Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  Any mole? Moles more like! The place was alive with the sound of pups, bleating and mewing and stirring, and the sound of a mother shushing them still.

  Pups on the slopes! It was the first time he had ever heard of such a thing and if there was one thing in the world to raise his spirits a little at that moment, it was their sound.

  There was a scurrying and muttering somewhere in the tunnels ahead where the litter was. Then a mole came running aggressively down the tunnel at him, stopping ready with her talons raised.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said gently, ‘I’m not here for harm, just to pass the time of day like. I’m Mekkins the elder, from the Marsh End.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Rue.

  ‘I’ve been to the Stone.’

  ‘Oh!’ She sounded surprised and came closer and snouted at him.

  ‘Sounds like you got yourself a litter,’ said Mekkins cheerfully. ‘Can I look?’

  She nodded. She knew of Mekkins. He was all right, played fair, they said.

  ‘Got a worm or two to spare?’ asked Mekkins, pressing his luck.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ said Rue. ‘But as it happens I have.’

  She turned round and ran on before him, back to her litter, and he followed very slowly, knowing how sensitive mothers can be.

  Her burrow was a joy to look into. There she was, curled up with four pups suckling at her teats, bleating occasionally when they lost their grip, wrestling with each other for the best place, and milk spattering their pink snouts and pale young whiskers. Their eyes were blind and their paws as floppy as wet grass. Rue twittered and whiffled at them, guiding their mouths to her nipples and cooing love sounds at their feeble antics. One of the pups did a mewing cartwheel backwards and Rue laughed fondly, saying, ‘Come on, my sweet,’ pulling him back. It was only as she lifted him up to her nipples that Mekkins saw that there was a fifth pup there, smaller than the rest, lost among the melee of the paws and questing snouts. He was feeble and lacked the vigour of the others, seeming unable even to suck.

  ‘The runt,’ said Rue matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve tried to make him feed but he only manages when the rest take a break and that isn’t often. He’s growing weaker by the hour. There’s always a weak one in a litter of five. Of course, he’s a male—they’re always the ones.’

  But Mekkins wasn’t listening. He was thinking, his mind was racing, and an idea was forming swifter than lightning. An idea so ridiculous that he might make it work.

  He took a tentative step into the burrow, at which Rue immediately tensed. ‘There’s a female I know,’ he said at last, ‘who lost her litter. She’s ill from want of suck. That’s why I went to the Stone—to ask it to help her.’ He looked meaningfully at the little feeble pup being climbed all over by the other four. Its mews were too weak for him to hear them above their noise, but he could see its mouth desperately forming the sounds.

  Rue looked at him. ‘What you’re saying is that he might survive with her, whereas he definitely won’t with me. You may be right and you may be wrong.’ Slowly Rue relaxed.

  She went back to tending the more vigorous four and somehow shifted a bit so the fifth fell away and got lost by itself in the nesting material between Rue and Mekkins. Slowly, with great care, he eased himself towards the little thing. Rue studiously ignored them both.

  Then Mekkins gently bent down to the tiny pup, took it up in his mouth by the scruff of the neck, and lifted it off the ground. It swung loose from his mouth, eyes blind and paws waving weakly. Mekkins hesitated for only a moment before turning to the entrance and going back into the tunnel and then, as fast as he could go, down to its entrance. Rue did not even look up after he had gone. ‘My sweet things,’ she whispered to the healthy four, ‘my loves.’

  As Mekkins was about to exit on the surface, he heard sounds behind him and thinking that Rue had, after all, changed her mind, turned round to face her and found himself looking into the face of a young adult male, with grey fur and wary eyes. The pup hung in the air between them.

  ‘Take care of him,’ said the young male. His voice was strong but strangely haunting, and it made Mekkins stop quite still, for surely he had heard it before. Before high summer he had heard it… coming out of the dark on Midsummer Night, coming from the Stone clearing. The voice of Bracken. Feeling suddenly that he and the system were in the grip of forces whose power and destiny were beyond imagining, Mekkins sensed the pup in his mouth stir feebly and then he was gone, up into the light of early morning, racing down the slopes, running with the little pup swinging helplessly in front of him, as he made desperately, without pause, for the distant isolated place where Rebecca lay dying.

  * * *

  Never had the smell of decaying wood and rotting leaf mould—the smell of the most forsaken part of Duncton Wood—felt so good to Mekkins. It meant that he was back.

  Down then into Curlew’s dark tunnels, along to her burrow, desperate eyes at its entrance looking to see if Rebecca… if Rebecca was… and a gasp from Curlew that had a thousand different feelings in it.

  Mekkins placed the pup at Rebecca’s belly, nudging it to her hard and swollen nipples, pushing it forward almost clumsily in his desperation to see it take suck. And when it did not, whispering to Rebecca, whose eyes were closed and whose breathing was shallow, ‘Rebecca! Rebecca! I’ve brought you a pup!’

  ‘They’ve all gone,’ she moaned in a dead voice. ‘All gone.’

  ‘He’s here. Look at him. Look at him,’ whispered Mekkins gently, his eyes looking hopelessly to Curlew as the pup, too feeble to suck on its own, fell back to the shadows of her belly, its own tiny belly hurrying in and out, in and out, as if its life were being gasped away.

  ‘Just look at him, my dear,’ said Curlew, her snout caressing Rebecca’s face. ‘Just try.’

  But Rebecca was not even interested, and try as they did, the pup could not seem to suck at her nipples, though it mewed softly and its mouth opened to try.

  ‘Rebecca,’ said Mekkins, again desperately, ‘please listen, my love. Try to help him. Try to give him your love. He needs you.’

  But still she only stirred slightly and though she looked round at the pup for a moment, she seemed to have no interest.

  Mekkins sought for something to say, just as he had searched for something to say at the Stone. His eyes were wild, his mind distraught, and he searched desperately about until, suddenly, the words of Bracken came to him again. ‘Take care of him,’ he had said and he saw an image of Bracken’s face, looking at him so deeply.

  Mekkins turned back to Rebecca once more, put his snout to her ear, and said urgently: ‘You must try. You must try. The pup is Bracken’s young. He’s Bracken’s pup!’

  What mole can say how soon a pup knows that its mother is gone? However it is, and will always be, the pup suddenly bleated out its sense of eternal loss. Not the quiet mewing that had been too soft to hear in Rue’s burrow, nor the feeble bleats he had made while trying to reach Rebecca’s teats. But the loud cry into the wilderness of loss, so that as Mekkins said ‘He’s Bracken’s pup’ Rebecca seemed to hear the pup’s cry as if it was her own.

  Her snout slowly turned round and down to the bleating thing, ran gently over its body, sniffled at its tiny paws; her tongue ran softly over its dry snout and she curled the protection of her body around it and guided it to one of her teats. The pup fell away, but she tried again. And again. Beginning to whisper words of encouragement as soft as its gentle mews, nudging it to her, pushing her teat to its mouth, moistening her own teat with her tongue to help, giving it her love. Until at last, before the breathless gaze of Curlew and Mekkins, the pup began to suckle, the noise of it filling the burrow like the sound of soft spring rain falling among dry grass.

  While behind them, unnoticed in the shadows of the tunnel outside the burrow, Bracken crept silently away. He had used all his skills to follow Mekkins’ desperate race to Curlew’s burrow so that he might watch over the safety of his son. Had
danger loomed, had a badger come by, had Mandrake himself come like a black cloud out of the night, Bracken would surely have given fight, so that his son, carried on by Mekkins, might be safe.

  So, unnoticed, he had watched over the safety of his son. He had crept into the tunnel after Mekkins and watched unobserved, only realising, because she was so changed, that it was Rebecca who was lying there when Mekkins said her name. He watched as the pup faltered and weakened, willing him to try again! Until the pup had bleated his heart out in one last cry and Rebecca had at last turned her face gently to him and, unknowingly, taken his son for her own.

  Only then did Bracken creep softly away. Out again on to the surface of this dark and wet part of the wood, back up south to the Hill and towards the Ancient System, to which he seemed for ever enchained.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They called the pup Comfrey, after the healing herb that grew by the wood’s edge near Curlew’s tunnels and which, she said, had kept Rebecca alive in the two days Mekkins was away at the Stone.

  For many long days they worried over him, all three nurturing and cherishing life into him until he was able to suckle of his own accord, and his sounds were those of the eagerness of a growing mole rather than the desperation of a dying one.

  But though Rebecca tended to him, whispering her love to him, it still seemed to Mekkins that some light in her had gone out and that there was a weariness with, or lack of belief in, the very life of which she had once been the greatest celebrant.

  When November came, Mekkins could stay no longer and left to attend to Marsh End affairs and, though he did not say so, to see what he could find out about any search that might be being made for Rebecca.

  ‘I’ll take good care of her, Mekkins, so don’t you go fretting,’ said Curlew as he left. ‘Comfrey will be all right now, a little weak perhaps but even the slightest plants bear flowers. And as for Rebecca, she’ll take time to recover, but recover she will, you’ll see.’

  Mekkins was touched by the change that had come over Curlew herself since Rebecca, and then Comfrey, had come. They seemed to have put new life into her and the mole he remembered as being so frightened and withdrawn was now bustling with activity and full of purpose. ‘Things certainly work out in a strange way,’ he thought to himself as he departed, and that was something to take comfort from.

  * * *

  When he got back to the Marsh End and heard what had been happening in the system, he realised how right Rose had been to warn that dark days were coming. They were already there. For fear and terror were taking Duncton over, as the henchmoles, mainly Westsiders, were beginning to get so powerful that they were out of control.

  There were random attacks on Eastsiders and Marshenders; there were takeovers of tunnels by henchmole gangs; there was even a killing in Barrow Vale itself, the one place in the system where a mole traditionally felt completely safe on neutral ground.

  At the root of the problem was the change that had come over Mandrake, which had started, the gossips were quick to point out, from the night he and Rune had killed Rebecca’s young. In the early days of Mandrake’s thrall, if there had been killing to be done it was done by Mandrake himself. He kept tight control of the henchmoles, whom he selected himself and who obeyed nomole but he. Slowly, subtly, darkly, Rune began to gain power. By acting as a buffer between the henchmoles on one hand and Mandrake on the other, he gained the confidence of both. A mole like Burrhead, who was the leading Westside henchmole, preferred to work through Rune rather than directly with Mandrake, who was too unpredictable. He made a mole like Burrhead stumble over his words and feel stupid; Rune was so much more understanding…

  By the Midsummer after Bracken’s birth, Rune had the direct loyalty of all the henchmoles, many of whom had gained their positions by his preferment, and one way or another (mainly by his guile) those henchmoles originally selected by Mandrake were frozen out. Rumours were set against them, for example, so that Mandrake no longer trusted them. At one elder burrow meeting, two of them, whose reputation with Mandrake had been poisoned by Rune’s slanders, were killed by Mandrake himself in front of all. So savagely was it done that only Rune smiled; there was something sensual in death for him.

  After the death of Hulver, or, more particularly, ever since Mandrake had been so shocked to hear those words of grace spoken by Bracken—the voice of the Stone, as it seemed to Mandrake—he had slowly lost interest in the power he had won for himself. Nomole doubted he was in charge, not even Rune, but he preferred to let Rune exercise power for him, with occasional excursions into mindless brutality just to show who was in charge.

  Most moles in Duncton, including Mandrake, assumed that Rebecca had been taken by an owl along with her litter after their killing. But seemingly worse, for Mandrake, was the fact that his mate, Sarah, who had opposed the killing of the litter from the start, had been taken by owl as well—at the same time as Rebecca. The sudden loss of his mate and daughter seemed to mark the start of Mandrake’s decline into distracted brutality. He would suddenly appear in Barrow Vale and spend hours sitting brooding, while the moles there would quietly disappear. Sometimes he was heard to attack the walls of his tunnels in great lumbering crashes and to mutter to himself in the language of Siabod. Words that sounded like curses, and ravings nomole could understand.

  He became obsessed, too, by the Stone Mole, a rumour that had never died out. Indeed, the incident with Rebecca got tangled up with the Stone Mole, who was said (and Mandrake appeared to believe it in some way) to have mated with Rebecca. ‘Oh, yes! Haven’t you heard? The pups Mandrake killed were the Stone Mole’s pups!’

  Nomole quite believed this, and yet it was a good story… so rumours feed on themselves.

  As for the reports of her death, these were so confused that nomole could really tell what the truth was. Mandrake himself believed her dead but there were others, Rune among them, who were not so sure. Some even said—but this was the wild gossip of those who had exhausted the titillation in every other story—that she had escaped from the system with a single pup who had not died in the assault and was rearing him as a second Stone Mole to come and avenge his siblings’ deaths. ‘Typical Rebecca!’ some said, not knowing that the Rebecca they had known was no more, alive or dead.

  Mekkins garnered all these stories in visits to Barrow Vale, for Marsh End was too cut off and unpopular to be a good source for gossip. He trusted the henchmole who had so bravely led Rebecca down to the Marsh End to keep quiet—it was in his interests to do so.

  More serious was the possibility that the news of Rebecca’s existence and whereabouts might leak from the Marsh End, where a few moles must have guessed at it. He began to think that if there was any way for Rebecca to leave the system he should find it. For surely if they ever did discover her, especially with Comfrey, then she would be killed. It was to discuss this that he himself decided to risk a journey to the pastures to see if he could locate Rose to ask for her advice and help. He wanted, in any case, to bring her back to Curlew’s burrow to take a look at Rebecca and see if she could inject into her a greater will to live again.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, the Stone Mole rumour was resurrected periodically by glimpses of Bracken, who now had such a command of the Ancient System—except for its most central part, whose exploration still defeated him—that he did not mind taking a few risks. In fact, for him it was quite fun. But he was seen only down on the slopes, for as the atmosphere of fear in the wood increased, nomole ventured too far from his burrow, and none up on to the hill itself.

  Bracken’s visits to the slopes were principally to see Rue and her thriving litter—Violet, Coltsfoot, Beech and Pipple.

  Bracken had tried several more times to find his way through the Chamber of Roots but finally gave up when, one windy day when the roots were viciously active below ground, he got cut off by a deep and treacherous fissure that appeared in the floor and took a long and dangerous time to find another way out again, while the r
oots got noisier and noisier and seemed to want to entwine themselves about him and take him for their own. He was determined to return one day and find some way of completing the exploration, but meanwhile decided to create tunnels of his own.

  He established his tunnels at the wood’s edge beyond the Stone clearing, quite near the spot where Cairn had died. His choice was decided principally by the existence of the second tunnel leading out of (or into) the circular tunnel around the Chamber of Echoes. The tunnel was a slight affair, meandering here and there and eventually petering out to the west of the Stone. Bracken constructed a clever series of tunnels that connected up with it in a deliberately confusing and roundabout way, designed to put off any inquisitive mole who found his own tunnels. He liked the idea of having access to the Ancient System underground but saw danger in creating a direct route.

  Meanwhile, Duncton Wood declined towards winter. The winds off the pastures grew greyer and colder, and the last of the leaves blew in desolate flurries off the trees, leaving just a few dead ones hanging on the beech and oak trees as a reminder of the summer now long gone. The only green that remained was the ivy that hung off some of the older trees, some mistletoe that had colonised the occasional oak on the lower Westside, and near Barrow Vale a holly tree or two, whose shining, prickly leaves and clusters of red berries seemed the only splash of colour in the whole wood.

  Creature after creature disappeared from sight. Most of the birds had gone, while the grey squirrels, who had scampered their way over the trunks and branches of the oaks or across the wood floor between the beeches all spring and summer, began, one by one, to disappear into the nooks and holes in which they hibernated and would see the long winter through.

  A colony of pipistrelle bats found out the hollow dead elm in the lower wood and, after wheeling and circling round it dusk after dusk, settled down to sleep the winter through in the safety of its dark inaccessibility. Insects like wasps and ladybirds crawled away under the looser patches of tree bark while hedgehogs, after growing slow and dozy, finally chose their spots for sleep as well, curling up under a cover of leaves and mould with only the very slightest trembling of their snouts to tell that they were still alive.