Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  The dream seemed to continue. As Bracken watched, still half conscious, he heard a fifth mole slowly enter the chamber on his left. He turned his throbbing head towards it, and there he saw Mullion standing open-mouthed, taking in the scene before him. Bracken could almost hear Mullion’s thoughts think themselves.

  Three moles lying around the chamber walls as if swept aside by a raging storm and in the centre an old mole crouched still and peaceful, aged paws stretched harmlessly before him, snout settling down comfortably on to them.

  ‘Impossible!’ Mullion was thinking.

  ‘Oh no, it’s not,’ thought Bracken. And then, ‘Oh no, you don’t!’ as Mullion started angrily towards the old mole. But he got up, turned his snout to Mullion, seemed suddenly more powerful than anything Bracken had ever seen in his life, and without so much as flexing a talon, brought Mullion to a respectful halt.

  The dream ended. To his right Bracken saw the big mole stirring and heard him groan and gasp. To his left he felt Boswell’s paw, against which he had fallen, moving as the mole from Uffington slowly came to. He felt himself stretching, aching and pained, as he righted himself back to his paws, and turned to look at the old mole again.

  ‘It would be a courtesy if you told me your names,’ said the old mole in a kindly, wise voice.

  ‘Mullion, of the Pasture system,’ said Mullion, awed and respectful.

  ‘Bracken of Duncton,’ said Bracken. The old mole turned to look at him, nodded gently and said nothing. He turned to the big mole at the side of the chamber, who raised his snout, shook it, and said, ‘My name is Stonecrop, also of the Pasture system.’

  At this, both Bracken and Mullion started with surprise. ‘Stonecrop!’ thought Bracken. ‘Stonecrop. Brother of Cairn. Known to Rebecca. So that was why…’

  ‘Stonecrop!’ said Mullion delightedly, but with the old mole so much in command he did not dare move.

  The old mole smiled and turned to Boswell who, instead of saying his name, got up slowly and moved out into the chamber before him.

  ‘My name is Boswell of Uffington,’ he said, lowering his snout respectfully to the old mole.

  ‘May the blessings of the Stone be with you, as they must have been to have brought you safely so far from the Holy Burrows,’ the old mole said to him. ‘And may they be with the rest of you. My name is Medlar of the North and it would be better if there were no fighting in these tunnels—not at any rate by moles such as yourselves who are prey to ignorance and fear.’ He said this severely, as a father might to a recalcitrant youngster.

  Then he turned to Mullion and said gently, ‘I think you have come to learn how to fight, but I tell you, your nature is not that of a fighter but a friend. Anymole that counts you as a friend will be stronger by far than if he stood alone.’

  Medlar turned to the other three and looked at each of them in turn and then said: ‘I do not know what forces have brought you here, or indeed have led me here myself. But in all my long life I have never met three moles who have more to learn about the way of fighting, or have given me the sense that they will learn as much. I hesitate to speak of this and after it will say little more on the subject. Each of us has a task and with the Stone’s grace only may he fulfil it. All moles may choose to be a fighter if they wish, though many do so who are not fitted for that way. All moles perhaps may be warriors, too, though few, too few, can find the way to it. My task is to try to show you the difference between a fighter and a warrior and it may not be what you expect.

  ‘Each of you stands now in a tunnel, the start of which is far behind you, the end of which is far ahead. I am but a mole who meets you on the way. Others ahead of me will talk to you as well, and many try to take you down false paths with them. These are your real opponents. Do not give in. Some will invent ways of distracting you. Learn to recognise them. Only the spirit in your heart will keep you going. Hear it. Follow it. Let courage and patience enter your talons and love of your opponents enter your heart.’

  Medlar looked round at each of them in turn again. As he looked at Bracken, his old eyes kind and wrinkled with age, Bracken felt as if his soul was stripped bare and this strange mole knew everything there was to know about him. Bracken felt at once frightened and exultant.

  ‘Now,’ said Medlar, ‘leave me here and go and sleep, for each of you has made a long journey to get here—and each must soon make a long journey again. So our time is short. Eat and sleep and tomorrow I will begin to show you what you need to do.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Tomorrow came, and with it the start of what, for Bracken, was to be the first long period of settled peace in his life. For the days and nights passed slowly, sliding through the molemonths as April gave way to May, and May grew warm with sunshine and birdsong, until a full moleyear had gone by.

  It was a time in which Bracken learned to stop worrying about physical danger as he and the other moles concentrated on the guidance that Medlar gave them. Like Hulver, Medlar gave a mole the feeling that when he crouched in a burrow, time chose to crouch still with him, and from this stillness some of Medlar’s wisdom went out to all of them.

  Each took something different from him, though it was to be a very long time before any of them understood that he was teaching them. For as well as the curious exercises he made them do—Boswell, for instance, had to attack a wall ‘in slow motion’ for many days in succession, while Bracken had to crouch opposite Mullion and guess ‘what he was thinking and whether he likes you or not’—he instructed them in the art of sitting still and doing nothing, ‘which is where you will meet your first, and perhaps your only real opponent—yourselves’.

  But for his extraordinary display of fighting skill against Stonecrop, and the sense of truth he seemed to carry in everything he did, all three of them, at one time or another, might well have given up what seemed a fruitless effort.

  As Stonecrop—who soon learned to respect Bracken—was to say one night, ‘I’ve come here to learn how to fight, not to sit on my belly all day trying to think about nothing.’ Yet there was never a time when all three wanted to leave all at once and, indeed, at any one time there was always at least one of them who positively felt he was learning something, though none of them was ever quite sure what.

  The fact was that Medlar had seen from the first that the three moles who appeared in the chamber so unexpectedly each had unusual abilities in some directions and were underdeveloped in others. Stonecrop, for example, was one of the most physically harmonious moles he had ever met but for the key fact that his mind was unpeaceful and often confused and full of anger about his brother’s death, so that he could never be a really good fighter because he was not at one with himself. So Medlar made him sit still and allow time for the anger to evaporate.

  Boswell, on the other paw, was one of the most spiritually developed moles Medlar had come across—indeed, Boswell was to teach Medlar a great deal about the philosophy of the Stone in talks they had to which Bracken listened, though Stonecrop and Mullion found them boring.

  But Medlar understood clearly Boswell’s difficulty in believing that he could extend the use of his body into something as straightforwardly physical as fighting—a natural doubt, given his deformity. But if there was one thing Medlar had learned in his years of showing others how to fight, it was that most moles underestimated what they were capable of doing, killing off their own instincts with the false opinions others held of them.

  As for Bracken, Medlar found him the most interesting of the three. It was obvious to Medlar from the moment he first saw him that he was a mole of enormous physical and mental stamina. But it was only slowly that Medlar understood that the fugitive life he had lived, alone with himself and with real danger, had given him no way of valuing the strengths he truly had. He was like a hungry mole who is too insensitive to see that food lies all around him. Medlar’s task was to make him see the qualities he had developed inside himself without knowing it—an ability to act independently and alone
for long periods, and very real physical power.

  Medlar’s skill lay in making each of the three moles not only see these different qualities in themselves but actually experience them, the only way to pursue truth that he knew. ‘You may tell a mole ten times he is strong and he may believe you, but he will still remain weak; only let him experience his own strength once, and he will always be strong,’ he was fond of saying. So he made Stonecrop experience stillness, Boswell experience gracefulness and Bracken experience his own independence and staying power.

  Bracken’s view of Medlar—and indeed of Boswell, Mullion and Stonecrop—changed several times as the molemonths went by. His early awe gave way to exasperation at having to do such pointless-seeming things, and then blind trust took over when he found he could do things that were difficult; then a kind of cocksure disrespect when he thought it was all very easy; and then, when more molemonths had passed, he discovered a new awe bordering on love as he understood that Medlar was teaching him things, without him knowing it, whose very conception he could not even have had at first. Like the question that Medlar had first raised with them about how a great fighter loves his opponent.

  His insight into the truth of this came one day when he was engaged in a mock fight with Stonecrop. By now the two moles had an affectionate relationship and were certainly close enough not to wish to harm each other. Bracken was no longer afraid of Stonecrop because he had discovered that, though smaller, he was able to move faster and could turn Stonecrop’s size and power back against him by, for example, using it to add power to his own talon thrusts. As they were engaged in sparring in this way, Medlar suddenly called out: ‘Right! Now make the fight real. Try to kill each other.’

  So great was their trust in Medlar that their hesitation was only temporary as each saw the other’s stance change into a real threat. The fight grew slower and more intense and Bracken found to his surprise that he seemed to be not so much fighting against Stonecrop as engaged in a ritual dance with him—a feeling that soon gave way to the sense that, for the moment at least, he was Stonecrop and that when Stonecrop lunged towards him, he was able to counteract the move instinctively because he was making Stonecrop’s lunge himself. ‘Stop!’ called Medlar, and the two, who had both experienced this sense of oneness in the fight, or ‘love,’ as Medlar called it, found their bodies now experienced a curious sense of loss as the fight ended. Neither was in the slightest bit hurt.

  Experience like this also taught Bracken to appreciate that a fight between moles is not, at root, a physical thing at all, but a spiritual confrontation. The very idea of spirit was a new one to him and he only learned of it in himself by being made to observe it in other moles. Mullion for example, had a friendly, weak spirit with no ‘hardness’ or ‘force’ to it, and it was only when Bracken himself sensed this that he understood Medlar’s immediate rejection of Mullion as a fighter.

  ‘But it is his real spirit,’ said Medlar, ‘and it is therefore a powerful one, but it is not the spirit of a fighter. Win the loyalty of his spirit, however, and you are strong indeed.’

  Bracken found that Stonecrop, on the other hand, had a very hard and powerful spirit, though one that was inflexible and therefore, in Medlar’s terms, fairly easy to get round. In his own mind, Bracken came to understand this by thinking of Stonecrop as a series of burrows and tunnels, not unlike the Barrow Vale, where, if a mole kept his head and spirit firm, he would eventually find a way through. It was understanding this that cleared Bracken of his fear of Stonecrop—and simultaneously made Stonecrop more respectful of Bracken.

  As these insights about fighting came to Bracken, he began to understand other things that Medlar had taught. One of them was the idea that there is no such thing as a talon lunge by itself: a proper fighter lunges with his whole body, which for Medlar meant with his whole spirit.

  ‘If you understand this, Bracken, you have the way into your true strength. So many moles think that they will succeed by making their lunges more and more powerful—but a gentle touch from the paw of an old mole like me is a thousand times more powerful because I make it with my whole spirit, whereas they use only their muscles.’ And, as if to prove the point, Medlar seemed to do no more than touch Bracken on his shoulder and he found himself tumbling back across the chamber.

  Sometimes Bracken saw things suddenly as if a rush of sunlight had all at once filled a gap between trees—and this often happened when he was watching Medlar instruct one of the others. One day, when Boswell was the willing victim, Medlar suddenly yawned and crouched down. Involuntarily Boswell followed suit, thinking that Medlar was taking a rest. Or was it just that? As Boswell relaxed, Medlar attacked him viciously and, taken by surprise, Boswell almost crumpled up before them.

  ‘A weak spirit will follow a strong spirit and copy what it does,’ said Medlar. ‘You tense up, he will tense up; but you relax and he will relax, as Boswell just did. In a fight, if you gain dominance of spirit and then relax, your opponent will do the same, and in that moment you can kill him, as I could have killed Boswell. Learn to read your opponent’s spirit.

  ‘It will help you do this if you make him strike at you first with his talons. Indeed, among great fighters the one who strikes first will always lose the fight. Striking betrays weakness of spirit.’

  ‘Well, that would mean that really great fighters never need to strike a blow,’ said Bracken dubiously.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Medlar.

  One day, Medlar invited Stonecrop to kill him. Stonecrop thought it was a joke, or some kind of trap—which, in a sense, it was, though not quite as Stonecrop imagined. Medlar became angry with his hesitation (or seemed to be, none of them was ever sure with Medlar) and he started viciously attacking Stonecrop, who became angry in his turn. In the midst of the fight, Medlar dropped his guard and repeated, ‘Kill me, Stonecrop,’ and crouched quite still, waiting. There was a hush lasting a long time as Stonecrop’s talons hung poised above Medlar’s upturned snout. Suddenly he dropped his talons and relaxed, saying, ‘You want to die!’

  Medlar laughed and said ‘Perhaps I do, but do not turn your back on what you have learned. You see, I am no longer afraid of death and for another mole to meet that attitude is a very fearful thing. A mole who no longer fears death is very powerful because his opponents are then faced by nothing but their own fears. This is very hard to understand, very hard to feel. When you can see that there is no difference between life and death and that you are already dead, then not only will you be more alive than you have ever been but it may be that at last you can accept the task that the Stone has got for you. When that happens you will be a warrior.’

  Bracken found it hard to understand these ideas but the exercises Medlar gave him to do made him feel the truth of them and so come to know them from within rather than from without. Discussing them with Boswell, he discovered that while Boswell often understood them better, he found it harder to feel them—neither was sure which was best, or worst.

  So the molemonths passed, and the meadow grass on the surface of the Nuneham system began to grow green and lush with the coming of June. More and more grasses and flowers appeared, as the early spring plants gave way to red and white clover and the waving pink flowers of ragged robin, while white clusters of sneezewort and pink cuckoo flowers grew down nearer the river where, in moments of relaxation, the moles occasionally explored. While the river itself flowed more languidly, tiny whirlpools of water catching and circling into nothing at its edge, where the shadows of tall reed, reedmace and fluttering yellow flag fell; and the occasional chub or roach took food on the surface, the roundling circlets of their rise travelling and fading slowly with the flow.

  Then, quite suddenly, Bracken began to miss Duncton Wood. He missed the high cover of green leaves, always rustling above, and the different sounds of birds—blackbird and thrush, treecreeper and chaffinch—scurrying and hopping, some on the surface, others on the branches, their massed song at daybreak sharper and much clearer than t
he more diffused song of a system out here in the open. He missed the beech trees he had grown to love. He missed the darker rich smell of the tunnels, where the worms moved easily, and the surface litter, so much richer in grubs and insects than green grass.

  He missed the sound of a Duncton voice. He missed Rue. But most of all, and most mysteriously to him, he missed Rebecca. The more he sat and didn’t think, as Medlar insisted that he should; the more he learned to feel the spirit of Stonecrop or Boswell, and of himself; the more he turned to face the world about him through learning how to fight… the more he missed Rebecca.

  There were days when her memory would nag at him, and he would look about him as if the world was incomplete, and there was something just outside his reach which needed to be put in place for it all to be right again. He remembered running through the Chamber of Roots beneath the Stone, when she was ahead of him. He could feel her touch on his shoulder and her voice, gentler and yet fuller than any birdsong he had ever heard, as it spoke again to him. ‘My love. My sweet love.’ She had said those words to him, she had, she did. ‘My love, my Rebecca.’ And the stone beneath the Stone, the stone that had glimmered and played its light around them! The Stillstone! He had touched it, he could still feel its pattern on his paw, and could scratch it on the ground and wonder at it, thinking of her. She had touched his fur, and he remembered touching her, he did, he had, his love Rebecca.

  Talking about her did not help, or any other of his Duncton memories. One day he suddenly took it into his head to tell Stonecrop about Cairn. He told him just as it was, the terrible love and ache of it all, his spirit turning weak from the telling. He said again what he had said then about Rebecca, and Stonecrop nodded because he remembered her. Stonecrop didn’t say much but just heaved his body sadly, the look in his eyes a mixture of loss and anger, and disgust at the memory of Mandrake’s odour in a temporary burrow by a wood’s edge, a smell he had not forgotten.