Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  Brome nodded. He looked pleased by this reply but said nothing. For a moment it was his turn to hesitate, but then he settled down further on to his paws with the air of a mole who, after keeping something to himself for a very long, time has decided that the moment has come to tell it all. He trusted Mekkins.

  ‘You’ve got to understand that in my system we are brought up to believe that Duncton moles are spell-weavers and evil, that the wood is dangerous to go near and that the Stone on top of the hill—which we have all heard about—is an evil Stone.’

  Mekkins looked visibly surprised at this.

  ‘Well, that’s how it is. Now, plenty of moles here believe in the Stone as an idea—something to worship, if you like. And we’ve got our rituals, like any other system. But we’re a big, diverse system and in recent years have been plagued by fighting and factions, just as other systems such as your own have. When, at about the time I took control here, I got talking to Rose about this and that, she told me, to my surprise, that she had been to your Stone several times. “It’s about as evil as a buttercup”, she said. Well, one night I decided to go and see for myself—a bit risky, but something drove me to it.’

  ‘Yeh! The Stone’s like that,’ murmured Mekkins.

  ‘Well, of course it wasn’t evil, it was inspiring. I couldn’t even describe the effect it had.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mekkins with a conspiratorial grin, ‘I think I know.’

  ‘I might have left it at that but for something that happened last September. One of our moles, Cairn, got killed in your system. A mating fight. His brother is… I should say "was" because he has left our system now… a mole called Stonecrop, who was the most important fighter this system has ever seen. He wanted to lead a group of moles over to Duncton and avenge Cairn’s death. One way or another I persuaded them out of it—frankly, I was worried about the consequences. But somehow it made me think about whether it would be worth invading Duncton.’

  Mekkins began to look worried, but Brome laughed. ‘Don’t worry. Hear me out. What I concluded was that if there was anything at all in Duncton Wood we wanted it was the Stone. Or rather, access to the Stone. It would give our moles the kind of focusing point that might stop the pointless feuds that keep developing here. And anyway, half of Duncton Hill is made up of the pastures, isn’t it? And taken together—the two systems, that is—the Stone is a natural centre.’

  Mekkins looked decidedly worried. The implications of what Brome was saying were very obvious to him.

  Brome continued. ‘Now, the reason I mention all this to you is principally because if you want my help down in the Marsh End against your Rune, which I think you may, then I’m going to want yours, up on top of the hill. I don’t want territory. I want access.’

  ‘The thin end of the root,’ said Mekkins cynically.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ said Brome. ‘But it might just stop the killing and feuding that goes on between the systems, and within my own.’

  ‘What’s this to do with me?’ asked Mekkins.

  ‘I don’t know—yet,’ said Brome. ‘But I’ve got a feeling that when Rose told me that you were a mole to be trusted, she meant you might have a bigger part to play than perhaps you expect in the changes she is talking about.’

  Mekkins and Brome looked at each other as two equals, poised before great events about to take place which would affect and change everything they knew. Mekkins smiled at last.

  ‘You’re quite a mole, you are, Brome. We could do with a mole like you in Duncton.’

  Brome laughed and cuffed him lightly on the shoulder, as if to seal a trust between them.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘if that Rebecca of yours is the one who mated with Cairn, which I noticed you avoided even hinting at, you had better warn her not to mention it. There’s Pasture moles who wouldn’t like to know she’s in the system. You see, Cairn’s brother Stonecrop was a very special mole and he’s missed. If they thought a mole who, even indirectly, caused his departure from the system was here, they might not like it.’

  Mekkins smiled noncommittally. He turned to go.

  ‘Is she that mole?’ asked Brome.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mekkins. He didn’t like lies.

  ‘She must be quite somemole,’ said Brome.

  ‘She is,’ said Mekkins. With that, their discussion was over, and after a short visit back to Rose’s burrow, in which he passed on Brome’s advice to Rebecca, Mekkins went hurriedly back to see what was happening in Duncton Wood.

  Rose’s burrow was one of the untidiest, and loveliest, Rebecca had ever seen. It was the kind in which youngsters could wander delightedly from object to object and lose themselves in reveries of wonder and play. Its walls had been burrowed in a rough and homely way, with an occasional roundel of stone left protruding, because Rose liked it that way, which cast friendly shadows and pillows of shade.

  Just inside the entrance, and half blocking it, was a pile of dried leaves and flowers of woodruff, whose hay like scent, said Rose, was the quickest way of reminding a returning mole that sanity lies inside her burrow more often than outside it. Next to this was a scatter of beechnut husks and near them, the two mingling together at the edges, a collection of black elderberries, dried and frizzled into hardness.

  There were several flints around the floor of the burrow, one of them flat-topped and obviously used by Rose as a surface on which to crash herbs, for it was covered by the crushed and shredded foliage of white horehound, whose thyme scent made that corner of the burrow like an open field of its own to moles who closed their eyes and let the scent take them over.

  ‘Yes, my love, that’s why I never quite finish crushing them all, because, you see, every time I try, the delicious scent quite takes me over!’ said Rose, explaining the clutter of horehound stems and leaving them exactly where they were.

  On the far wall opposite the entrance Rose had made her own special nest, a soft pile of blue runner leaves intermingled with the dried petals of eglantine and wild lavender. Rose had let Violet sleep there one day, though inevitably she complained that it was ‘uncomfortable and bumpy,’ which indeed it was, since some of the rose hips which Rose had gathered and heaped nearby had ‘inexplicably’ rolled into her nest and she had never noticed them.

  There was a dusty, dried-out red cardinal beetle shell by one wall, which Rose had never bothered to move since, ‘It crawled down here one summer’s day and peacefully spent the evening watching me do something or other—I can’t quite remember what—and then died!’ Violet didn’t like it much, but Comfrey found its colour—a deep red ochre— beautiful, and he liked the obscure shine of its dead wings.

  In the centre of the burrow and draped with other herbs and stems, all dusty, dry and green with age, was a long, gnarled flint of pinks and blues whose shape seemed to change with the hour of the day and the angle at which a mole chose to look at it. ‘Oh, no. It doesn’t change,’ explained Rose to Rebecca when they were talking one day, ‘you do.’

  From this fragrant burrow Rose had carried out her life’s work of healing Duncton and Pasture moles alike. By the time Rebecca came so desperately to her in the last week of that cold January, Rose was reaching the end of her long life. Even in the time since just before Longest Night, when Rebecca had last seen her, Rose had slowed and aged. She suffered pains now in her shoulders and back paws, which made movement difficult so that she tended to prefer to settle into one position at a time, moving only her head to keep track of Rebecca and the youngsters when they were in her burrow. She liked to see a mole’s eyes when she spoke to him, or her, and despite her pain, her own eyes were as still and warm as ever.

  At the same time she slept more, sometimes drifting in and out of sleeping and waking as a scatter of dandelion silk rises and falls on a warm evening wind in September. As the days went by, she seemed to say less and less and to smile more, and round her came a peace that descended even on Violet, whose normal ebullience grew quieter and gentler when she was near
Rose.

  Comfrey had quickly overcome his initial wariness of Rose and, together with Violet, he would spend long hours with her as she told them tales and legends of the system. Violet liked the dramatic ones, with heroes and villains dashing about from tunnel to tunnel, while Comfrey preferred to hear Rose tell stories of the flowers and trees, whose lore and mysteries held him spellbound.

  Rose began each of her tales the same way—‘From my heart to your heart I tell this tale, that its blessing may touch you as it has touched me’—and Comfrey would snuggle down, while Violet looked all expectant as the magic of the story wove them into its fabric.

  Although Rebecca was not aware of it, it was almost unknown for a mole to enter Rose’s burrow, and word quickly got about among the Pasture moles that ‘that Rebecca from Duncton must be very special, because Rose the Healer lets her inside her burrow. Inside!’

  They were right to remark on it, for to Rose, Rebecca was very special. She had seen the power for life in Rebecca from the first, and valuing it as she did, understood better than any mole, better even than Mekkins, how near to a death of spirit the murder of her litter by Mandrake had brought her.

  Even in Rebecca’s care of Comfrey, which could hardly have been more tender and loving—and now, in her acceptance of Violet—even now Rose could see that Rebecca had lost much trust in life. Sometimes there was a far-off sadness in the way Rebecca caressed Comfrey, or a sudden frailty in the laughter that had once always been so full and free.

  So Rose opened her burrow to Rebecca and the youngsters, knowing that with the Stone’s grace, Rebecca might find again some of the life she had lost touch with. Rose did not waste time or breath on regretting what had happened. She had known since their first meeting that Rebecca would be a healer, and she knew that healing can only come from a heart that has seen the dark as well as the light. She feared that for Rebecca there was more to come, far more than she herself had ever known, and she silently prayed that the Stone would help her give to Rebecca the strength and trust to find her way alone when she, Rose, was gone.

  It was for this reason that Rose was insistent that the youngsters should, for a period every day, leave her together alone with Rebecca—indeed, she made sure that the more friendly of the Pasture guardmoles, who still hung about, took Violet and Comfrey under their care and kept them occupied.

  These were times of talk and silence, times in which Rose imparted to Rebecca her knowledge of herbs and healing lore and a trust in the Stone—a time in which there continued inside Rebecca the healing that had started with her communion with Bracken on Longest Night, in the silence of the Stone.

  She taught Rebecca by instinct rather than by design, for her mind was as delightfully illogical as her burrow. Rhymes and sayings, thoughts and words, ideas and laughter, all came at their own pace and in their own way, and Rebecca was barely conscious that she was learning anything. Like the old flower rhyme that Rose taught her one day to illustrate the herbs that give a burrow a nice, long-lasting scent, and which Rebecca only discovered she remembered many moleyears later:

  Germander and marjoram,

  Basil, meadowsweet,

  Daisy-tops and tansies,

  Fennel with burnet;

  Roses in August,

  Lavender in June,

  Maudlin and red mint—

  None will go too soon.

  They talked about a thousand things, but what Rose most put into Rebecca’s mind were seeds of thought to grow, rather than finished plants to fade. And she waited for Rebecca to ask the questions.

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘Mmm, my love?’

  ‘How do you know how to help a mole when you think he needs help?’

  ‘You don’t know, my dear. You never know. You may have an idea but you don’t know. No… you see, they tell you. What you have to learn is to understand what they are trying to say, because if there’s one thing certain, they won’t know themselves! In fact, Rebecca, one of the burdens healers have to bear is most moles’ inability to say what it is that’s wrong with them. Mind you, if they knew—really knew—then there probably wouldn’t be anything wrong.’ Rose crouched in silence, Rebecca letting the words sink in. Then Rose added: ‘The best way to start is to touch them gently with your paw just as you touch Comfrey when he needs comforting. Touching tells you far more than words ever can.’

  Another time, Rose suddenly broke a long silence in which she had seemed to be sleeping and said, ‘You can tell what’s wrong with a mole by the way they stand. Illness and disease, even that which starts in the mind, always shows in the body. The easiest things to heal are injuries after a mating fight—give them a push here, a shove there, and a word of encouragement all over and they’re soon as right as rain. How I used to love to get my paws on those rough Westside males!’ They both laughed at the thought, and Rose explained: ‘You see, they use their bodies for fighting so much that they can feel what’s wrong better than most moles, and they soon go back into place. As a matter of fact, fighting isn’t as bad as some moles make out. It teaches a mole to appreciate what he’s got. Too much fear and too little action spoils a body. That’s what was wrong with that Bracken of yours!’

  As the weeks passed and February reached its chilly end, Rose began to encourage Rebecca to make sure each day to find time to crouch by herself and ‘not think’ for a while.

  ‘What do you mean, Rose?’

  ‘You just do it, my love, and don’t think about it. You’ll find that every burrow has its best spot for crouching and doing nothing and in my burrow it’s over by that plant where the horehound scent’s so pleasant. You can start right now. You just go over there and close your eyes and don’t think, while I do my best to tidy up a bit. But don’t mind me.’

  As Rose slowly moved about, Rebecca tried, but after a few minutes her voice came to Rose across the burrow. ‘It’s impossible not to think! Thoughts keep coming to replace the ones I’ve just got rid of!’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Rose unsympathetically, ‘it is trying. But you won’t find it helps to talk.’

  That first time Rebecca managed it for only ten minutes before she gave up in exasperation, claiming that she had better go and see what the youngsters were up to. But Rose kept her at it and gradually, as March progressed, Rebecca found she was positively looking forward to her time of not thinking every day.

  When this happened, Rose, who was only repeating what her own teacher had taught her so many years before, started to suggest that instead of thinking of nothing, she try thinking about one thing each time. It was the spear thistle that grew on the pasture above Rose’s tunnel and would soon be showing life again that she had to think about the first time. Then, variously, such things and ideas as oak trees, owls, stones, the Stone, darkness, talons and warmth.

  One day Rebecca started to weep when she was doing this, and Rose let her, glad to see that at last some of her grief was leaving her. Later, Rebecca spoke about it, saying, ‘I remembered running up the hill one day, after Cairn had left to fight Rune—I told you—and it was raining and I was running. I was so confused, running this way and that until somehow I found I was up at the Stone…’

  ‘Somehow?’

  When Rose interjected like this, Rebecca knew it was important to find an answer. How had she found her way up the hill? She thought back, and she was among those great grey beech trees again, with the rain falling between them and she was turning, running… why, it had been the beech trees swaying with her, urging her this way and that, swaying her back to the light at the top of the hill where the Stone was, as if they knew where she should go and were telling her…

  ‘Was that it, then?’ she asked herself and Rose.

  ‘Only you can really tell, my dear. But I know that the trees and plants tell me things I wouldn’t otherwise know. Sometimes I think they help to guide me to a mole who needs help—otherwise I can’t think how I’ve so often found my way so quickly to a mole. If you doubt me, go on to the surfac
e in Duncton Wood after a really bad storm, when the trees have been whipped and shattered by the wind, and branches have fallen: you can feel that the trees are shaken and desolate by what has happened, for their feeling is in the very air, mixed with relief as well.’

  So, bit by bit, Rose passed over some of the heritage of her wisdom to Rebecca, who one day, she knew, would take over her task of healing.

  By mid-March, the two youngsters, particularly Violet, were becoming increasingly independent. Violet was already growing fast and had managed to make friends with some Pasture youngsters from an autumn litter, so they saw less and less of her, though she came back to sleep in Rebecca’s burrow most days.

  Comfrey still liked to stay near Rebecca, though lately he had taken to sleeping in a burrow of his own making. Inspired by Rose, he had grown increasingly interested in herbs and flowers, and was forever asking when he would be able to go out on the surface and see more for himself.

  ‘You’ll have to wait a week or two more yet before the first ones start coming, my sweet thing,’ said Rose, ‘though I expect you’d find a few snowdrops here and there now. And winter aconite. But soon there’ll be celandine and bluebells, and after that, in April, there’s ground ivy, bugle, all sorts of ferns starting up and oh! you’re so lucky!’ Rose suddenly looked sad and nostalgic, as if she knew that she’d never see such delights again.

  ‘Of course you will, Rose,’ said Rebecca. ‘The warm weather’s nearly here now. Why, there’ll be the sound of pup cries in Duncton soon, and probably in the pastures as well…’ But Rebecca couldn’t go on. Rose was looking at her with eyes that said she knew how old she was and how near the end. And Rebecca could never say anything but the truth to Rose.