Chapter Text
Belladonna Took was married to Bungo Baggins in the year 1285, Shire Reckoning. Five years later – longer than most hobbits waited but what do you expect from the wildest daughter of the Tooks - the couple was expecting their first child. Their daughter was named after her mother at Bungo’s request, so that there might always be a beautiful lady in Bag End.
For years Bella was a happy, laughing child with eyes brighter and smile wider than any other fauntling in the Shire. But after her child’s fifth birthday Belladonna grew tired of what her life had become – all hosting tea and going to the market and never going on a single adventure. She needn’t go on a large adventure, she told Bungo. In fact, they could do something as a family. A safe little Shire adventure.
So it was that Bungo, Belladonna, and little Bella Baggins set off in a boat to spend an afternoon on the Brandywine. Hobbits, however, are known neither for their great sailing skills or their experience in building boats. And thus when the vessel struck a large rock it immediately began filling with water and went down. Bungo, who had never known anything but a life of leisure and certainly had never swam, drowned before he could even think of which shore was closest. Belladonna was better suited to swimming, having splashed around in the small pond the Tooks kept stocked with fish as a child in Tuckborough. But many years out of practice and carrying her child, the hobbit went under more than once before reaching the shore.
Gorbadoc Brandybuck and his wife Mirabella, sister to Belladonna, were smoking outside Brandybuck Hall and saw Belladonna struggling for the shore. Running to the river banks, they reached her just as she finished pulling herself out of the water. As Gorbadoc led Belladonna to the warmth of Brandy Hall Mirabella stripped the soaking dress from Bella and wrapped the babe in her dry jacket. Miraculously, little Bella seemed not to have swallowed any water from the river. Belladonna, though, could not seem to stop coughing up the dark water.
Belladonna Baggins died a week after her husband, in her beloved Bag End. An infection in the lungs, the healer said. Her father Gerontius wept by her bedside through the night, his grandchild held tightly to his chest, and resisted any efforts to take the girl from him.
Gorbadoc and Mirabella offered to adopt the now orphaned Belladonna. Having two children already – Rorimac and Primula – and Mirabella pregnant again they were sure the little child would settle quickly into their lively home. Gerontius, struck by the grief of losing his favorite child and having lost his wife Adamanta only a year before, refused them and declared he would raise little Bella.
Slightly mad with grief, Gerontius became convinced that Belladonna was sent to him by Yavanna herself. For eighteen years Bella wanted for nothing. She had the finest tutors the Thain could find in math, medicine, and that peculiar magic hobbits have but refuse to name. She spent her days in the gardens of Tuckborough; and any change or plant she wished for them was granted at once. The only thing she was not allowed, was contact with the world outside the Shire. Her grandfather would not even allow her to be taught Westron, which most hobbits learned as fauntlings. Belladonna, he declared, would never leave the Shire and thus never need to speak anything other than Hobbitish.
It was when Bella had just turned 32 that the harvest season was cut short by an early freeze which gripped the Shire and refused to let go. The winter was worse than any other in hobbit history and grain stores, already less than usual, were depleted before the cold showed any sign of retreating. Wolves and worse crossed the Brandywine and hobbits were forced to fight for their homes for the first time in centuries. Many died of starvation, others to sickness, and more to the wolves and wargs.
Gerontius Took did not die that winter, but he was changed. Weak from the constant hunger, he had survived only because of his granddaughter’s tireless efforts to fight the cough that settled in his chest. The once strong hobbit never recovered, and as spring warmed he handed the Thainship to his son, Isengrim III.
Isengrim knew that the Shire could not survive another winter such as the Fell Winter alone. After meeting with Gorbadoc, who was now Master of Buckland, and Fosco Baggins, Mayor of Michel Delving, he sent a letter to Erebor to open talks of an alliance.