A Looming Disaster by Kathryn Ramage

The next morning, Frodo accompanied his client to Oatbarton, which lay twenty miles due north of Hobbiton. They arrived at midday, and Frodo immediately took a room at the inn. From the window of his room, he could look down upon the fast-flowing stream which ran out of Bindbole Wood, and the many millwheels that were powered by it.

Frodo had been briefly through the town before, stopping for a single night's rest on his journeys to and from the Long Cleeve, but he always remembered the mills. They were Oatbarton's main reason for existing. The town was within sight of the eaves of Bindbole Wood, and it was the first place to receive the trunks of the trees chopped down there and sent floating out on the stream; the wood was cut up at the sawing-mills and the leavings pulped with rags at the paper-mill. Oats and corn from nearby farms were also sent to Oatbarton by cart to be made into flour at the grinding-mills.

Frodo only stopped at the inn long enough to deposit his baggage and leave a note with the innkeeper, in case Sam should follow him that same day. Then he joined Mrs. Spindlethrift at her place of business, which lay just a short walk down the main road through town.

Along their journey, Mrs. Spindlethrift had told him something of her personal history: She had come to work at the Spindlethrift textile mill when she was still in her tweens, and had been one of the first girls to work on the new looms. Possessing the sure hand and quick foot prized by her profession and not being wary of new ways and machinery, as so many hobbits were, she soon became head of the weaving-women, "and caught the eye of young Master Spindlethrift in the bargain!" After marrying her employer's son, Mrs. Spindlethrift had for a time been less involved in the day-to-day concerns of the family business while she was bearing and bringing up "our girls," but once her daughters had grown up and begun to take an interest in the skills of the trade themselves, Mrs. Spindlethrift had also returned to it. Old Mr. Spindlethrift had passed on more than ten years ago. After her husband's death five years ago, Mrs. Spindlethrift had taken charge of the mill in partnership with her brother-in-law.

The Spindlethrift mill consisted of a cluster of long and low thatched-roofed buildings that reminded Frodo of the guardhouse at Newbury, except that every building had a series of multi-paned windows like greenhouses atop it to give the mill-workers sufficient sunlight throughout the day without allowing casual passers-by to peek in. The mill employed a number of townsfolk. Mrs. Spindlethrift showed him around, and Frodo felt that he learned a great deal about the textile business.

Bales of freshly shorn wool and harvested flax were brought into a central sorting yard, either in carts or in flat-bottomed boats along the stream. At this time of year, explained Mrs. Spindlethrift, there was usually more flax than wool, but today hobbits of both sexes were working on wool. Their first job was to pick over the material to remove any dirt or twigs, then wash it. This was done in the sorting yard in vast tubs, with water drawn from the stream in buckets. On sunny days, the wool was then laid out to dry on a large, tilted table.

Mrs. Spindlethrift then showed him the spinsters' room, where two dozen women of all ages from girls in their tweens to grandmothers sat at spinning-wheels, turning tufts of wool into thread. This work was under the supervision of a woman whom the others called Mistress Spinner. This wasn't her name, as Frodo discovered when they were introduced, but a job title; she was Jemina Spindlethrift, Mrs. Spindlethrifts' eldest daughter. Jemina was a little older than Frodo, and appeared to be as steady and competent a workwoman as her mother, although of a less jolly demeanor. Her hair was pulled tightly back, as all the spinsters wore it, to keep long curls from catching in the wheels as they worked.

"'Tis a delight to meet you, Mr. Baggins," Jemina said. "I never thought you'd come to us so quick as this. I wanted to go after you myself, and leave Mum to manage things here, but she said she should go and explain it all to you." She glanced at her mother. "Mum said that if anybody was to be going around telling our secrets to outsiders, it oughta be her. I expect now she was right to go instead. I couldn't've done better. Mum has told you all, hasn't she, Mr. Baggins, and showed you the loom-cards?"

"Your mother explained the problem very thoroughly," Frodo assured her.

"And have you shown him yet?" Jemina asked her mother.

"Not yet," said Mrs. Spindlethrift. "We're going to the weavers' room next."




When they left Jemina, Mrs. Spindlethrift led Frodo through a door at the far end of the room, through another room where spun thread was dyed a remarkable number of colors in vats and laid out to dry, then into the weaving room. This was the largest work-room in the mill, containing a dozen looms, most of which were currently unoccupied. When the weavers were as busy as the spinsters, Frodo thought, they must make a great deal of noise; right now, however, only two of the machines were making their usual rhythmic clack and clatter as the frames shifted up and down between each passage of the shuttle. A woman of about forty was working at one, and a younger girl sat at the other. When Mrs. Spindlethrift and her guest came in, both weavers ceased their work and the elder rose to greet them.

