In the days that followed, Frodo missed Sam terribly. He occupied his time and his thoughts by working diligently on his book and by taking one or two small cases that wouldn't tax his strength. Merry and Pippin were glad to assist him, for they too had missed the fun of investigating.
One evening just after sunset, an Elf came to the door of Bag End and asked to see Frodo.
"Mithrandir bid this be sent to you," the visitor said simply once Frodo was urgently summoned by his cousins; he drew a wrapped and sealed parcel out from beneath his pale gray cloak.
"From Rivendell?" asked Frodo as he took the package, which was small and oddly-shaped, but surprisingly heavy. He wondered what it could possibly be. "Can you carry a message back to Gand- ah- Mithrandir for me?"
The Elf shook his head. "He is no longer there, and I shall not return. My path lies to the West."
Frodo understood: this was one of the Elves Gandalf spoken of, on his way to the Grey Havens to leave Middle-earth forever. He was about to thank the messenger, but the Elf had already gone from the doorway and was disappearing into the deepening twilight.
He brought the package into the sitting-room, where Merry and Pippin were waiting with unabashed curiosity. They had not been expecting any message, as Frodo was, and were even more eager than he was to find out what Gandalf had sent. They gathered close, bursting with questions that Frodo did not answer as he opened the sealed wrappings.
Inside the package were two letters--one from Bilbo, enclosed in another from Gandalf--and the remarkable object that had made it so heavy: a long and slender, sausage-shaped knitted green purse of obvious Shire-make. Glitters of gold were visible through the faded net. When Pippin untied the string at one end, a number of gold pieces spilled onto the table, glinting in the firelight. The sight drew astonished gasp from all three hobbits, and they reached out to catch the coins before they fell onto the dimly-lit floor, then began to count them. There were twenty-five in all, and very old-looking, bearing the well-worn stamp of a crowned head and a sword, and some words in a language that none of the hobbits knew.
While his cousins examined the gold pieces, Frodo read Bilbo's note. It was heart-breaking to see that familiar handwriting, once so precise, now a nearly illegible, spidery ink scrawl straggling across the paper. He couldn't understand much of what Bilbo had written, for even when the writing was clear, Bilbo's thoughts wandered too much to make sense of them. What Frodo could decipher told him that Bilbo was delighted to hear from him and pleased to learn that he was carrying on his studies. The gold was intended as a wedding gift for Sam and Rose.
"It's 'the last of the Dragon's hoard,'" Frodo read. "Uncle Bilbo wants Sam to have it to start him and Rosie off." He looked up from the note at the ancient gold coins now neatly piled in little stacks on the table. "Put those away. We'll lock it in my strongbox to give to Sam when he and Rose come back."
"Can you picture the look on his face when he sees them?" laughed Pippin. "Sam's never had so much gold in his life!"
"He could buy all of Hobbiton with this, and have some to spare," said Merry, "but he wouldn't dare spend any of it. Coins as old as these must be worth more than the gold they're made of. I wonder where they came from before Old Smaug got hold of them?"
Frodo found the key to the strongbox. Once his cousins had restored the gold to the purse and carefully knotted the strings at both ends, they went off to the study to lock this treasure up. Frodo settled down to read Gandalf's enclosing note, which was more legible and informative than Bilbo's:
"I leave for Lothlorien tomorrow. Bilbo does not seem to recall the book you've taken such an interest in, but has agreed to write down what he knows.
"I have asked Lord Elrond what he knows of it. He is familiar with the book, which belonged to his wife, but has not missed it from his library.
"According to Elrond, the Lothlorien tale of the 'Tragic Death of the White Lady' is deprecated as a curiosity, nothing more. It is claimed to be an account of the Lady's death by a witness to the event in Gondolin--one of the Elven Lords who accompanied Aredhel on her journey from the city years before and lost her. His name was Elennapril, and it was said that he had loved Aredhel without hope and mourned her loss even more than King Turgon."
Frodo didn't know what to make of it. Did this mean that the second account was less reliable than the official story?
A new idea occurred to him: Could someone else besides Eol, Turgon, or Maeglin have killed Aredhel, someone he hadn't heard of before? There were other Elves in the Gondolin court, ladies and lordlings. What did he know of their relationships with Aredhel before she had gone out on her fateful ride? Had she friends among them? Enemies? Disappointed lovers? If the information Gandalf had given him was true, the author of the second version of the story might have resented that the lady he'd loved had married elsewhere, and taken revenge on both her and his rival when the opportunity presented itself. Was his story meant to be a sort of oblique confession?
