Bleating Off - 2. Last of the Summer Wine

The last of the wine from the remaining cask filled to brimming a few pitchers lined up on the serving tables. The guests finally calm, had begun to drop face to the table, one by one, a charger their only pillow. My cousin’s parents were seated opposite each other, smiling benignly at the actions of their cousins. Roots, leafy greens, breads, and soups continued to be served to those guests cognizant enough to signal. Meat had been absent at the meal. I’d kill for even a morsel of rabbit.

I sat at a table set apart from the other, for children and the youthful, with my older sister and my brother. We were the Three Dees.

We were also Bagginses.

Besides we three, there sitting with us was an energetic and adventurous cousin. We were related to him as first cousins through our mother and as second cousins through our father. The boy was not the least secretive, or shy, but at certain times seemed to disappear before our eyes. We four all watched the goings on across the room.

My brother and sister laughed as another at the old codger table nodded slowly into a plate containing a good portion of my Aunt Belladonna’s Coconut Crumble.

“Good riddance to that rubbish!” My brother whispered sideways. “Nothing I can abide less than poorly made Coconut Pastries!” I watched my cousin twice-removed wince at my brother’s cruel words.

I tapped him on the shoulder and whispered an apology in his shapely if slightly pointy ear. It seemed to work for my cousin smiled and nodded.

My parents are stand to acknowledge and take leave of their cousins. Mother cast an eye over to Drogo. My cousin and I grin conspiratorially.

I am Dudo, my elder brother is Drogo and my sister is Dora. We and our younger cousin Bilbo are Bagginses. According to my parents the similarity between us ends there. His family has more land and a greater amount of wealth. His parent’s home was more ostentatious and better planned. It was far larger than the home of our parents.

My sister felt that didn’t make Bilbo a better person. She and I rode sitting together in the coach from home that afternoon.Drogo sat behind our parents facing me. My sister harped her concern to her two member audience.

“I mean he’s nearly 16 and still walks everywhere, no horse cart, no nothing: and always barefoot. You’d think his parents would teach him better, and buy him shoes, but no-o-o-o!!

Then there are his strange friends, and those idiotic stories he’s always telling, of some wizened old wizard with a pipe ever full of excellent herbs.”

His imaginative stories concerned the wizard and some adventure the two had been on. My siblings believe our cousin should be satisfied like them, just to idle the summer away beneath some evergreen tree with a fishing pole and a pilfered sampling of Old man Maggot’s prized herbs.

They are always on about that ring he wears on twine round his neck, nearly like a noose. Sometimes the thing seems to affect him, makes him almost giddy, and at other times there seems to be a storm cloud of doom right above his head.

Back at the table, we are all standing. My right hand lightly brushes my cousin’s. I inclined my head toward the boy and give him a wink. At my father’s insistence we all give a slight bow to Bilbo and his parents as we take our leave. Before we are to the door Bilbo runs up and something wrapped up in a bit of parchment drops into my hand.

“Protect it.” He quietly commands. “Keep it safe.”