Another matter concerning the Moon may be mentioned. At the beginning of the chapter, when Faramir waking Frodo says 'the full moon is setting', my father changed this on the manuscript to 'rising'; when they came out from the stairway in the rock the words 'Far off in the West the full moon was sinking' were changed to 'Behind him the round moon, full and majestic, rose out of the shadow of the East'; and Faramir's 'Moonset over Gondor' was changed to 'Moonrise over Gondor'. This would of course make it very much earlier in the night. But all these alterations were returned to the original readings, presumably at once, since subsequently 'It was now dark and the falls were pale and grey, reflecting only the lingering moonlight of the western sky' (TT p. 295) was not changed.
VII. JOURNEY TO THE CROSS-ROADS.
I have recounted the original relationship of 'The Forbidden Pool' and 'Journey to the Cross-roads'(1) at the beginning of the last chapter. Preliminary drafting for this second part of the original single chapter runs continuously, in excruciatingly difficult handwriting, as far as the coming of Frodo and his companions to the ridge covered with whortleberry and gorse-bushes so tall that they could walk upright beneath them (TT p. 307).(2) The story to this point differed from that in The Two Towers. The journey took a day less: they came to the road from Osgiliath at dusk of the day on which they left Henneth Annûn in the morning; and their taking refuge in the great holm-oak was described at much greater length (cf. TT pp. 306 - 7, from 'Gollum reluctantly agreed to this'):
Gollum agreed to this, and the travellers turned back from the road, but Gollum would not rest on the ground in the open woodland. After some search he chose a large dark ilex with great branches springing together high up from a great bole like a [?giant] pillar. It grew at the foot of a small bank [?leaning] a little westward. From the bank Gollum leaped with ease upon the trunk, climbing like a cat and scrambling up into the branches. The hobbits climbed only with the help of Sam's rope and in that task Gollum would not help, he would not lay a finger on the elven rope. The great branches springing almost from the same point made a wide bowl and here they [?managed] to find some sort of comfort. It grew deep dark under the great canopy of the tree. They could not see the sky or any star.
'We could sleep snug and safe here, if it wasn't for this dratted Gollum,' thought Sam. Whether he was really as forgiving as he claimed or not, Gollum at least had no fear of his companions, and curled up like some tree-animal and soon went to sleep, or seemed to. But the hobbits did not trust it - neither of them (certainly not Sam) were likely to forget Faramir's warning. They took [it] in turn to watch and had about 3 hours' sleep each. All the while Gollum did not stir. Whether the 'nice fish' had given him strength to last for a bit or whatnot else, he did not go out to hunt.
Shortly before midnight he woke up suddenly and they saw his pale eyes unlidded staring in the darkness.
At the point where this opening draft ended my father wrote Thunder. But at this stage there is no suggestion in the text of any change in the weather or in the feeling of the air. Other points worth mentioning are that the staves given to Frodo and Sam by Faramir had 'carven heads like a shepherd's crook'; that the tree of which they were made was first named melinon (the last two letters are not perfectly clear), then lebendron, and finally lebethras, all these changes being made in the act of writing;(3) and that though Faramir warns them against drinking of any water that flows from the valley of Morghul he does not name it Imlad Morghul (but the name occurs soon after: p. 223, note 25).
A second draft takes up at the beginning of the passage just given ('Gollum agreed to this'), and the episode of the oak-tree was rewritten. In this text appears the first reference to an approaching change in the weather.
They were steadily climbing. Looking back they could see now the roof of the forests they had left, lying like a huge dense shadow spread under the sky. The air seemed heavy, no longer fresh and clear, and the stars were blurred, and when towards the end of the night the moon climbed slowly above Ephel Dúath (4) it was ringed about with a sickly yellow glare. They went on until the sky above the approaching mountains began to grow pale. Gollum seemed to know well enough where he was. He stood for a moment nose upward sniffing. Then beckoning to them he hurried forward. Following him wearily they began to climb a great hogback of land....
