahead and invade the Shire. The vanguard Rider (D) reaches Bag-End on Sept. 23 (night). Two (DE) then trail Frodo etc. to the Ferry (Sept. 25). F G HI are on the main road. D E, foiled at the Ferry (Sept. 25), ride off to Brandywine Bridge and join F c H t (dawn on Sept. 26).

HI then ride along scouring both sides of the Road and reach Bree up and down Greenway [sic] on Tuesday Sept. 27.(9)

On night (cockcrow) of Sept. 26 - 27 D E F attack Crickhollow.

There they carry off Ham. c was left guarding the Bridge but now comes with them.

HI go on through Bree asking for news, to make sure 'Baggins'

has not escaped and got ahead. They get in touch with Bill Ferney.

DEFG with poor Ham now ride to Greenway (does Harry see them? Probably not). At Amrath they meet the King (A) and BC, on Wednesday 28th, leaving for the moment the Road deserted. The King is angry at this. He is suspicious of a plot since Ham has no Ring. DE are sent back to Bree, arriving late on Thursday 29th.

(Meanwhile the hobbits have got to the Inn.) FG go back to the Shire.

DE get in touch with Bill Ferney, and hear of news at the Inn.

[Struck out at once: They attack the Inn but fail (and get the idea that Green'(10) has gone off?)] They fear Trotter', but get Bill Ferney and the Southerner to burgle the Inn and try and get more news, especially of the Ring. (They are puzzled by two Bagginses.) The burglary fails; but they drive off all the ponies.

FG bring news to the King that Gandalf has escaped and is in the Shire (which he reached on Wednesday 28th [> Thursday 29th night], and visited Bag-End and the Gaffer).

DE return to the King and report (Sept. 30): he is puzzled by

'Green' and the Ring, by Baggins and Ham, and troubled by news of Gandalf behind. He does not kill Ham because he wants to find out more, and Sauron has ordered him to bring 'Baggins' to Mordor. HI return (Oct. 1) reporting nothing on the Road as far as Weathertop, and that Green and Trotter have left Bree and vanished. The King decides to pursue Green with all his forces, carrying Ham with him.

Gandalf goes to Crickhollow late on Thursday 29th and finds it deserted. Old cloak of Frodo dropped. Gandalf is terrified lest Frodo is captive. (? Does he visit Tom - if so make him arrive in the Shire on the 28th and visit Buckland on the 29th; if not, arrive in the Shire on the 29th, visit Buckland on the 30th.) Either visiting Tom or not, Gandalf reaches Bree on Saturday Oct. 1 (after the hobbits have gone). He rides after them. The Black Riders meanwhile have left Amrath and revisited Bree to get news of Green, and gone off along the Road on both sides. Gandalf crashes into DE who are carrying Ham and rescues him. He gallops to Weathertop, reaching it on Oct. 3. He sees Black Riders gather and goes off North (three Riders, D E F, pursue him). The rest patrol round and watch Weathertop.

Here we have the story of the capture of Hamilcar Bolger again, but with a significant difference. In Time-scheme D (p. 12), and in the story told by Gandalf at Rivendell (p. 68), the attack on Crickhollow took place on the night of Thursday-Friday 29-30 September; and the story there was that Gandalf arrived just as the Riders left, and he was able to catch them up ten miles east of the Brandywine Bridge. In the present outline, the attack on Crickhollow took place three nights earlier, on that of Monday - Tuesday 26-27 September (Frodo and the others having left on the Monday morning), and since Gandalf still arrives there late on the 29th (or the 30th) he finds the trail cold; but he also finds Frodo's cloak dropped on the step. He still rescues Ham, but not till his captors have passed Bree. It is curious therefore that (though he was uncertain about it) my father had not decisively rejected the visit to Tom Bombadil, since with this plot Gandalf could have had no notion that the hobbits had entered the Old Forest.

This is very probably the first appearance of Saruman (Saramond, Saramund), who steps into the narrative quite unheralded - but he enters at once as a Wizard whose aid Gandalf seeks, and who has

'fallen and gone over to Sauron'; moreover he dwells at Angrobel or

'Irongarth' (cf. Isengard) 'on the borders of Rohan'. But my father was still quite uncertain what happened to Gandalf, having rejected the story of the Western Tower: the possibilities suggested here show that the imprisonment in a tower had been for the moment abandoned.

