Before he'd gone to see Jacimbo, Frodo had asked Pristina and Elfina to work through several more sets of loom-cards and weave each until they'd discovered the cards that were wrong for the patterns. These, Pristina extracted and gave to Frodo in a stack before he left the mill that afternoon, wrapped up in a piece of cloth. Frodo carried this parcel back to his room at the inn, where he locked it into the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe before he washed and changed to join the Spindlethrifts for dinner.
The entire family had gathered at Mrs. Spindlethrift's smial in the hills above the mill that evening. Her unmarried daughters lived with her, but her married daughters and brother-in-law did not. There were seven daughters in all, Frodo discovered. The ones he hadn't met when Mrs. Spindlethrift had showed him around the mill were introduced before they sat down at their mother's table. After Jemina, the eldest, were Carina and Dosina. These two sisters were married to two brothers named Nutley who went by the title of Master Dyers. They had five small children between them, all of whom were present that evening, but Frodo was never certain which children belonged to which couple. Pristina was next in age, then Lalina, then the apprentice card-maker Mulbina. Elfina, who was not-quite thirty, was the youngest. Some of the daughters were prettier than others, some plumper, some mousy and others dark-haired, but all resembled their mother in one respect or another. The differences in their ages, the styles of their dress and hair enabled Frodo to distinguish quickly between them. All were well-dressed in fabrics made in their mill, for all were involved in the mill in some capacity while they learned their family business.
Although Carina and Dosina were presently more concerned with bringing up their families and didn't go to the mill every day, they were the chief designers of new patterns: Carina favored flowers, while Dosina preferred geometric patterns, especially dots. Lalina, who was apprenticed to her brothers-in-law in the dye room, spent her days mixing colors. Frodo recalled noticing her when Mrs. Spindlethrift had escorted him through the room, although they hadn't then been introduced.
"I suppose you're looking forward to designing your own patterns as well," Frodo said to Lalina over dinner. The young woman had been wearing a remarkable kerchief of purple and yellow paisley earlier while at work, which had drawn his attention.
"Oh, no," she answered. "I like making colors, Mr. Baggins. I'm learning how to making the dyes from plants and roots and beetles' wings. And when they let me, I like mixing things up in different ways and finding new colors."
"When we let Lally mix whatever she fancies, most of it turns out to be a muddy mess," Nardo Nutley, the elder brother and Carina's husband, laughed.
"But sometimes Lally makes beautiful new colors," Carina defended her sister. "That bright pink she made last week 'twas like sommat you'd see in a sunrise. If it holds true on the thread, I have some pretty little rosebuds I want to use it for once this trouble with the weavers is over."
"I know a painter who invents his own colors," Frodo told them. "He's made some splendid shades of red and purple I'd never seen before. Lio Darrowby is his name. He lives in the Southfarthing, in Budlingsbank. If you like, Miss Lalina, I could introduce you to him via correspondence."
"Could you, Mr. Baggins?" the girl asked eagerly. "That'd be wonderful, learning from somebody who knows… only, it wouldn't be asking him to give away his secrets?"
"We can but ask him and find out," said Frodo. "Lio makes dyes to sell his new colors on yarns and embroidery threads in his sundries shop, but that's only because he can't make his living painting portraits alone. He isn't interested in weaving cloth. If your mother agrees and makes him a reasonable offer, I expect he'd be willing to sell you information about how to make what he calls 'puce' or 'magenta'."
"You might marry him into the family business, Lally, and get all these wonderful colors for free," teased Nondillo, the younger Nutley brother. "It'd be a better match for you'n that Bindbole lad you was walking out with this summer past. Now, he wanted into the business, but had naught to give us in turn."
Lalina's face was bright pink, if not exactly the same rosebud shade that her sister admired. Frodo, who'd been trying to find some delicate way to suggest that Lio Darroby wasn't the sort to marry any girl, grew curious about Lalina's last suitor. "Who was this lad?" he asked.
"Nobody," Lalina mumbled. "Just a boy."
"He came out o' Bindbole Wood and took work at the paper mill upstream," said Dosina. "I thought he was sweet, Mr. Baggins, but some o' the family didn't like him."
"He was asking too many questions, m'dear," said Nondillo. "A lad that's courting a girl as pretty as our Lally oughter be paying more attention to her than our work here."
"He was expecting to come in 'n' work with me when we wed," Lalina responded.
"Snooping, he was, my lass. Ma agreed with me--didn't you, Ma?" Nondillo turned to his mother-in-law for confirmation. "You turned 'm away and he hasn't come near Lally since. It wouldn't surprise me if he was the one behind this trouble o' ours."
Lalina abruptly left the table; Elfina rose and went after her.
"You shouldn't've said such things about poor Lally's sweetheart like that," Dosina scolded her husband. "Not in front o' Mr. Baggins."
"No," said Frodo, "if you have suspicions of anyone, I must hear them." He addressed the Spindlethrifts all around the table. "Is there anyone else I ought to know about who might wish to do harm to your family business--an unhappy weaver, or someone you've dismissed who might bear a grudge?"
"There was that Larksey woman we turned off right before this trouble started," said Pristina. "You remember, Jem? That widow-lady that said she could spin 'n' weave good as anybody we had working for us, but when you put her at the wheel, she couldn't manage an even thread--and she was worse at the looms!"
"I remember her," Jemina answered. "She couldn't get used to our way of doing things at all. But she couldn't've got in to spoil the loom-cards. She wouldn't know how."
"Some weavers from down south was here for awhile in September," said Mrs. Spindlethrift. "They said they was going to open a shop o' their own. Now, I've no quarrel with other weavers. They've a right to make a living best as they can, same as anybody else. But they came to call on me at the mill and asked about our looms."
"You should've tossed 'em out on their ears, Ma," said Nardo.
