Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  There was no answer, and never can be, and the two moles crouched together in a tragic silence, the wet drizzle of a cold spring day heavy and thick on their fur.

  Then, with a sigh, Bracken got to his paws and did something more brave than anything Boswell had ever known: he started the long weary climb back up Uffington Hill again to face the scribemoles into whose system he had brought such shame.

  ‘Let them decide what is to become of me,’ were the only words he spoke to Boswell on the long, weary climb back.

  It was the chosen moles who sat in judgement on Bracken, Boswell present but not among them, and they did it in the chamber where the song had been sung and Skeat had died, believing that his spirit would guide them in their decision.

  After Bracken had told them what had happened, as far as he could remember it, and one or two points of detail had been cleared up, there seemed nothing more to say at all, and they crouched in a deep silence which Bracken, in his guilt and before their calm, found almost unbearable. He would rather have faced the talons of Mandrake himself and accepted death there and then, than have faced the silent and tragic meditation of the scribemoles around him earnestly searching for a decision about his future.

  Eventually, he, too, fell into a kind of trance and began to think of Skeat, of what little Boswell had told him and what little he had seen of him when they had talked. It was as he did so that an idea came to him, a suggestion, a possibility, that grew in his mind only slowly as light grows at dawn on a winter’s morning. He broke the silence around him with it, speaking it out almost before the thought was clearly into his mind:

  ‘There is one thing I could do, or try to do if the Stone would give me strength,’ he began, speaking in such a weak and broken voice that it was hard to hear him. There was a murmur among the chosen moles, and they looked up from their prayers at him.

  ‘Skeat said that Uffington has heard from all the seven major systems but one. He said what strength it would give all moles if here, in Uffington, you knew that the Stone was honoured in the last system—the system of Siabod, of which little is now known. Let me go there and seek to fulfil the dream that Skeat had. If I never come back, than at least I will have tried; and if I return with information, or can myself honour the Stone there, then give me no thanks…’ He bowed his snout and waited while his words sank in.

  There was a chatter among the moles, and a voice said, ‘A fine idea, except that this mole, should he ever reach Siabod, and even more unlikely reach the Stones of Tryfan which are believed to stand by the legendary Castell y Gwynt, would bring no honour to the Stone. What he has done means that he can pray for nomole but himself.’

  At this there was a murmur of agreement, and the light that had dawned in Bracken’s heart began to flicker and die away into despair again. Until, very softly, a voice broke through the murmurings, the voice of Boswell, and the others fell silent.

  ‘Then let me go with him,’ he said, ‘and if we reach this place called Siabod, I will speak the prayers of healing and forgiveness that Skeat, my former master, would have spoken, and I will call out the invocations of love through the Stone so that all will know that the Stone is honoured in every system, even after the plague has cursed all moles.’

  As Boswell spoke, Bracken dared to look fully on him again at last, and felt the great power of his love, whose light and strength seemed capable of healing so much.

  ‘Let me go with him,’ repeated Boswell, ‘and surely the Stone’s will may be done.’

  There was a silence as the chosen moles considered Boswell’s proposal and then the oldest one among them finally said:

  ‘Steyn rix in thine herte.’

  ‘Staye thee hoi and soint,’ chanted all the moles.

  ‘Me desire wot we none,’ said Boswell, stepping forward to join Bracken and to face the rest of the scribemoles.

  ‘Blessed be thou and ful of blisse,’ said the oldest mole, raising a paw to bless them and to give them the strength and forgiveness of the Stone. At which Boswell led Bracken out of the chamber and up through the tunnels to the main system of Uffington, and from there out on to the surface. Both knew the sacrifice they had made. For Boswell it was surely the end of his quest for the seventh Book and the Stillstone; for Bracken, the fear now grew into certainty that he would never see his Rebecca again, and the promise he had made in his heart so many times to return and protect her could never be fulfilled. They found a temporary burrow away from the main system and food, and when they had slept and were refreshed, they set off together northwards down the escarpment, veering off towards the dark northwest beyond whose dangerous distances the feared and unknown system of Siabod lay. Each leaving behind him the places and hopes they had cherished for so long.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  By the time that Midsummer came round once more to Duncton’s Ancient System, the moles who had survived in it to burrow and mate and litter through the spring had formed a healthy and harmonious system. The tunnels they had recolonised smelt once more of the freshness of youth and echoed to the sound of growing litters and a laughter that would have brought a smile even to the faces of the sternest moles who lived there originally.

  Although the system had no leader, it was Rebecca to whom all moles turned for help and guidance and whose love for them all was the wellspring of so much happiness. And by June, with the coming of summer, Rebecca had regained— or seemed to have—much of her normal joy in living.

  So it was she who reminded them that Midsummer Night was a time to gather quietly at the Stone and to give thanks for the young; and who can say, as the warm Midsummer evening drew in, that she did not hope that her beloved Bracken might come again from off the pastures, with Boswell at his side, and speak the special blessing only he knew, which he had not had time to teach another mole before he left?

  Perhaps Comfrey suspected, or guessed, that Rebecca had such dreams; perhaps he prayed to the Stone for such a miracle to happen, while making sure that he stayed lovingly close to Rebecca all Midsummer Night in case it did not.

  All moles gathered by the Stone, the youngsters younger than normal because of a lateness of littering, many of them playing and gambolling among the roots and leaves, hushed by the peace of their parents and Rebecca, who moved among them whispering words of blessing that she drew from memory and love and which surely spoke the spirit, if not the words, the Stone intended on that special night.

  But no Bracken came, no Boswell hobbled into view: though there was a time, later in the evening, when the youngsters had been taken back to their home burrows and only a few adults remained in silence by the Stone, the warm night air soft in their fur, when Rebecca knew in her heart that somewhere, far, far away, her Bracken was saying the blessing for them all and sending her his love as the same moon that shone down into the Stone clearing shone on his own dark fur. She hoped that just as Comfrey was by her, and had stayed with her all evening, so Boswell was near him. ‘Dearest Boswell,’ she thought, ‘My own sweet Bracken,’ she smiled, hoping that the Stone would let him know how much she loved him.

  Well, perhaps it could, perhaps it would, and ‘perhaps’ became a word Rebecca grew tired of using. A mole must live where a Stone has put her, or him, and with those moles who happen by circumstance or fate to be living in the same system. And nomole was more aware than Rebecca, healer now to the system of Duncton, that hopes and memories are like winter aconite, a source of health and joy if used one way, a debilitating poison if used another. So, as the summer advanced, she put her Bracken from her mind and concentrated all her energies on helping the moles about her.

  Their numbers grew rapidly. Under her care, most of the late spring litters survived and there was so much spare territory available in the Ancient System that there was little conflict, or death, when it came to the dispersal of the young in July and August. At the same time, the Stone, and perhaps the reputation of Rebecca, brought a steady flow of moles into Duncton, some from the outlying parts of t
he Pasture system, others from far to the east, the old Eastside, which had not been much affected by the fire. There was a good mixture of males and younger females in this influx and the system began to have a fuller, united feel about it—the main social centre of the system being over to its east side where Bracken had first started his exploration.

  There was a natural reluctance among the moles to go west into the Chamber of Dark Sound or beyond it towards where the Chamber of Echoes lay, and most moles lived on the east side of the ancient tunnels. Only Comfrey lived on the slopes, which gave him a reputation as an amiable eccentric, but he was respected for his enormous knowledge of the lore of plants and the role he was thought to have as adviser and protector of Rebecca. The mystery around him was enhanced by the fact that it was known that he travelled widely in his search for herbs, venturing right across the pastures, so it was said, and even down across the stricken Old Wood to the marshes.