Giant Fangorn or Treebeard again appears as a hostile being (cf. p. 9).

I suspect that the primary question that my father was pondering here was that of the emergence of the Ringwraiths from Mordor, Gandalf's knowledge of this in the summer before Frodo left Bag End, and Trotter's message. It has been said already (p. 9) that 'It was a message of Trotter's in July (?) that took Gandalf away - fearing Black Riders', and again (p. 10) 'It was a message from Trotter that fetched Gandalf away in summer before Frodo left'. These notes indicate that Gandalf already had reason, when he left Hobbiton, to suspect the emergence of the Ringwraiths; but it is now told, at the beginning of the present outline, that the message from Trotter (itself emanating from Saruman) was an actual report that the Nine had left Mordor and were moving towards the Shire. This would raise the question: why, in that case, did Gandalf, before he went off, not urge Frodo to leave for Rivendell as soon as he could? Scribblings on the manuscript of this outline show my father concerned with the question: 'Both Gandalf and Trotter must go away together and not fear to be captured, or else Gandalf would have sent a message to Frodo to start, or Trotter would have.' Then follows a suggestion that Trotter 'got cut off from Gandalf, only arriving in Bree hard on the tracks of the Black Riders.' But this does not seem entirely to meet the difficulty. Later my father noted here: 'Leaves Butterbur a letter which he forgets to send to Frodo', and this is clearly where that essential idea arose.

In FR (p. 269) the problem is resolved by reverting to the story that when Gandalf left Hobbiton he had no definite knowledge, and by the introduction of Radagast. 'At the end of June I was in the Shire, but a cloud of anxiety was on my mind, and I rode to the southern borders of the little land; for I had a foreboding of some danger, still hidden from me but drawing near.' It was Radagast who told Gandalf that the Nine were abroad, whereupon Gandalf, at Bree, wrote the letter to Frodo which Butterbur forgot to send.

Another brief but distinctive narrative passage is clearly associated with this 'August 1940' outline. It was substituted in the manuscript of the 'fourth phase' version of Chapter IX ('At the Sign of the Prancing Pony (i)') for that in which the Black Riders spoke to Harry Goatleaf, the gatekeeper at Bree, on the evening of Wednesday the 28th of September (pp. 40 - 1), and was itself subsequently rejected.

The rain that swept over the Forest and the Downs on Tuesday was still falling long and grey on Bree when evening came. The lights were just being lit in Tom's house,(11) when the noise of horses approaching came down the Road from the west. Harry Goatleaf the gatekeeper peered out of his door and scowled at the rain. He had been thinking of going out to close the gate, when he caught the sound of the horsemen. Reluctantly he waited, wishing now that he had shut the gate earlier: he did not like the sound. Two horsemen had appeared in Bree late the day before (12) and wild stories were going about. People had been scared; some said the riders were uncanny: dogs yammered, and geese screamed at them. Yet they were asking for news of hobbits out of the Shire, especially for one called Baggins. Very queer.

Harry thought it even queerer a minute later. He went out, grumbling at the rain, and looking up the Road he thought he saw dark figures approaching swiftly, three or maybe four. But suddenly they turned left at the Cross Roads (13) just beyond the gate, and went off southwards and down the Greenway; all sound of their horses' feet died away on the grass-grown track.

'Queerer and queerer!' he thought. 'That way leads nowhere.

Who would turn off on a wet night just in sight of the Inn at Bree?' He shivered suddenly all down his back. Locking the gate he hurried into his house and bolted the door.

Wednesday turned foggy after midday; but still the queer events went on. Out of the mists up the Greenway there straggled such a company as had not been seen in Bree for many a year: strange men from the South, haggard and wayworn, and bearing heavy burdens. Most of them had a hunted look and seemed too tired and scared to talk; but some were ill-favoured and rough-spoken. They made quite a stir in Bree.

The next day, Thursday, was clear and fine again, with a warm sun and a wind that veered from East towards the South.

No traveller passed the western gate all day, but Harry kept on going to the gate, even after nightfall.

This would then join on to the next part of the text, 'It was dark, and white stars were shining, when Frodo and his companions came at last to the Greenway-crossing and drew near the village' (cf. VI.348).