"Well, I didn't let 'em into the weaving room," Mrs. Spindlethrift replied. "That's what matters. They went back where they come from weeks ago. I'd've forgotten about 'em if you hadn't asked, Mr. Baggins, but now you do ask, it comes to me that they might've taken against us and got one o' our weavers to play tricks."
"Who can come and go into the workrooms at the mill?" Frodo asked.
"We don't let visitors come 'n' go as they please, Mr. Baggins, even if they aren't weavers themselves," Mrs. Spindlethrift told him. "If there's an outsider coming in, me or Pristy or Jem walks 'em about and sees they don't get to poking in where they don't belong or making a mischief. Nobody's let into the weaving or dyeing rooms unless they're with one o' us."
"Or if they have work there," said Pristina. "I hope we can trust our own weavers and spinsters, Mum."
"'Tisn't only to keep our secrets, Mr. Baggins," her mother explained. "'tis an interruption to our work if there's folk going in 'n' out, getting themselves underfoot. The Dyers 'specially don't want anybody getting in and making a mess."
The Nutley brothers agreed that there were a great many boiling pots of dye and jars of powders lying around their workroom, and a mess of many colors was a terrible thing to clean up.
"What about the card room?" asked Frodo. "Who's allowed in there?"
"I keep that under lock 'n' key when I'm not in it," said Jacimbo. After a moment's struggle with himself, he added, "Only… I suppose somebody might've got hold of the key off of me and got in to do some mischief with the hole-punching machine, or else I forgot to lock the door once." He looked defiantly around the table, then met his sister-in-law's eyes. "I didn't want to say so, Min, but it's been on my mind and since you brought Mr. Baggins here to hear such things, he might as well." He turned to Frodo. "It'd only take once, wouldn't it, Mr. Baggins?"
"Yes, if the person who got into your workroom knew what he or she was doing. If the holes in those cards are nonsense, as you say, Mr. Spindlethrift, then this person wouldn't have to worry about getting the teeth in the machine arranged properly, as he would if he were trying to make cards for a weaving pattern."
"But why would he do such a thing, Mr. Baggins?" asked Carina. "Just for spite?"
"Perhaps," said Frodo. "He may have been intending to put the false cards into sets to cause confusion and delays to your weavers, exactly as it's happened. Or he may have been after something else. Perhaps he was a spy for rival weavers and was attempting to learn how to punch holes in the cards for himself, when he was interrupted and forced to flee before he was discovered in a place where he had no right to be. He accidentally left his cards behind for Miss Mulbina to find, and she naturally mistook them for some replacement cards her uncle had made." Frodo also had another theory about Mulbina's part in this, but he wanted to speak to her privately about it before drawing any conclusions. "He may have wanted samples of some of your loom-cards to show to someone else, so they could make cards of their own." He looked around the table again. "Do you know if any of your cards have ever been stolen?"
"They get carried off sometimes, to be sure," said Mrs. Spindlethrift. "We burn the worn-out ones whenever we can, but our weavers talk about their work and might take cards home to show their families. We can't stop 'em from doing it."
"Might they tell other weavers, like the ones who were here in September?"
"That they might, Mr. Baggins," Pristina answered. "But one card alone won't tell 'em much, nor even a whole set."
"It's like I told you before, Mr. Baggins," her mother said. "The cards is only half our secret. Everybody in the Shire's heard about how we do our fancy weaving. There's been plenty o' time to talk over these fifty years since Father Spindlethrift built his first special loom. If somebody wanted to steal our secret, they'd have to build the right sort of loom to use the cards on."
"And nobody's managed that yet," added Jemina with a note of pride.
"It'd need a machine-minded hobbit like Grand-dad or Uncle Jacco looking over one o' our looms and having it all writ down before they could make their own like it," Pristina concluded.
"Are you responsible for maintaining the looms as well as the cards, Mr. Spindlethrift?" Frodo asked.
"That's right, sir," Jacimbo answered. "My dad taught me and my brother when we was lads. I keep 'em up, and make new parts when the old uns wear out."
"And nobody else? Will you teach Miss Mulbina?"
"I expect I'll have to, sooner or later," the elderly hobbit responded. "There's no lads in our family grown enough to teach, but somebody's got to learn how to do it before I'm so old I must leave off my work. Just the same, I don't like leaving it to a lass. I never saw a lass yet that had a mind for machines. Machines, Mr. Baggins, is like businesses. No woman's got a head for 'em."
"I have a better head for business 'n you do, Jacimbo Spindlethrift," his sister-in-law retorted with some asperity. "Even if I an't got one for machines. Where'd we be if I left the managing o' the mill to you after my poor husband passed on?"
"Weaving and spinning've always been a woman's business," Jemina added. "If we must work, could we have more fitting work to do? We--all us here--was brought up to it at Mum's own feet. We've been 'round those looms of Grand-dad's since we was old enough to stand. Why shouldn't Mulby learn how to fix 'em, Uncle, if you show her how?"
"Why, if we didn't take up the business, Uncle Jacco, who would?" asked Carina. "You and Mum mightn't agree on much, but I remember what a fuss you both made when Dosina 'n' me got married and our husbands tried to take a bigger hand in the shop. They're dyers, you said, and no more, and they wouldn't get to run the place 'til you was in the vault--and maybe not even then!" Her sisters laughed, but the two husbands didn't look as if they found this jape at all funny.
Site Info
We are the home of 1292 authors from among our 2552 members. There have been 2904 reviews written about our 3820 stories consisting of 10734 chapters and 29400445 words. A special welcome to our newest member, Rosamundeb.Categories
Skin Change
Donate
Help us keep one of the oldest running LotR archives available to all. Even the smallest donation helps!
Many thanks to our previous donors!
Many thanks to our previous donors!