"Mum! We didn't expect you back so soon," she said as she gave Mrs. Spindlethrift a quick hug. "Is this Mr. Baggins?"

Introductions were made. The elder weaver was Pristina Spindlethrift, who was Mistress Weaver. The younger, who remained seated shyly at her loom, was her sister, Elfina.

"I sent the others home," Pristina explained. "They weren't doing any good work, being too frightened that more o' them troublesome cards'd turn up and spoil whatever they was doing. But Elfy and me've stayed on to do some plain tweeds."

"We don't need cards for tweeds," added Elfina from her seat. She then became immediately abashed and apologetic until her mother assured her that she hadn't spoken out of turn. Mr. Baggins knew all about the loom-cards.

"All the same, I'd like to see how they work and how they go wrong," said Frodo. "Will you show me?" he asked Pristina.

Mrs. Spindlethrift produced a stack of cards from her bag, and Pristina affixed it to the end of one of the looms abandoned by the weavers. There were already a number of colored threads hanging down from spools fixed above the top of the frame; Pristina made sure that the cards were aligned properly so that a series of tiny brass hooks set into a wide but pliant board could pass through the holes and pluck at the threads, then she sat down to work.

As she wove with what seemed to Frodo to be astonishing swiftness, lifting and lowering the frame, sliding the spindle, and directing Elfina to turn from one card to the next, a pattern emerged on a strip of cloth. It was one he had seen before among the faulty samples Mrs. Spindlethrift had brought to him--clusters of red and yellow flowers on an off-white background. Then, before his eyes, the pattern was suddenly spoiled. Streaks of bright red and buttercup appeared across the background where no colors should be.

Pristina stopped. "There, you see how it is, Mr. Baggins. If I were making a proper piece of cloth, I'd have to go back and pull that out."

"Will you go on a little longer, please?" Frodo requested. "I want to make note of which cards are the troublesome ones." He marked the edge of the card currently in use by scratching a corner with his thumbnail, then bid Pristina to continue.

After Pristina had worked through the entire cycle of cards, Frodo determined that there were three "troublesome" ones. He crouched to examine these more closely: on all three cards, the holes always began on the far left-hand end, so that the first hook always engaged its thread. Some rows of holes were very short after this first one, only one or two, but others extended halfway across the card or went nearly from one end to the other, so that almost all the hooks would pass through and engage their threads. No row seemed to go all the way to the right-hand side of the card.

"Do you have any patterns that would use so many crossthreads together?" he asked once he had drawn the three weavers' attention to the placement of the holes.

"Stripes," Elfina responded promptly, then lapsed back into shyness.

"A stripe would go all the way across," said Pristina. "It wouldn't stop short, not the way these look like they do."

"A plaid'd only go part-way like that," their mother added, "but there'd be holes atop or under them, to take another color."

"May I take these cards, to study them more closely?" requested Frodo. "You can remove them from the set, can't you?"

"Yes, o' course," said Mrs. Spindlethrift. "Old cards wear out 'n' need to be replaced all the time. Or else we want to add or take out a part o' the pattern to make it longer or shorter. If we wanted to add a stripe of another color between those bunches of flowers, say." Pristina waved her hand over the unfinished strip of woven cloth to show where a horizontal stripe might be added. "You just have to untie those bits of string."

As he did so, Frodo asked, "Who makes the replacement cards?"

"Uncle Jacco," Elfina piped up.

"My husband's brother, Jacimbo," Mrs. Spindlethrift clarified. "Same as made the first uns, Mr. Baggins. He's been making cards for these here looms since he was a lad. His father taught him how."

Frodo tucked the three extracted cards inside his waistcoat--they were too long to fit into the pocket. "I ought to speak to him next, Mrs. Spindlethrift, if you'll please show me the way."




Jacimbo Spindlethrift's workroom was small compared with the larger spaces where his nieces oversaw the weavers and spinsters. Most of the room was occupied by a single table, which was covered with pieces of the stiff paper the cards were made from. Jacimbo stood bending over a strange mechanical device at the table's center, but at the sight of a stranger accompanying his sister-in-law, he moved swiftly to block Frodo's view before Frodo could do more than glimpse it. His vigilance relaxed only slightly when Mrs. Spindlethrift explained who her visitor was.

"You know I didn't want you bringing no outsiders in, Minna," Jacimbo protested.

"I know you didn't," Mrs. Spindlethrift retorted, "but I went and got 'm, and he here is. I told Mr. Baggins about the cards already and Pristy's shown him how the looms work. There's little more left for him to find out, but since he's asked how you make the cards, you might as well tell 'm yourself to be sure he learns it right."

