The Treason of Isengard (36 page)

'But what about you, Frodo?' asked Gandalf, as they halted to take a gasping breath. 'That is really important.'

'I am bruised and in pain, but I am whole,' said Frodo, 'if that is what you mean.'

'I do indeed,' said Gandalf. 'I thought it was a heroic but dead hobbit that Aragorn picked up.'

'... it seems that hobbits or this hobbit is made of a stuff so tough that I have never met the like,' said Trotter. 'Had I known I would have spoken softer in the Inn at Bree. That spear thrust would have pierced through a boar.'

'Well, it has not pierced through me,' said Frodo, 'though I feel as if I had been caught between a hammer and anvil.' He said no more. His breath was difficult, and he thought explanations could wait.

From this point ('They now went on again', FR p. 342) the original text is very largely lost for some distance, because my father overwrote it (and largely erased it first) as part of a revised version, but something can be read at the end of this section:

There was no time to lose. Away beyond the pillars in the deep [? gloom] at the west end of the hall to the right there came cries and horn calls. And far off again they heard boom, boom and the ground trembled [? to the dreadful drum taps]. 'Now for the last race!' said Gandalf. 'Follow me!'

The remainder of the original text is in ink and is at first fairly legible, but towards the end becomes in places impossible to decipher, being written at great speed, with small words indicated by mere marks, word-endings omitted, and scarcely any punctuation.

He turned to the left and darted across the floor of the hall. It was longer than it looked. As they ran they heard behind the beat and echo of many feet running on the floor.(10) A shrill yell went up: they had been seen. There was a ring and clash of steel: an arrow whistled over Frodo's head.

Trotter laughed. 'They did not expect this,' he said. 'The fire has cut them off for the moment. We are on the wrong side!'

'Look out for the bridge!' cried Gandalf over his shoulder. 'It is dangerous and narrow.'

Suddenly Frodo saw before him a black gulf. Just before the end of the hall the floor vanished and fell into an abyss. The exit door could not be reached save by a narrow railless bridge of stone that spanned the chasm with a single curving leap of some fifty feet. Across it they could only pass in single file. They reached the chasm in a pack and halted at the bridge-end for a moment. More arrows whistled over them. One pierced Gandalf's hat and stuck there like a black feather. They looked back. Away beyond the fiery fissure Frodo saw the swarming black figures of many orcs. They brandished spears and scimitars which shone red as blood. Boom, boom rolled the drum-beats now advancing louder and louder and more and more menacing. Two great dark troll-figures could be seen [?towering] among the orcs. They strode forward to the fiery brink.

Legolas bent his bow. Then he let it fall. He gave a cry of dismay and terror. Two great dark troll-shapes had appeared; but it was not these that caused his cry.(11) The orc-ranks had opened as if they themselves were afraid. A figure strode to the fissure, no more than man-high yet terror seemed to go before it.

They could see the furnace-fire of its yellow eyes from afar; its arms were very long; it had a red [?tongue]. Through the air it sprang over the fiery fissure. The flames leaped up to greet it and wreathed about it. Its streaming hair seemed to catch fire, and the sword that it held turned to flame. In its other hand it held a whip of many thongs.

'Ai, ai,' wailed Legolas. '[The Balrogs are >] A Balrog is come.'

'A Balrog,' said Gandalf. 'What evil fortune - and my power is nearly spent.'

The fiery figure ran across the floor. The orcs yelled and shot many arrows.

'Over the Bridge,' cried Gandalf. 'Go on! Go on! This is a foe beyond any of you. I will hold the Bridge. Go on!'

When they gained the door they turned, in spite of his command. The troll-figures strode across the fire carrying orcs across. The Balrog rushed to the Bridge-foot. Legolas [?raised]

his bow, and [an] arrow pierced his shoulder. The bow fell useless. Gandalf stood in the midst of the bridge. In his hand Glamdring gleamed. In his left he held up his staff. The Balrog advanced and stood gazing at him.

