September 25
Year 3018, Third Age of Man's Reckoning
Birdsfoot Jewellers
Little Delving, The Shire
Master Nadvald, Expert Gem-cutter
Nadvald's Wonders
5 Scholar's Stair
Bree-town
My very dear Nalvand,
It is a pleasure to do business with you, as always, and I remain at your service. We were delighted by the brilliant uncut gems you sent home with Corydalia. Oh, better by far than the load of silver we sent her after! One of the star sapphires is egg-shaped, and because my good wife Melondene looks ever so well in blue, I've had thoughts of setting it as is, without any cutting whatsoever. Your thoughts are just as welcome as your beardy old self at my door is!
Melondene sends you her warmest greetings, also, and will have a delicious feast laid for you if you should choose to visit us at our smíal when you come for Cory. Melondene was ever so delighted with the very special ring you had Cory make. It may be a plain band, but Cory clearly made it with Melondene in her pretty little heart, and that means more to Melondene than the very special metal you started Cory on. Don't think old Rubicund doesn't know what it is, or how much that "simple" ring is worth!
Yes, dash it all, I am consenting to let you have my only daughter as an apprentice! She always was a bit different. Her brother is going for the Bounders, which is risky -- spiders and wolves about, and rumors of goblins on our Greenfields. (Within sight of the statue of old Bandobras Took, at that! The gall of they critters! Gall, I say!!) But jewellery is a respectable occupation for a young Hobbit-lass of a merchant family, and I haven't any doubts about Cory's talent or persistence. Maybe after your extra teaching, we could even marry her to a Took! Not on account of having titles and suchlike, but there's a branch of 'em as likes old books and mysterious things. But I've wandered away from my topic like a daft old cow.
I tell you, Nalvand, Cory has the gift of the metal as much as any lad or lass I've seen try to wield the jeweller's hammer. She always wanted more, and with you, I know she can do the exploring she always craved to do -- but under your protection, so Melondene and I won't worry so much. My little daw was always terrifed we'd pack her off to marry a Bolger from Budgeford (nothing wrong with pig farming, says I, but Cory won't hear of it!), and that made her jittery something fierce.
Take my daughter as your apprentice, Nadvald, and I shall be able to brag all around the Shire. Oh, that Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, she just won't know what to say! She'll have a righteous fit when she hears, because that pimply son of hers, Lotho, is a no-gooder layabout who can't even sow a pipeweed-field properly.
But Cory, who is working with gold, is about to reach the outermost bounds of what I can teach her. Rubies, sapphires, she works with like a wee trouper, and I've even started her cutting adamants. But the metals beyond the ordinary, platinum and anciet silver and all such of real greatness -- you who worked at the foot of Thráin son of Thrór can teach her far, far better than I. Oh my, yes. Far better!
Please treat her carefully and give her plenty of vegtables vegematab spinach to put colour in her cheeks. She's been most awfully sheltered with us here all the way to Little Delving, where customers seek us out, right enough, but Cory doesn't get the social opportunities or the bustle of Michel Delving. That's why I send her to Bree to pick up my supplies: my only daughter is quick on her feet as she is in her mind, and say, she can make strangers stick to their bargains like a handbill to a post! And so if she sees more in her travels with you... say, if you take her along to Thorin's Halls, and maybe while you're there, the Elf-refuge just to the east of it... well, that can only be good for her, I says to her, and even Melondene agreed.
I've got running tabs with the finest pubs -- the Bird and Baby, the Ivy Bush Inn, the Green Dragon at Bywater, you name it -- and you can go in any one and ask for a free, gratis pint of the finest stuff they've got on tap, entirely on me. Plus, if you do come to supper, Melondene's been on a kick for making those strawberry-rhubarb pies you like so much. Hint, hint!
It's tremendous good of you to take over Cory's learning, and even gooder better to know from working side by side at a bench together that you truly feel in your heart what the stone and metal tell us. You understand more than anyone round Delving way what it is to have a conversation with the piece you're shaping. Uncanny!
