Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  The grass in the oval was short and soft, and it covered the barrow behind the stones, although there and there a smaller sarsen stone poked its grey, wet snout out at the edge of the barrow and formed a pattern that delineated its long shape.

  Sensing that he was in a very holy place, Bracken skirted around the edge of the stones and barrow at first, travelling its full length and then back the other side. Only when he had made a full circuit did he plunge into the gap between the stones, sniffing among them for mole-scent. There was nothing much, certainly nothing fresh, until he went right into a cell formed by the stones from beyond which, through gaps between them, he sensed the presence of recent mole activity. The scent was dry and a little mysterious, like sun- bleached wood or the husks of beech nuts. He fancied he sensed movement, secretive and silent, ritualistic and arcane—or was it vibrations from the great, shadowy stones about him, before which many a mole ritual must have been enacted, that he heard? He moved carefully and silently, as if the slightest movement would disturb the peace about him.

  He was tempted to go beyond the stones in the cave through the gap between them, but one thing he had learned in exploration of a new place was that it was best to approach by the least obvious way. It was not that he was afraid for himself here so much as that he felt himself on the edge of some religious rite for the Stone and preferred to be as unobserved as possible. For this reason he retreated out of the stone caves and climbed up on top of the long barrow where, rather to his surprise, he found evidence of molehills, though they were old and half washed away by weather.

  It was now growing dark and the wind had died a little so that the trees swayed only very slightly, whispering occasionally around the barrow and giving the impression of a growing calm. He snouted from one molehill to the next until he found one where the scent had completely gone and what remained of it was just wet and muddy. Experience now told him that such an entry was likely to be unobserved and forgotten, and he was right. The entrance was virtually blocked up with age and he had to burrow some way down, taking care to let no soil fall downwards, before he found the tunnel he was looking for.

  The soil was darker than the chalky soil he had got used to in Uffington, and the tunnel itself was smaller. It led along a short way and then down almost vertically, and then on again and down once more, as if he was dropping into a deeper and deeper silence. There was molescent about, but it was distant and still. It was as if he had descended vertically into a sleeping burrow, except that there was no burrow as such and, as far as he could see, there were no moles near.

  The tunnel came to a sudden end, sealed irreversibly by a massive sarsen stone. He put a paw to it and then his snout, sensing that beyond it lay something which would be well worth seeing. Bracken very much wanted to get beyond it and was tempted to burrow round it until, feeling the hard, caked soil in which it was embedded, he realised that the attempt would make far too much noise. Yet, at the same time, he felt an urgent need to press on, a confusing mixture of awe and disregard for the place coming over him, with the same feeling of certainty that he would get through which he had had in the Chamber of Roots with Rebecca when they had passed on to the buried Stone itself. He retreated, looking for the slightest burrowable chink in the wall.

  Soon he found one, at the bottom corner of another sarsen stone that lined the wall and in which the soil was not packed so tightly. Careful not to scratch the stone with his talons and so make a noise, he rapidly burrowed the chink bigger so that his snout was into the hole behind his paws, and then his shoulders, and he was pushing the dry soil behind him in great scoops, until the earth ahead collapsed forward and he was in a burrow or small chamber. There was an entrance on its far side and through it he could hear, from somewhere far off, even further off than the scent, the faintest vibrations of voices, as if many moles were gathered together and whispering in a chamber that echoed their sound. He went through this chamber into a tunnel off which there were many turns to left and right. The walls were partly composed of dark earth and partly of dark-olive sarsen stones, which gave any sound in the tunnel a heavy thunking echo in which even the lightest cough might sound serious.

  Bracken headed downwards as fast as he could without making a noise, the mutterings and coughing sounds seeming to come from several directions at once and giving him the feeling that he was on the edge of something important which he could not quite reach. He sneaked his way along, keeping to the inside edge of the wall where it curved, just in case there were moles ahead. The sound of voices grew louder and richer and he very nearly stopped, convinced that at the next corner he would come to a great mass of moles. But each turn in the tunnel brought nothing but a louder and louder sound of the moles voices echoing around and past him.

  Ahead, the air gained a spacious quality that warned him long before he reached it that he was about to approach a gap in the tunnel or a precipitous void, and he snouted ahead very carefully until, quite suddenly, the floor ahead disappeared and he found himself crouching at the end of a huge drop into the biggest, deepest chamber he had ever seen. It was not so wide as the Chamber of Dark Sound, but it was certainly deeper, and it was some moments before he could make out anything in it, though the echoing and coughing and throat-clearing that came up from below made it obvious that the moles he had heard were gathered somewhere in the gloom below.

  The chamber was round and for the most part seemed to have been made of the sarsen stones, piled one on top of the other to form a well-like wall that dropped way down below him and rose far above him into dark and echoing heights he could not even see.

  This vertical drop had the effect of making the moles gathered far below him seem tiny, like ants, except that they crouched still and in order, a crescent of moles gathered about what, from above, looked like a jagged shadow but which, after a while, he made out to be a single stone on the floor of the chamber.