  Although the summer was generally sunless and chilly, in contrast to the preceding one, it was still a time for idleness: the rain had brought plenty of worms and grubs to the beechwoods and the litters were quickly off parents’ paws. So, once more, the Duncton moles slipped into their old habits of gossip and chatter and the telling of tales; and, memories being short and imaginations strong, many stories were told (and more created) of the deeds and adventures of Bracken, the mole who had rid the system of Mandrake and Rune and who had gone to Uffington with that Boswell, the mole from Uffington, to give thanks for deliverance from the plague.

  Many a youngster heard the tale, and asked to be told again, of how Bracken crossed the marshes to ‘rescue Boswell,’ of how Bracken ‘ordered’ Stonecrop to kill Mandrake before the Stone, of the plague and of Bracken’s subsequent departure for the Holy Burrows.

  ‘Will he come back one day?’ was the question always asked, and most often greeted with a shake of the head and a statement like ‘These things happened many moleyears ago now, before last Longest Night, and what happened to Bracken and Boswell lies with the Stone.’

  Many stories linked Rebecca’s name to Bracken and some even said that stuttering Comfrey was the result of their great love and supposed mating and was the cause of Mandrake’s anger with Rebecca. As the molemonths of summer passed by into moleyears, the name of Mandrake became darker and blacker than it had ever been during his lifetime, and many moles refused even to talk of him. As for Rune, whose evil ran deeper than Mandrake’s ever had, the moles were strangely silent about him, as if disease attached itself to anymole who even mentioned his name. When it was spoken (and what mole doesn’t like from time to time to flirt with evil?), it was in hushes and in secret, and told in garbled form amongst siblings who thought themselves daring and who gasped at the wickedness of it all. Rune and his henchmoles had been routed by Bracken and Stonecrop, and Rune had been forced to flee far away, where he died of the plague. Rune, it was said, did ‘things’ to other moles, and made other moles do them as well, though what ‘things’ were was never specified.

  Rebecca heard these stories but never involved herself with them, refusing to be drawn on to the subject of Bracken or Mandrake or any other mole, except that sometimes she would tell tales of Rose the Healer, whom some still remembered, and would often make youngsters and adults alike laugh with her fond memories of Mekkins, the Marshender who had more courage than anymole she knew.

  The Old Wood was never visited now by the Duncton moles; its tunnels were believed to be dangerous because of the many moles who had died there of the plague and whose bodies were incarcerated there for ever in the debris of the fire. But in fact, as Comfrey alone knew well, the wood was not as devastated as it had first seemed to be. True, all the shrubs had been killed by the fire, and many of the smaller trees like holly and hazel as well, while some of the oaks, particularly in the centre of the wood where the fire was the strongest, had suffered total destruction of their crown canopies and so would die slowly for want of the means to take life from the sun and air.

  But by the end of June, some tree life had returned to the stricken wood as well as a great deal of plant life. Some of the smaller trees had sent up suckers from their roots, like the aspen and, curiously, a couple of old and previously neardead elm trees, while many of the oaks that had looked dead from ground level because their roots and lower trunk and branches had seemed so charred had withstood the fire well, and their higher branches were putting on leaf and beginning to cast a little shade when the sun showed up over the derelict wood floor.

  At the same time plant life, which Duncton had never seen before in such profusion because the wood was normally too dark to sustain it by Midsummer, began to blossom and grow among the ashes of the fire. Even in some of the most fire-wasted areas, creeping thistles, their tubers untouched by the fire, sent prickly green shoots up through the black, dead litter; in many areas, great banks of rosebay willowherb shoots were forming, their pink flowers not yet out but their thick stems and long, narrow leaves already giving a magnificent swaying life to the very areas where the fire had been thickest.