With this compare the 'August 1940' outline (p. 71): DEFG with poor Ham now ride to Greenway (does Harry see them? Probably not).' I think it is clear that when Harry Goatleaf saw the dark figures mysteriously turn off down the Greenway at the crossroads in the rain at dusk, they had Hamilcar Bolger with them, bearing him to the King at Amrath. And with the description of the company that came up the Greenway on the Wednesday cf. an earlier passage in the same outline:

'Meanwhile the Black Riders attack the Shire, coming up the Greenway and driving a crowd of fugitives among which are one or two evil men, Sauronites.'

In the margin of the 'fourth phase' version of the attack on Crickhollow (p. 55) my father later noted:

Omit, or bring into line with old version (in middle of Chapter VII).

Ham cannot be captured (Black Riders would obviously kill him). It probably spoils surprise to show what Gandalf is up to at this point.

Gandalf can briefly explain that [? he was at] Crickhollow.

There is a definitive tone about this that suggests that this is where the

'Odo-Hamilcar' adventure was finally abandoned; and if this is so it must be placed, of course, after the outline dated 'Aug. 26 - 27, 1940'.

Presumably it was at this time that the 'fourth phase' version of the

'Crickhollow episode' was struck through.

Labelling this rejected form 'A', my father seems now to have tried out a version (labelled 'B') which follows his direction to 'bring (the story) into line with the old version (in middle of Chapter VII)' - i.e.

the original form of the episode, which was inserted in the course of the 'second phase' into Chapter VII 'In the House of Tom Bombadil'

(VI.303-4), at which stage the story was that the house at Crickhollow was empty when the Riders came, for no hobbit had been left behind there. In version 'B' there is no mention of Hamilcar Bolger at all. The 'man in grey', leading a white horse, comes up the path, looks in at the windows, and disappears round the corner of the house; then the Black Riders come; at first cockcrow they break in the door; and at that moment the horn call rings out, the Riders flee, with 'a cry like the cry of hunting beasts stricken unawares' (cf. VI.304), and Gandalf appears wielding horn and wand and thunders after them.

A page of notes is associated with these attempts to find the right form for the opening of 'A Knife in the Dark'. These begin: It will improve matters to cut out Ham Bolger. Version B will provide for that. (Gandalf arrives, takes Ham Bolger out of the house, and chases off the Black Riders.)

This is obscure, since there is no mention in the version labelled 'B' of Gandalf's entering the house, no mention of a light in the window, nor any suggestion that it was inhabited. But in any case it was clearly not my father's meaning when he wrote 'It will improve matters to cut out Ham Bolger' that he intended to cut him out of the narrative altogether: he meant only that Ham was to be excluded from further adventures after the 'Crickhollow episode' was ended. Conceivably, he had here a passing notion that Gandalf came to Crickhollow, entered secretly, told Ham Bolger to clear out, and proceeded to look after the Black Riders himself. Whatever the meaning, these notes continue:

But better would be this:

Gandalf is captured by [Saramund >] Saruman.

Elves send word that he is missing, which reaches Rivendell Sat.

8th.(14) Glorfindel is sent out, and messengers sent to Eagles. The Eagles are told about Oct. 11. They fly all over the lands, and find Gandalf about Sat. 15. Bring... to Rivendell Wed. 19th.

The XIII and wood are Sam's discovery. Trotter says it is a rangers' camp.

Weakness of this is that Black Riders are sure to make some attempt on Crickhollow. How was it foiled?

Ham flies as shown overleaf.

Then Gandalf can come and find house deserted and only old cloak of Frodo's. He thinks Frodo [struck out: is capt(ured)]. He follows like thunder.

'Ham flies as shown overleaf' refers to a third version, labelled 'C', which (though at first differently ordered in the articulation of the narrative) scarcely differs from that in FR (with Ham opening the door of the house, seeing a black shape in the garden, and fleeing out of the back door and over the fields), apart of course from the fact that this is Hamilcar and not Fredegar, and apart from the notable words, afterwards lost, following 'Ham Bolger had not been idle': 'Terror will drive even a Bolger to action'. The hobbit-cloak let fall by one of the Riders as he fled reappears from the 'August 1940' outline (p. 72). At the head of this version my father noted: