"If you're right, Frodo, and it's a code, what're they saying to each other?" Sam wondered later that evening when Frodo showed him this same strange message, plus two other examples Mr. Droppot had found in his shop recently. There had been others, but the master scribe hadn't bothered to keep them.
"I don't know yet," Frodo answered.
They were in their room at the White Chestnut Inn at the heart of Michel Delving. After leaving the scrivener's shop, Frodo had joined his friend for dinner at Lad and Angelica's smial at the northern end of town. They walked back together in the cool spring twilight after Sam had tucked his children in and promised to join them at breakfast. For Elanor and her little brother, sleeping over at their best friends' home was a more exciting prospect than staying at the inn with their Father. Frodo, of course, felt differently about that.
He'd forgotten about the peculiar notes by the time he and Sam left the Whitfoots. Arm in arm on the peaceful, lonely lane between curving chalk downs, they had little thought for anything but each other and their destination. The past year had been a painful and difficult one for both of them, but Sam had shown him in many little ways that he was over the worst. He would never forget Rosie, but he was ready to forgive and go on to make a new life for himself and his family--a family which Frodo was an important part of. Once they were in their room, how could Frodo think of anything but the arms around him and kisses covering his face? It was almost like the old days, when they'd spent many happy nights in inns around the Shire.
Frodo only remembered the odd messages when he rose from the bed to wash up and picked up his jacket, which he'd left on the floor when he'd hastily undressed half an hour earlier. The three slips of paper fell from his pocket. When Sam had asked what they were, Frodo told him about his visit to the scrivener shop.
He sat at the foot of the bed with his dressing gown thrown over his shoulders and his bare limbs emerging pale in the flickering light from the single candle on the nightstand while Sam lay warm beneath the blankets with the notes spread on the pillow at his elbow. "I haven't had a chance to study them yet," said Frodo. "You remember how long it took me to figure out the meaning behind those holes in the weaving cards from the Spindlethrifts' loom."
"I remember you jumping out o' bed and not coming back 'til the middle of the night. You're not doing that again, not if I have any say in it." Sam reached out to tug on the hem of Frodo's dressing gown to try and draw him back. "Even if it's some sort o' code, I'll bet they aren't saying anything important like those cards at Spindlethrifts did."
"Why not?" Frodo came a little closer, but didn't get back under the covers.
"What secrets does a scripter got to give away? There's no mystery to their work. All it needs is a steady hand to write clear in straight lines. The rest is just cutting quills and making inks. Anybody who know how to read and write can do that."
"Writing all day does take a certain amount of patience," mused Frodo. "It's the sort of job I might consider taking up if I ever fell on hard times." He picked up the nearest piece of paper and turned to lie on his side so that the candle was behind him and its light fell upon the odd words:
"Dog and rat, locked in nighttime growls.
May eagles eat trees? My eagles!
Tell no one if ghosts haunt tonight.
Before yesterday, try haunting eagles--
or laughing dogs or any kindly troll.
Reach every elegant, insipid nightingale
growling at rusty dawn each night."
He picked up another note. This one read:
"Wander as the cows hunt: only under the frosty old rain.
Under no circumstances look eager!
Frostbitten udders soon sag. Poor old things!"
At least two people were writing these messages. Frodo could see that this second message was in a different handwriting from the first one and the first three lines of the one Mr. Droppot had found today. While the 'dog and rat' and 'eagles' scripts were written in a sloppy hand with a quill that frequently ran dry and spattered, the one about the cows was in a careful, blocky print, as if the writer were attempting to disguise his writing. If the writer was one of Droppot's scribes, then the master scribe was sure to recognize his usual hand. Handwriting was Mr. Droppot's business. The last line of the most recent message--"Yellow every sunset!"--was also in a blocky print, larger and bolder than the lines above it. Could it have been written by the same person who'd written the nonsense about cows? Was it an answer to the lines above? But what, then, was the question?
"It's almost like poetry, only it doesn't rhyme and makes less sense," Sam observed after Frodo had read all three absurd passages aloud. "There's lots o' dogs, cows, and rats in it--and lots and lots of eagles! How come they write so much about eagles?" While eagles had featured several times in the Baggins family history, these mighty and majestic birds were rarely seen in the skies above the Shire. Few hobbits had ever had the opportunity to see one up-close, as Sam and Frodo had.
"'Many eagles.' 'My eagles,'" Frodo quoted, and pondered these particular words. "Maybe it isn't the eagles themselves that are important. 'Eagle' is a word that begins with E, and there aren't very many of those in the Common Tongue. And yet E is a letter that appears in a lot of words... Sam!" Frodo sat upright and handed Sam the note that began 'Dog and rat'. "I think I've got it. Read this one out loud, please. Not all the words, but only the first letter in each word."
Sam squinted at the scrap of paper and read, "D, A, R, L-- It's 'darling!' It's a love letter! M, E, E, T--'Meet me.'"
"That's why there are so many eagles, Sam: They needed the E. They use the word 'me' so often in their message, I suppose it was easiest for them to use the same two words every time to signify it."
"'Darling, meet me tonight by the old oak tree in garden.'" Sam had puzzled out the whole message. "Now what's that one about the poor cows really saying?" he asked Frodo.
Frodo looked at the first letter of each word. "It's a warning: 'Watch out for Uncle... F, U, S...' He frowned; he could guess now who must have written this message, but the name following uncle was obviously not Turlo. "Oh, it's 'Fusspot'!" Frodo laughed. "Jewel Droppot has to be the author of this note. Her uncle would certainly know her normal handwriting. Her lover must be one of the scribes. Her uncle wouldn't approve--he wants her to marry someone else--and so they communicate with each other in this secret way right under his nose. When Miss Droppot has a parcel to deliver, the boy tucks his note inside. She takes it out to read once she's away from the scrivener's shop, writes her reply, and brings it back to him when she returns from her errands. It's quite clever of them."
Who was Miss Jewel's lover? The odd collection of words, as Sam had noted, had a sort of poetry to them; the boy Jewel loved possessed an imagination. Frodo first thought of the dreamy boy who sat gazing out of the window, but that young scribe's handwriting would be as familiar to Turlo Droppot as his niece's was. Besides, these two notes were not the work of a professional scribe, even disguised. A scribe would never run so short of ink. Then Frodo thought of how Jewel had passed through the workroom swinging her empty basket on her arm, of where she'd been going, and the spot where her uncle had discovered the dropped note today.
He read this note, which contained her lover's last message and her reply. "Mr. Droppot isn't going to lose any professional secrets, Sam, but he's about to lose something that's far more dear to him than his livelihood." Frodo sighed and tossed aside his dressing gown before he got out of bed.
"Where're you going?" Sam asked, watching while Frodo found and put on his clothes.
"To Mr. Droppot's. It isn't very late, and since he asked for my help in discovering the meaning of these notes, it's only fair that I tell him what's about to happen… if it hasn't already."
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