Brother- and sister-in-law might be partners in this business, but it was immediately obvious to Frodo which one was in charge. With no more than a grumble to indicate his disagreement, Jacimbo demonstrated how "the hole machine" punched the cards. The machine was essentially a wooden box with metal peg-like teeth on the inside of the lid and corresponding holes in the bottom. On the top was a handle that worked as a sort of press. The teeth could be retracted from any space, leaving only the ones Jacimbo wished to use; he then put one or more blank cards into place, taking care to align them, then closed the box's lid and pressed the handle down to punch the holes through thr paper.

"How do you know which teeth to choose?" Frodo asked once Jacimbo had presented him with a finished card.

"I just do," Jacimbo answered bluntly. "Most o' the patterns are ones my old dad made up ages ago, and I do as he taught me. The old cards wear out, and I make new uns just like 'em."

"That's what I wanted to ask you about. How do you replace worn-out cards?"

This information was also given grudgingly. When one of the weavers found a damaged or worn card in the set she was working on, she marked it. Pristina gathered these sets up and sent them to her uncle's workroom at the end of the day. Jacimbo matched the teeth to the pattern of holes in the marked cards, and punched out identical holes in the replacements, which were then tied into the sets of cards where the worn-out ones had been.

"And these odd ones that have been giving your weavers so much trouble--could you have put them into the wrong places by mistake?" Frodo asked him.

"'Twasn't me, Mr. Baggins. It's Mulby that puts replacers in these days," Jacimbo answered, then shouted over his shoulder, "Mulby-lass!"

A plump, dark-haired girl with her curls cut short emerged from an adjacent room so promptly that Frodo suspected she'd been listening at the door. She bobbed him a curtsey, and was introduced as Mulbina, another of Mrs. Spindlethrifts' daughters.

"Mulby's my 'prentice," Jacimbo explained. "I've no sons of my own, so I picked Mulby here of all Minna's girls to teach. She's a good head for such things, for a lass, though she's got a lot yet to learn."

By questioning Mulbina, Frodo learned that her uncle usually left the newly punched cards in a stack on the table beside the machine. She would come in later, when he'd finished his work and she wouldn't disturb him, and put them into place on a one-by-one basis--the first new card on the top of the stack replaced the first marked card in the first set in a pile, and so on. The old cards were then thrown on the fire.

"Could you have made a mistake, and put the cards in the wrong places?" Frodo repeated the question he'd asked Jacimbo.

"I might've, Mr. Baggins." The girl's cheeks turned red, and she cast an apologetic glance at her mother. "But if I did, I couldn't say how! Uncle Jacco left the cards for me same as he always does." She turned anxiously to her uncle.

"That I did," Jacimbo confirmed.

"And I put 'em in the sets, same as I always do, the top un in the place o' the first un marked in the pile that sits here."

"Were all the sets that received the wrong cards done at the same time, Miss Spindlethrift?" Frodo asked her next.

Mulbina shook her head helplessly; she didn't know.

"That one set Pristy weaved a bit of for you was one o' the last ones we sent in here to Jacco for fixing right before the trouble started," Mrs. Spindlethrift spoke up. "It's one o' our most popular patterns, so I notice in particular when it goes in to be fixed, and comes back to the weavers again." She consulted the other samples she had shown Frodo and, as far as she could recall, confirmed that they'd all gone to Jacimbo to have worn-out cards replaced recently.

"Could you tell what part of a pattern a certain card is meant to produce, just by looking at it?" Frodo asked Mulbina.

"No, Mr. Baggins," Mulbina responded with another brisk shake of her head. "I don't know one card from another 'less I'm holding 'em up next to each other. I suppose it'll be different once I learn how to make 'em myself, but I'm not allowed to yet. I watch Uncle Jacco do it sometimes, but he won't let me touch that machine o' his."

"That's right," Jacimbo added. "Mulby hasn't got so far. She don't know enough to start making the cards."

Frodo turned to him. "Your niece can't recognize the patterns by the holes in the cards, Mr. Spindlethrift. Could you?"

"I'd make a fair guess at it, if there was enough holes," Jacimbo replied with a diffident shrug.

"Can you tell me what type of pattern these might be a part of?" Frodo took out the three cards from his waistcoat to show the elder hobbit.

Jacimbo held up one of the cards to the light at the room's one small and round window, peered at it, then handed it back to Frodo. "No, sir," he answered. "That don't look like no pattern. It looks like nonsense to me. If that was punched out on this here machine, it wasn't done by me."
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