  To one side of them was an entrance. Leaning against the wall of the chamber, ready to seal it, was a great, round flint, shiny and blue and contrasting with the dull, rough texture of the sarsen.

  A hush fell. There was a muttering among several of the moles, and two of them went over to the flint and started rocking it back and forth, for it was too heavy for them to heave in one go. Then Bracken saw that they were going to seal the entrance, and the only way that the flint was to be stopped from rolling past it was by a jag of flint set out from the wall, against which it would rest; and Bracken noticed another for the return journey, when whatever they were going to do was finished and they intended to unseal the entrance. Forward, backward, forward, back… the rocking of the stone was taken up as a chant among the other moles as the great crunch, ker-unch of the stone’s movement began to vibrate about the chamber, spiralling rhythmically up the walls around towards where Bracken crouched, with his snout peeping over the edge from the squat, arched entrance from which he watched, and then booming its way upwards into the echoing darkness above. The chant became slower, not faster, as the flint rocked further back and further forward, almost tipping over at last on to the flint set out of the wall, teetering, then back until, with one mighty effort and with a loud push from the moles, the flint rolled right forwards and struck hard against the flint stop in the wall.

  It was a moment which all those moles watching, especially ones who had never seen it before, like Bracken, would never forget. For as the flint struck the stop, a spark of stunning light leapt from between the two stones and filled the whole chamber with a light so bright that it seemed everything in the chamber was turned into iridescent white, except the shadows, which turned pitch-black. The outline of each mole on the chamber floor was delineated in frozen clarity, the edges of the sarsen stones and the flints themselves seemed as hard as ice, the arched entrance in which Bracken hid became an arched, black hole against the white surrounding wall, the very heights of the massive chamber itself might have been seen, had a mole been looking at them.

  As the first struck toge
ther and the light lit up the chamber for an eternal second, several of the moles, all older ones who had sung the song before, broke into a deep-voiced, rhythmic song that seemed cast as far back in time as the very stones of which the chamber was built. It was a song such as Bracken had never heard before, which took a mole’s heart into itself and carried it, and his spirit, and his whole being in powerful steps towards the heart of the Stone itself. Bracken gasped and moved forward, unafraid of being observed so high up, as from its very first notes the song took his spirit into its ancient being.

  But as the last of the light from the clashing flints died away and he watched the singing moles below, he did not see one other sight that the spark had lit up and frozen even higher up in the chamber than he was, on the opposite side and crouched in a similar tunnel end. It was the face of Skeat, the Holy Mole, crouched in an entrance high above the chamber where, by long tradition, the Holy Moles who had sung the song themselves listened in silence to its subsequent singing.

  But what Skeat saw, no other Holy Mole had ever suffered seeing, and it brought to his peaceful face a look of unutterable alarm. He had seen Bracken and realised in that instant of white light that the song that had been secret for so many centuries was now being heard by a nonscribe. It was for him a moment of terrible blasphemy. It was as if the sacred song itself was being reviled and sworn on; it was a kind of spiritual death. Shaking with horror, Skeat turned away from the chamber and began to make his way down the tunnel levels to where Bracken was crouched.

  Unaware that he had been observed, utterly conquered by the first few notes of the song, Bracken rose into its glory as, line by rhythmic line, its first verse was sung by the older moles. He could not understand its words, which were in the old language, but as it progressed he began to understand its meaning with his deepest being. There was a short pause, a voice of instruction, and then the second verse started, with more moles joining it, doubly as powerful in sound and richness as the first verse. With each line, each word, each syllable, it seemed that the song gained strength, as the moles that sang it gave their whole souls into it, and it marched forward with them as an expression of the power that impels all scribemoles forward, indeed, all moles, towards the Stone from which they come and to which they return.

  As the third verse started, and even more of the twenty-four moles joined in, Bracken began to weep in his heart for the joy that the song surged into him. With each glorious word its deep melody seemed to untie the tangles in his heart about the Stone and the things he had done, and the moles he had known, and forge them into a powerful simplicity. He saw that everything he was was of the Stone—everything he had done, and would do, was of the Stone; Mandrake was of the Stone, Rune… Mekkins… Hulver… Duncton… Boswell, beloved Boswell was of the Stone… Rebecca was of the Stone… and their love! Their love only had meaning in the Stone, and he seemed almost to fly with the power of the song for the glory that it brought to his spirit. And then, as the fourth and strongest verse started and all the moles were singing, his own voice seemed to join them and he was singing it, too, and it carried him even further as its sound echoed and re-echoed around the chamber about him and took him finally for a moment into the very silence of the Stone, where a mole is nothing but a part of the glimmers and rays of the silence itself, unseen. As he went there, he understood at last where he had been with Rebecca and why he would always search until he found it with her once more.