After the description of the great gorse-bushes and their hiding in a brake of tangled thorns and briars there follows (cf. TT p. 308):
There they lay glad to be at rest, too tired as yet to eat, and watched the slow growth of day. As the light grew the mountains of Ephel-Dúath seemed to frown and lower at them across the tumbled lands between. They looked even nearer than they were, black below where night lingered, with jagged tips and edges lined in threatening shapes against the opening sky.
Away a little northward of where the hobbits lay they seemed to recede eastwards and fall back in a great re-entrant, the nearer shoulder of which thrusting forward hid the view in that direction. Below out of the great shadow they could see the road from the River for a short stretch as it bent away north-east to join the southward road that still lay further off [?buried] in the crumpled land.
'Which way do we go from here?' said Frodo.
'Must we think of it yet?' said Sam. 'Surely we're not going to move for hours and hours?'
'No surely not,' said Gollum. 'But we must move sometime. ..... back to the Cross-roads that we told the hobbits about.'
'When shall we get there?'
'We doesn't know,' said Gollum. 'Before night is over perhaps, perhaps not.'
At this point the second draft breaks down into an outline of the story to come, and the handwriting becomes in places altogether inscrutable.
Gollum away a large part of the day. Reach Cross-roads in fact owing to difficult country not until evening. Start at dusk about 5.30 and do not reach Cross-roads and headless statue until morning [sic]. Gollum in a great state of fright. Weather changed. Sky above Ephel Dúath absolute black. Clouds or smoke? drifting on an East wind. Rumbles? Sun hidden. In this darkness they get out of the wood and see Minas Morghul. It shines amid a deep gloom as if by an evil moon - though there is no moon.
Horror of hobbits. Weight of Ring........ vale of Morghul. Where road went away to the north shoulder and bases of the fortress they turned aside and climbed away southward to other side of V [i.e. Vale of Morghul]. Frodo and Sam ....... see a track. They are already some way up and the gates of Minas Morghul frown at them when there is a great roll and rumble. Blast of Thunder .... rain. Out of gates comes host led by B[lack] R[ider].
It was in this text that the idea of the great cloud spreading out of Mordor emerged. In a third section of drafting my father returned to the point where the second had become a sketch, following Gollum's words about the Cross-roads: 'The sun that had risen with a red glare behind the Ephel-Dúath passed into dark clouds moving slowly from the East. It was a gloomy morning. The hobbits took some food and settled to rest ...'
After Gollum's reappearance from his long absence that day this draft too turns to outline:
When he returns he says they ought to start. Hobbits think something has worried him (or ?). They are suspicious but have to agree. The [early evening >) afternoon is threatening and overcast. At evening they come to the Cross-roads in a wood. Sun goes down bloodred in the west over Osgiliath.
Terrible darkness begins.
The completed fair copy manuscript did not in this case reach the form of the story in The Two Towers, for Frodo and his companions still only took two days from Henneth Annûn to the Cross-roads, and a major later change was the lengthening of their journey by a further day. This was achieved by the insertion of the following passage into a typescript of the chapter, following the words (TT p. 305) 'The birds seemed all to have flown away or to have fallen dumb':
Darkness came early to the silent woods, and before the fall of night they halted, weary, for they had walked seven leagues or more from Henneth Annûn. Frodo lay and slept
away the night on the deep mould beneath an ancient tree. Sam beside him was more uneasy: he woke many times, but there was never a sign of Gollum, who had slipped off as soon as the others had settled to rest. Whether he had slept by himself in some hole nearby, or had wandered restlessly prowling through the night, he did not say; but he returned with the first glimmer of light, and roused his companions.
'Must get up, yes they must!' he said. 'Long ways to go still, south and east. Hobbits must make haste! '
That day passed much the same as the day before had done, except that the silence seemed deeper; the air grew heavy, and it began to be stifling under the trees. It felt as if thunder was brewing. Gollum often paused, sniffing the air, and then he would mutter to himself and urge them to greater speed.
(As the third stage of their day's march drew on ...)
This was retained almost exactly in TT. In the manuscript the text passes at once from 'The birds seemed all to have flown away or to have fallen dumb' to 'As the third stage of their day's march drew on', and thus in this narrative (as in the original draft, p. 175) they came to the Cross-roads at sunset of the second day. They had come to Henneth Annûn at sunset on 6 February (pp. 135, 141); they left on the morning of the 7th, and coming to the Osgiliath road at dusk of that day passed the first part of the night in the great oak-tree; they went on again 'a little before midnight', and passed most of the daylight hours of 8 February hiding in the thorn-brake before going on to the Cross-roads (see further the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter).
Thus the phrase 'As the third stage of their day's march drew on' referred, when it was written, to the statement then immediately preceding: 'Twice that day they rested and took a little of the food provided by Faramir'; as it stands in TT its reference is less clear. In this inserted passage occurs the first reference in TT to the heaviness in the air and the feeling of thunder. In the manuscript as in the draft (p. 176) the first reference to the change in the weather does not appear until they set out again and began to climb eastwards, after spending the first part of the night (the second night in TT) in the oak-tree; at this point in TT, by a later change, 'There seemed to be a great blackness looming slowly out of the East, eating up the faint blurred stars.' On the following morning, as they lay hidden under the thorns, the manuscript retained the story in the draft: the hobbits 'watched the slow growth of day', and saw the mountain-tops outlined against the sunrise; and here again this was afterwards changed to the reading of TT (p. 308): the hobbits 'watched for the slow growth of day. But no day came, only a dead brown twilight. In the East there was a dull red glare under the lowering cloud: it was not the red of dawn.' Where the manuscript, again following the draft (p- 177), has 'The sun that had risen with a red flare behind Ephel-Dúath passed soon into dark clouds moving slowly from the East. It was going to be a gloomy day, if no worse' TT has 'The red glare over Mordor died away. The twilight deepened as great vapours rose in the East and crawled above them.' On the other hand, the further references in this chapter to the darkness (and to the deep rumbling sounds) were already present in the original version, and at the end it is said, almost as in TT (p. 311): 'There, far away, the sun was sinking, finding at last the hem of the great slow-rolling pall of cloud, and falling in an ominous fire towards the yet unsullied sea.'(5)
Comparing the text as it stands in the manuscript with that in TT one might well suppose at first sight that all these careful alterations show my father at a later time (when he had reached Book V) developing the original idea of a great thunderstorm arising in the mountains into that of the 'Dawnless Day', an emanation of the power of Mordor that obliterated the sunrise and turned day into night, that stroke of Sauron's that preceded his great assault. But it is clear that this is not so. That conception was already present. In fact, the essential reason for these changes was chronological, and they are to be associated with the extra day of the journey from Henneth Annûn. The slow approach of the great cloud out of the East had to be advanced at each succeeding stage of the journey to the Cross-roads (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter). It is also true, however, that the rewriting of these passages intensified the Darkness and made it more potent and sinister.
Lastly, another later alteration to the text in the manuscript was the sentence (TT p. 306) 'and the sound of the water seemed cold and cruel: the voice of Morgulduin, the polluted stream that flowed from the Valley of the Wraiths.'
On p. 181 is reproduced a plan of the Cross-roads and Minas Morghul.(6)
NOTES.
1. My father wrote the word 'Cross-roads' very variously, but in this chapter I spell it thus throughout, as in TT.
2. Cf. Unfinished Tales, p. 99 and note 15.
3. In the fair copy manuscript it was still said that the heads of the staves were in the form of a shepherd's crook, though this was subsequently rejected (see p. 207), but the name of the tree was lebethron as first written.
4. In the first draft the form was still Hebel Dúath. On this change see p. 137. - This reference to the moon climbing above Ephel Dúath 'towards the end of night' is curious, in view of the opening of 'The Forbidden Pool', where towards the end of the previous night the full moon was setting in the West. The original draft here is even odder:
The moon rose at last out of [?high) shadows ahead of them. It hardly showed yet any ... of its full light, but already away behind the mountains and the hollow land and the empty wastes day was beginning to grow pale.
'There comes White Face,' said Gollum. 'We doesn't like it. And Yellow Face is coming soon, sss. Two faces in sky together at once, not a good sign. And we've got some way to go.'
My father was certainly, as he wrote to me on 14 May 1944 (Letters no. 69), having 'trouble with the moon'.
In the manuscript the moon is still climbing above Ephel Dúath late in the night; only by a later change does it become 'the sinking moon' that 'escaped from the pursuing cloud' (TT p. 307).
5. The words in TT 'beyond sad Gondor now overwhelmed in shade' were a later addition.
6. At the head of the first stair there is evidently a track and not a tunnel, and therefore the later conception of the ascent to the pass is present (pp. 198-200).
Note on the Chronology.
The time-schemes referred to as Scheme C and Scheme D (pp. 140 - 1) both cover this part of the narrative. Scheme C reads as follows (for comparison with the citations from The Tale of Years that follow I have added 'Day 1' etc. in both cases).
[Day 1]
Monday Feb. 6 Frodo and Sam in Ithilien. They are taken by Faramir. Battle with the Southrons. Frodo spends night at Henneth Annûn.
[Day 2]
Tuesday Feb. 7 Gollum captured in the Pool of Annûn in the early hours (5.30-6). Frodo Sam R Gollum leave Faramir, and journey all day reaching Osgiliath road at dusk, and go east just before midnight.
Faramir leaves Henneth Annûn for Minas Tirith.
[Day 3]
Wednesday Feb. 8 Faramir rides to Minas Tirith late in day and brings news to Gandalf.
Frodo lies hid in thornbrake until late afternoon (Gollum disappears and returns about 4.30). Sound of drums or thunder. They reach the Cross-roads at sunset (5.5 p.m.). Pass Minas Morghul, and begin ascent of Kirith Ungol. The host of Minas Morghul goes out to war.
[Day 4] Thursday Feb. 9 Frodo etc. all day and night in the Mountains of Shadow.
Host of Minas Morghul reaches Osgiliath and crosses into realm of Gondor.
Here this scheme ends. Scheme D is precisely the same in dates and content, but continues further (see p. 226) and has some entries concerning Théoden's movements: Feb. 7 'Théoden prepares to ride to Gondor. Messengers from Minas Tirith arrive. Also tidings of the invasion of North Rohan and war in the North'; Feb. 8 'Théoden rides from Edoras'. The fully 'synoptic' scheme S also agrees, and in addition mentions the coming on of 'the Great Darkness' on Feb. 8.
It will be seen that this chronology precisely fits the narrative as it stands in the manus
cript, i.e. before it was altered by the insertion of the extra day. When that was done, the (relative) chronology of The Tale of Years was reached:
[Day 1] March 7 Frodo taken by Faramir to Henneth Annûn.
[Day 2] March S Frodo leaves Henneth Annûn.
[Day 3] March 9 At dusk Frodo reaches the Morgul-road.
[Day 4] March 10 The Dawnless Day. Frodo passes the Cross Roads, and sees the Morgul-host set forth.
The synchronization of Frodo's story with that of the events west of Anduin required both that Frodo should take longer and that 'Day 4' should be the Dawnless Day. Thus in the original story Frodo and Sam see the red sunrise from their hiding in the thornbrake on 'Day 3'; in the final form they are hiding in the thornbrake on 'Day 4', and there is no sunrise, but a red glare over Mordor that 'was not the red of dawn'.
VIII. KIRITH UNGOL.
In this chapter I shall describe the writing of the three last chapters of The Two Towers: 'The Stairs of Kirith Ungol', 'Shelob's Lair', and 'The Choices of Master Samwise'. As will be seen, this is dictated by the way in which my father developed the narrative.
The History of Middle Earth: Volume 8 - The War of the Ring Page 23