Or, even if Turgon were responsible, that didn't necessarily mean that he had committed the murder with his own hands. A courtier like this Elennapril might have acted on his liege lord's behalf... perhaps even without his knowledge? Surely the citizens of Gondolin were as concerned with the safety of their city as the king was. This courtier might have seen it as an act of loyalty, doing what Turgon couldn't do himself--protecting the kingdom by getting rid of the lady whose wanderlust had already betrayed them once, and eliminating the danger brought in by her husband at the same time.
When Pippin and Merry returned to the sitting-room, they found him sitting curled in his chair, nibbling absently on a corner of Gandalf's letter. Both recognized Frodo's pensive moods as well as Sam did, and knew what this meant.
"What's going on?" Merry asked him. "What're you investigating, Frodo--and what do Gandalf and Uncle Bilbo have to do with it?"
Frodo had not told his cousins about the Lady Aredhel and the odd circumstances of her death before this, but he explained it all now. He brought out the books, which he still kept in his bedroom, to show them and told them of Gandalf's brief visit and what he'd hoped to learn from Gandalf's inquiries in Rivendell and Lothlorien.
Merry laughed. "Sam was right--you won't rest! You'll investigate mysteries even when you're sick in bed and the murder happened ten thousand years ago."
Pippin asked the same question Sam had: "What does it matter now, if you solve it or not? Everyone's been dead for so long, even the people you suspect!"
"It's not as if justice can be done for the Lady, Frodo," Merry agreed.
"I know." He admitted that they had a point. All the principle players in this drama had died eons ago: Turgon was not the only one to suffer the Doom of Mandos, but Aredhel and Eol and their son all shared that same fate. Not one had gone into the West. If their spirits survived, they were in the Halls of Mandos--wherever that might be--and were beyond the reach even of immortal Elven-kind. What did his research matter to them? Was he doing it for them? He had promised to aid a Lady in a dream... but that was not what drove him. "I'd simply like to find the truth, for myself if no one else. I can't cloak a lie, and let a false history stand in place of the true."
"You've kept secrets before," Merry observed. "We know. We've kept them with you."
Frodo nodded; he knew exactly what Merry was referring to. His investigations had often uncovered unpleasant truths. The full facts behind Berilac's death and poor Mentha's suicide were known only to them and a few members of the Brandybuck family. The four of them alone knew what Lotho Sackville-Baggins had been up to in his last days, how he had died, and who had killed him. Even in the case of Toby Clover, where more than one secret embarrassing to the Tooks had to come out, Frodo had kept information from Thain Paladin when he thought that punishing the guilty would injure innocent people.
"When I thought that the truth would do more harm than good, yes," he answered. "I did what I thought best in each case and if I was wrong, then I will bear the consequences of it. This long-ago lie protects no one living. The Elves are leaving these lands and soon there will be nothing left of them in Middle-earth but the ruins of their cities and the stories they've left behind. I'd like those stories to be accurate. I'd like to see the proper version of the Lady Aredhel's death put forth, whichever one is correct. The worst kind of lie is one that's entrenched as historical fact."
This might be an obscure point for his cousins, as it was for Sam. To them, history was merely exciting stories; they didn't really care whether or not it was true as long as it made a good tale. His was a scholar's interest. Bilbo, in translating the Elvish stories for hobbits to read, had taught him the importance of accuracy and honesty in reporting what had happened. Bilbo had failed to do that once, when first telling the tale of how he had found the Ring, and even after he had corrected his error, he could never forget it.
To make them understand, Frodo tried a different tact. "After all, who knows what tales they'll tell about us in the ages to come, and how far will they be from the truth? That's why I wanted to write my own story, myself, so there'd be no exaggeration about what I did."
He knew, as no one else did, that his success at the end of his quest was due more to Sam's strength and determination and Gollum's treachery than anything he had done. He had not got as far as that in his writing yet but, when the time came, he meant to tell the entire truth.
"The Men of Gondor will tell things differently. Remember that song they were singing in Minas Tirith when we left? Already, they call me a great hero, when I know I was only a frightened little hobbit who didn't have much choice in the matter. When the tale of the Ring is retold, that's how my part in it should be remembered."