  Then the song was over as abruptly as it had begun. But for Bracken, as for the scribemoles who had sung it in the chamber below him, its sound continued on as its echoes died away only slowly in the chamber around them, and even more slowly in the higher peaks of the mountains of their spirits. The flint sealstone was rocked back and forth once more, until it rolled back into its resting place and opened up the chamber again, and one by one the chosen moles began to come out of the world into which the song had led them, but back into which there would now always be an entrance in their souls, which was the purpose of the singing of the song.

  While high above them, crouched on the edge of the chamber wall, Bracken began to feel the enormous strength of peace and love and purpose which the song had put into him. But as the chamber came into focus before him once more and the slow sounds of the scribemoles below drifted up, he became aware of a commotion behind him, of a running and angry panting and, turning round, he saw Skeat, the Holy Mole, whose eyes were not filled with love and peace but with horror at the presence of Bracken.

  From the place the song had taken him to and from which he was only slowly returning, Bracken seemed to see Skeat as if he were shouting against the force of a wind, so that the sound of his voice was lost and mute and his wild gestures bore no meaning.

  Then the sound did come through, and the chamber behind him was filled with a terrible sound which caused the scribemoles below to stop and peer up into the dark, from where they heard a voice of terrible power cry:

  ‘Bracken of Duncton, you are cursed by the Stone, you are cursed of the Stone, you are lost from its wonder, you are cut off from its love, you…’ and they heard the sounds of scuffles and sobbings and terror above.

  As Skeat had begun to curse Bracken, he stepped forward, towards him, and Bracken automatically stepped back to the very edge of the massive drop into the chamber, for what mole dares raise a paw to such a holy mole as Skeat? Everything was confused in Bracken’s mind, for he could not understand Skeat’s words, or from where this terror had come to disturb the world of peace to which the song had carried him. He felt like a pup suddenly and violently cuffed by a mother or sibling who, until that moment, had only ever loved him. So he began to sob in unbelieving fear, weak with confusion, and retreating before a nightmare force. For his part, Skeat was quite as confused, for a Holy Mole is, as he himself had always said, only another mole at heart. What Bracken had done, or seemed to have done, had appalled him as nothing had ever in his life appalled him before. He had run through the tunnels, round to this second viewing point, the sound of the song echoing in his ears and the picture of the intruding Bracken in his mind, but with what intent he had no idea.

  When he saw Bracken, the curse came from him as if he had no control over it, and his confusion increased, growing even worse as Bracken retreated towards the void of the chamber behind, looking not like a guilty mole or one who thinks he has done something wrong, but like a pup who has lost his mother and needs help.

  But Bracken was not a pup, but an adult who had survived to reach Uffington, and as he felt the danger of the precipice behind him, anger replaced confusion, aggression replaced love, and he instinctively lunged back towards old Skeat with his talons. But instead of retreating, Skeat came forward, for perhaps he saw, as a mole as wise as he must have seen, that Bracken’s blasphemy was unconscious, while the power of the Stone’s love in him was very strong. Perhaps Skeat wanted to take away the curse while its very sound still echoed about them; perhaps he wanted to touch Bracken to bring him back to peace. However it was—and no chronicler is certain on the point, not even Boswell himself, who was there—however it was, Bracken mistook Skeat’s advance for attack, swung round and into him again as Medlar had taught him to do so well, and with a gasp and a cry Skeat was plunging over the void of the chamber down, terribly, towards its depths, down to where the chosen moles were encircled, looking up in horror at the sounds above them, until he fell to his death among them, his frail old body still and bloody at their paws.

  Far above them, Bracken crouched frozen in horror looking down, Skeat’s blood on his talons and a black and terrible fear in his heart. And then, as gasps and shouts came up from below, he turned and ran, his paws pulling him desperately forward and up, back through the tunnels he had come down, to get away from the crime he had committed and which lay dead on the floor of the chamber in whose echoing depth he had heard the silence of the Stone. But as he flew from the evil that he seemed to have done, he left behind as well hope and light of the Stone, a mole
fleeing from light into darkness. Until, gasping and panting with effort, weeping and sobbing with fear, he emerged on to the surface again and ran without pause from the calm inside the oval of beeches around the long barrow, on to the rough and difficult ploughed field now dark with night and gusty with wind, across which he began to escape towards the escarpment on the northern edge of Uffington Hill.

  * * *

  It was Boswell who found him, three days later, desolate and lost in the drizzle that enveloped the Blowing Stone. Boswell had left the prayers and chanting lamentations that followed Skeat’s death in Uffington and had gone out on to the surface, turning by instinct down to the Stone towards which, in a time of his own despair, he had gone.

  There Bracken crouched, muttering and half mad with grief and shame, with no direction in which to turn that did not seem blacker than the last. Had Boswell believed that his friend had deliberately killed Skeat, once his own beloved master, he might not have been there. But he could not and did not believe it, and the fact seemed confirmed by the presence of Bracken by the Stone, before which he shivered and asked for help and guidance.

  Boswell’s gentle touch calmed him, and though Bracken could not bring himself to look straight at his friend, he asked the endless question that all moles faced by seeming evil asked: ‘Why?’