Well, I've blethered enough and I don't fancy mixing up another pot of ink, for I surely am tired. I complain about Miss Lobelia, but truth be told, she's my best customer as far as placing the most orders, even if she squeezes a penny so hard that Marcho and Blanco scream... and I've been working on a silver set for her night and day. Funny thing is, she gave me some silver spoons to melt down for it, even though I told her 'tweren't necessary. I never knowed her to be generous. Most odd, most odd.
[Rubicund begins yet another page, this time on the finest vellum, no less fancy a writing surface than the Founding Writ itself]
Nadvald of the Lonely Mountain, I do formally charge you with the apprenticeship of Miss Corydalia Trefoil Birdsfoot. I understand that you shall have her to assist you in your travels, shop-running, and all such needful tasks. In return, you feed her and keep a roof over her head, and most of all, out of trouble. You impart all the knowledge you can stuff into my girl's fiery head. All work she does in one of your shops is considered YOUR property, but if you give her a trip home at your own discretion, the work she does for ME is for her or me to sell. We mutually agree any proceeds from her apprentice work on her own time go into trust for her, with her to choose if it's to be a dowry or to set her up in her own shop in whatsoever respectable and safe place she might choose.
(Below, his signature in bold red ink, and then the notation: "Witnessed thereunto this day, Master Osbert Fallohide," with the notary's stamp beside that)
[Rubicund returns to the more ordinary paper he started with, stamped with "BIRDSFOOT JEWELLERS" in subtle gray at the bottom]
Just sign below where I did, and return that page to me by land courier, Quick Post, or bird, whichever will go fastest from where you are just now. Enjoy the enclosed packet of Longbottom Leaf that's been aging in my cellar (NOT with Cory -- Melondene was very clear on this, that a lady is never seen smoking)! And Nadvald, my great and dear old friend... when you figure it's wise and Cory has learnt all the skills she needs to make a diadem fit for an Elf-queen... please also return my daughter for a little while. I'm getting on in years, and I'm older than Melondene. Let me have my one more little digression...
I have told this to Melondene, to my son Franco, and to Corydalia herself, but I wish to be buried with my oldest tools on a hill looking over the Delving pass. My BEST ones, not the oldest, but the keenest and best, plus of course my five-times magnifying loupe you gave me, those go to Corydalia. There are bits of jewelry, and long letters like this one, for each of my loved ones hid in a box marked "FIREWORKS! DO NOT TOUCH!" on the highest shelf in my shop. The key to it is sewn into the lower left corner of my apron. One of 'em just has to rip the seam open with a leatherworker's tool, and out comes the key. My will is in there too. They'll easily see that Corydalia inherits my shop whole and entire, including such funds (in gem, coin, or authorized notes of debt to me) as pertain to its running, as well as the aforesaid tools, stock, and the shop's waggon and pony-team; Franco, who will be a Bounder by then, inherits my secret account at the Bank of the Mathom Society, and all my standing with the Mathom House and Inn League and privileges described in the membership agreements of both societies, as well as my one-sixteenth share in Longo Burrow's pipeweed business; and both siblings must jointly provide for my beloved Melondene, who inherits the house, its contents not related to the shop, and all other lands, gardens, buildings, farm and pet animals, private waggons, furnishings, and such other useful property as remains under my name, so's she never again must work a day in her life. Set 'em up with some trusty Dwarf-friends if you at all can. I love each and every one -- oh, hang it, bigger and more even than the giant pumpkin that took first prize at the Farmer's Pride Faire two years back.
Anyhoo, I close this letter (at last, ha ha!) hoping very much to see you soon, and fully at peace with you being the one to take my daughter's fine work to its greatest potential.
Your friend and brother for always, and your host for any meal or snack of the day or night,
Mister Rubicund G.M.J. Birdsfoot, Delving Guild of Trade, and Bearing the Special Recognition of the Mathom House and of Thain Paladin Took II
[The letter is sealed with a design stamped into the wax: a jackdaw examines a gem clutched in one of its claws, as it balances on the other]