Later that evening, Frodo re-read Bilbo's letter as he lay down in his bed, and tried to make sense of the scribbled passages. Gandalf said that Bilbo had agreed to write down what he knew. Surely, there must be something here, if only a sentence or two.
He began with the sentence he had deciphered earlier: "I am pleased to hear you're carrying on with your studies, my lad." So much was clear, but after this, the most he could make out was, "Sorry... I meant to teach you..." and a few lines farther down, "Left behind? I never realized..." and something about Elrond. "There were 4 of them..."
Four of what? The books Bilbo had been left behind? Frodo sat up with a jolt. Yes, of course! There were four books in that package he had found forgotten atop the shelves. On the next line, he could read, "said to be from..." and a word began with a 'D' and ended with what looked like a 'y' or 'th'. Could it be Doriath? If Gandalf was right, the books had been bound in Lothlorien, but the stories were much older. Since Frodo hadn't been able to read them, he had not examined the other books in the package closely. Where were they now? What had he done with them?
After a search, Frodo located the three other Lothlorien books, still in their wrappings, tucked away under the nightstand. The written words remained a mystery, but this time he looked at the illustrations. In the first book, there were two, one of an Elven lord and lady who stood facing each other, gazing into each other's eyes; the lady held something in her cupped hands that looked like a large, glowing gemstone, and which she seemed to be offering to her lover. In the second illustration, a gathering of Elves stood on a shore and watched a ship sail away toward the open sea. Another book contained fearsome pictures of a battle between Elves and Dwarves, and of the Elves fleeing a burning wood. The third book had only one picture, in the frontispiece, of a gold-leafed and silver-branched tree.
Frodo gathered up these books and, taking his candle, went down the hall to his study.
When Merry and Pippin emerged from their room shortly afterwards, to investigate the thumping noises they'd heard coming from the study, they found Frodo sitting on the floor with the three books each open to an illustration, and a dozen other books he had pulled from the shelves scattered around him.
"Frodo, what're you up to?" Merry demanded. "You ought to be in bed at this hour of night. Sam will kill us if you catch cold."
"I'm not cold," Frodo answered absently; he did not lift his eyes from the book he was looking through. "I want to find Uncle Bilbo's translations of these Elvish stories. Help me find the books that have pictures to match these, will you?"
His cousins exchanged glances, but they had both seen Frodo in the midst of an investigation. Unless they dragged him back to bed and held him down, he wouldn't rest until he found whatever it was he was looking for, so they might as well help. They began to pull books off the shelves to look for pictures.
The trio quickly found two of the books. The first was a tale of how the refugees from Gondolin and Doriath had united by the sea. The couple in the first illustration turned out to be Earendil and Dior's daughter Elwing, and what Frodo had taken for a gemstone was in fact the Silmaril that Earendil would bear on his famous sea-voyages. The second illustration was not of one of Earendil's voyages, but depicted Idril and Tuor sailing for the West. The second book, as Frodo had already surmised, was a tale of the sack of Doriath.
While Merry continued to search for the last book, Pippin went to the kitchen to make them some tea. Frodo, still sitting on the floor, carefully read Bilbo's translations of these first two stories.
"I've seen these stories before," he told his cousin, "but these versions don't seem very different from the others I've already read."
"Should they be?"
"I thought they would. The Lothlorien version of the Lady Aredhel's death was quite different, and if these stories were written by the same person-" Frodo stopped. Maybe that was the important thing--not the stories themselves, but that they all had the same author. Someone who had personally witnessed these events? Could one Elf have been in Gondolin at Aredhel's death, in Doriath to see battle against the encroaching Dwarves, and among the refugees at the sea? And the last story, the one they had not found yet-?
Frodo lifted his gaze to find the Elvish version, still open to the picture of a golden-leafed tree. There was only one place in Middle-earth that he knew of where trees like this grew...
"Could this be it?" Merry, who had climbed up to reach the books on the upper shelves, tossed one down into Frodo's lap. There were no illustrations within the book, but a similar tree had been stamped into the leather cover.
Frodo opened the book: It was a long poem that told how Celeborn and Galadriel had led a party of Elves over the Misty Mountains to find a new home, carrying the seeds of mallorn trees from Doriath with them. When they settled their new kingdom, they planted the seeds, which grew into the golden wood of Lothlorien.
"Yes," he answered, "I think it is."
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