[Envinyatar]

Ruby and Buttercup had gone on their appointed errands. Cook, unable to contain her excitement at the news of Mistress Piosenniel’s arrival with the babies, could not wait for their return, and had gone herself in search of Cami and Aman. The return of the Elf to the Inn had gone from two weeks away to imminent in her mind, and for one usually as down to earth as she was, she was now quite in a dither.

The rapid departure of the kitchen staff left Derufin alone with the supervising of the evening meal. Accustomed as he was to feeding himself quite adequately while on the road, he found it was altogether a different task when faced with the preparation of a meal for a large number of hungry and somewhat discriminating persons. Still, he was a member of the Inn staff now, and Cook had gotten most of the food already well under way.

‘How hard could it be?’ he thought to himself as he tied an apron round his waist and picked up the wooden stirring spoon.

He gave the chicken stew a stir with the spoon, and tasted the broth. Superb! He bit into a chunk of the carrot, noting it met his teeth with the resistance he liked in his vegetables, and set the large pot on the back burner to stay warm. The peas could wait to be cooked until he’d seen to the floury mound of would-be biscuits sitting on the counter.

Now that was a challenge he was not sure he was up to. Though he had eaten a fair number of biscuits in his life, he could not recall ever having made them. He dredged up a distant memory of his mother faced with a similar gluey mass teaching his older sister the fine art of flakey biscuits. Using her remonstrances to his sister as a guide, he worked the dough lightly and rolled it out gently. Taking the floured rim of a wine cup, he cut out the rounds from the biscuit dough and lined them up like troops in two large baking pans.

This was where his memories failed him. He had gotten restless when the instructions turned to arrangement of the biscuits in the pan – how far apart they should be from one another seemed unimportant in comparison with the sight of his younger brother playing out in the yard with the family dog. And he had missed entirely the part of biscuit-making where the heat of the oven and length of baking was discussed.

Trusting that Cook had in all probability gotten the oven to the desired temperature, he opened the heavy door, and popped the two pans onto the waiting racks. Derufin pulled a chair close to the oven door and sat down, peeking in briefly every five minutes or so, determined to catch the biscuits at just the right time.

After what seemed an interminable time, the biscuits took on a golden hue and were taken out to sit on cooling racks. The peas were done, and he gave the thick chicken stew one last stir.

No one was in sight to serve it up, so he set out bowls and plates and spoons, and dishes of butter with butter knives and several pots of sweet Shire honey on the long counter in the kitchen. The food he placed on the table in the center of the room.

Stepping to the door of the kitchen, he called out in a loud voice that reached readily to the far end of the Common Room.

‘Supper’s served! Come line up if you’re hungry and help yourselves!’

Pouring himself a black stout from the keg behind the bar, Derufin seated himself on one of the high stools and watched the hungry horde shuffle by . . .