  Other plants began to rejoice in the new freedom for growth they found, like the evergreen alkanet, whose luminescent tight blue flowers nestled among thick, hairy leaves that towered above a mole like Comfrey, casting shade for the occasional rabbit that came in off the pastures. Down by the marshes there were unaccustomed paths of swaying green watercress, and in the stretches of the wood where the spring rains had turned the wood ash into mud, yellow and pink comfrey had taken root, bigger than that which grew on drier, higher ground and a place for bees to buzz and saunter. Birdsong returned to the wood, though mainly from nesting birds in the less burnt east side, though the beating of wood-pigeon wings and the scurry of magpies was heard more clearly among the sparser trees.

  The greens in the wood were lusher, too, because of persistent rains; so rich, indeed, that they seemed almost to bleed out into the sky, shining with life among the occasional horse chestnuts and furtive hawthorn on the wood’s edge.

  The ‘old’ wood was now a lost strange place, a secret place, where a mole like Comfrey could almost lose himself in wonder at the power of life over fire and nature’s burgeoning disregard of death. It was a world Rebecca also ventured into more and more as the summer advanced from July into August, and the magnificent waving pink-reds of the rosebay willowherb came out at last like sunrise against a morning sky. She called them fireflowers, though whenever she did Comfrey corrected her, because he liked to get the names precisely right.

  Both of them left the old tunnels alone, occasionally burrowing new tunnels for food or shelter but steering well clear of the old ones. In any case, as the summer advanced, bracken and bramble began to grow once more, thick grass grew here and there, and ground ivy filled the spaces between, so that there was plenty of safe ground cover for a mole. On a hot day, when the sun shone bright and strong and a convectional breeze caught the few remaining full trees, a mole might almost think that he or she was back in the Duncton Wood of old, before the troubles.

  August passed and September came, with warm, settled weather for its first two weeks, and not a mole in the Ancient System seemed to need Rebecca’s help. She spent long days alone, basking in the vegetation-covered warmth of the wood floor, listening to the last of the buzzing insects, watching the first of the dews and spiders come, relaxing from a summer of work and rebuilding.

  At the same time, the system settled at last into its own patterns and rhythms as the excitement of the plague and the fire finally gave way to a new generation who knew them only as memories, and who grew tired of hearing those old tales told. The young who had been pups in spring now became adults, settling into their own territory in the wide and expansive Ancient System and putting their life into finding today’s food rather than talking about yesterday’s battles.

  Bracken, too, became a memory, an especially romantic and dramatic one it is true, but a memory all the same. In the minds of the young, his leadership against R
une and Mandrake was more legend than contemporary history, and though many a youngster crouched by the Stone and gazed towards the west just as Bracken was said to have done, few could really believe he still existed, or could now come back.

  Then the first rains of September came and only Rebecca remembered Bracken as he had been and believed he was still alive. Time after time she remembered Boswell’s final reassurance to her—‘I’ll look after him’—and she went to the Stone to pray that he might be given the strength to do so. So many long moleyears gone and she could barely remember what Bracken looked like… only his touch and caress and the protection of his words down beneath the Stone where the Stillstone had shone upon them.

  Sometimes she fancied she sensed that he was out there far, far to the west where Uffington lay, until in the last wet week of September she lost that sense and found herself drawn uneasily towards the north, towards… oh, where was it? Then she found herself aching to understand what it was calling to her, sensing some terrible need far greater than the demands made on her by the Duncton moles and drawing her to a place she felt she knew and had once been shown, but which she could not remember. ‘Oh, give me the strength,’ she prayed, ‘give me the courage.’

  Some say now that it was a sudden vicious autumn hailstorm that reminded her of the blizzard that Mandrake had once dragged her into on the pastures, when she was a pup. Others, that it was simply that special sense she had always had of where her healing was needed. Whatever it was, she knew that one day soon she must leave Duncton and seek out Siabod, where her father had come from. Oh, she remembered the blizzard now, and understood again the terrible cry from Mandrake she had heard, and which all her life with him she had never learned how to answer so that he could trust her love.

  But the very absurdity of making such a journey, the inevitability of her dying on the way, was so great that for days she dared not even admit the possibility of doing it to herself.