Suddenly with a spout of flame it sprang on the Bridge, but Gandalf stood firm. 'You cannot pass,' he said. 'Go back [struck out probably as soon as written: into the fiery depths. It is forbidden for any Balrog to come beneath the sky since Fionwe son of Manwe overthrew Thangorodrim]. I am the master of the White Fire. The red flame cannot come this way.' The creature made no reply, but standing up tall so that it loomed above the wizard it strode forward and smote him. A sheet of white flame sprang before him [?like a shield], and the Balrog fell backward, its sword shivered into molten pieces and flew, but Gandalf's staff snapped and fell from his hand. With a gasping hiss the Balrog sprang up; it seemed to be [?half blind], but it came on and grasped at the wizard. Glamdring shore off its empty right hand, but in that instant as he [?delivered the stroke] the Balrog [?struck with] its whip. The thongs lashed round the wizard's knees and he staggered.

Seizing Legolas' bow Gimli shot, [but] the arrow fell ...

Trotter sprang back along the bridge with his sword. But at that moment a great troll came up from the other side and leaped on the bridge. There was a terrible crack and the bridge broke. All the western end fell. With a terrible cry the troll fell after it, and the Balrog [?tumbled] sideways with a yell and fell into the chasm. Before Trotter could reach the wizard the bridge broke before his feet, and with a great cry Gandalf fell into the darkness.(12)

Trotter [?recoiled]. The others were rooted with horror. He recalled them. 'At least we can obey his last command,' he said.

They [?passed] by the door and stumbled wildly up the great stair beyond, and beyond [? up there] was a wide echoing passage. They stumbled along it. Frodo heard Sam at his side weeping as he ran, and then he [? realized] that he too was weeping. Boom, boom, boom rang the echo of... behind them.

On they ran. The light grew. It shone through great shafts.

They passed into a wide hall, clear-lit with high windows in the east. [?Through that] they ran, and suddenly before them the Great Gates with carven posts and mighty doors - cast back.

There were orcs at the door, but amazed to see that it was not friends that ran they fled in dismay, and the Company took no heed of them.

The original draft of the chapter ends here, and does not recount the coming of the Company into Dimrill Dale. There is a pencilled note written on the manuscript against the description of the Balrog: 'Alter description of Balrog. It seemed to be of man's shape, but its form could not be plainly discerned. It felt larger than it looked.' After the words 'Through the air it sprang over the fiery fissure' my father added: 'and a great shadow seemed to black out the light.' And at the end of the text - before he had finished it, for the concluding passage is written around the words - he wrote: 'No - Gandalf breaks the bridge and Balrog falls - but lassoos him.'

It will be seen that for much of its length this chapter was very fully formed from its first emergence; while scarcely a sentence remained unchanged into FR, and while many details of speech and event would be altered, there really was not very far to go. But in certain passages this earliest draft underwent substantial development in the narrative.

The first of these is the account of Gandalf's blocking of the east door out of the Chamber of Mazarbul (FR pp. 340 - 1), where there was as yet no suggestion that some greater power than any orc or troll had entered the chamber, and where the blasting of the door and felling of the roof was not caused by competing spells of great power, but was a deliberate act on Gandalf's part to preserve the Company

. from pursuit down the stair.

It cannot be said precisely how the story stood in the lost passage (p.

196), though from a word still decipherable here and there it can be seen that Gimli saw a red light ahead of them, and that Gandalf told them that they had reached the First Deep below the Gates and were come to the Second Hall. Clearly then the essential elements of the final narrative were already present.

The second passage in which the original draft would undergo major development is the narrative of the final attack on the fugitives and the battle on the Bridge of Khazad - dum (FR pp. 343 - 5). That there was a bridge in Moria, that Gandalf would hold it alone against a single adversary of great power, and that both would fall into an abyss when the bridge broke beneath them, had been foreseen in the original sketch (VI.462); but the final form of the famous scene was not achieved at a stroke. Here, the trolls do not bring great slabs to serve as gangways over the fiery fissure, but carry orcs across (it may be noted incidentally that 'orcs', rather than 'goblins', becomes pervasive in this text: see note 5); the form of the Balrog is clearly perceived; there is no blast of Boromir's horn; Legolas is pierced in the shoulder by an arrow as he attempts to shoot; and Aragorn and Boromir do not remain with Gandalf at the end of the bridge. The physical contest between Gandalf and the Balrog is differently conceived: Gandalf's staff breaks at the moment when the Balrog's sword shivers into molten fragments in the 'sheet of white flame', and though the whip catches Gandalf round his knees it is not the cause of his fall.

Here, it is the great troll leaping onto the bridge that causes it to break, carrying with it troll, Balrog, and wizard together. But even before he had finished the initial draft of the chapter my father saw 'what really happened': 'Gandalf breaks the bridge and the Balrog falls - but lassoos him'. He thereupon moved the 'sheet of white flame' and the snapping of Gandalf's staff from the initial clash between the adversaries to the point where Gandalf broke the bridge.

It is clear that my father turned at once to the making of a fair copy of the original draft text - that he did so at once, before continuing the story, is seen from the fact that Sam's wound in the affray in the Chamber of Mazarbul only appears in the new version but is present at the beginning of 'Lothlorien'.

The new version (a good clear manuscript in ink, with little hesitation in the course of composition and without a great deal of subsequent pencilled alteration) was still called 'The Mines of Moria,

. 2'; a subtitle was added in pencil, 'The Bridge'. For some distance the text proceeds as a characteristic polishing and slight elaboration of the draft, bringing it very close to FR, which I take here as the basis with which the present text is compared.

The Book of Mazarbul is not described as 'partly burned', and its pages are said to have been written 'in both dwarf-runes and elvish script', where in FR a distinction is made between the runes of Moria and of Dale. The text of the first page that Gandalf read out runs thus:

'We drove out Orcs... from guard something and first hall. We slew many under the bright sun in the Dale. Floi was killed by an arrow. He slew... then I can only read stray words for many lines. Then comes We have taken the Twenty-first Hall of North-end to dwell in. There is ... I cannot read what: a shaft is mentioned. Then Balin has set up his seat in the Chamber of Mazarbul.'

'The Chamber of Records,' said Gimli. 'I guess that is where we now stand.'

'Well, I can read no more for a long way, except the word gold, ' said Gandalf; 'and, yes, Durin's axe and something helm.

Then Balin is Lord of Moria. After some stars there comes We found true-silver and later the word well-forged; then something, I have it! Oin to seek for the upper armouries and treasury of the Third Deep and... but I can make out no more on the page but mithril, west, and Balin.'

This text corresponds almost exactly to the third drawing of the page (see the Appendix, p. 459).

The text of the second page that Gandalf read out, in 'a large bold hand writing in elvish script', now identified by Gimli as Ori's, scarcely differs from the text given on p. 191, except that after We have barred the Gates Gandalf can doubtfully read horrible and suffer: all is. Thus the passage giving the date (10 November) of Balin's death in Dimrill Dale is still absent. The earliest, or earliest extant, drawing of Ori's page was done at the same time as the third drawing of the first page (see the Appendix, p. 459), and obviously accompanies the present version of the narrative.

The text of the last page of the book remains exactly the same as that given on p. 191; and the earliest extant drawing (accompanying the third of the first page and the first of Ori's page) fits it exactly.

In this version Gandalf no longer makes any mention of the Watcher in the Water and the two Doors, but Gimli says: 'It was well for us that the pool had sunk a little, and that we came to the Elven-door that was closed. The Watcher was sleeping, or so it seems, down at the southern end of the pool.' The italicized words were struck out, probably at once, and so the conception of the two separate entrances into Moria from the West was finally abandoned.