Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  He smiled briefly, every part of him the image of a confident and fair-minded mole, and turned to organize the guardmoles. In the few moments they had left together Privet whispered to Rooster, “My dear, we must believe that the Stone’s will is in all this, though how or why I cannot say or begin to guess. But we must try to tell Whillan what we know or suspect of his birth. That at least he must learn.”

  “‘No conferring,’ the Brother Commander said, and he meant it!” barked one of the guards.

  “Am here, always!” cried out Rooster as Privet was led away from him. Then to Whillan and Madoc he cried out, “Always! There is light beyond the void; Rooster knows!”

  Was it true? Could it be true? Or was it the forlorn hope of a mole who had once been given a great task, perhaps the greatest, but had failed to live up to it? With final despairing looks and words of encouragement the four moles were taken off separately by their guards – the smallest groups of two apiece for Privet and Madoc, while Whillan had four guards and Rooster was accorded the dubious honour of no fewer than seven moles to watch over him. But then, whatmole could even think of trying to escape if it meant punishment for all the others?

  Now the clear spring sky of late afternoon, and the fine view across the vale to the east where they should have been travelling, seemed to taunt them all, and leave them to dwell upon, or avoid, as their temperament dictated, what might have been.

  What Rooster’s thoughts were beyond the bleak offer of hope implicit in “there is light beyond the void” was anymole’s guess. As they were led off southwards he travelled with head low, his great paws thumping the ground and crackling the husks of winter-dead plants beneath them, ignoring his guards altogether.

  Some way behind him went Madoc, to whom the spring had brought health and comely beauty, which might have been why Thorne had assigned two older, grizzled-looking guards to her, lest younger ones be tempted by the attractions of their charge. Her eyes were brave but bleak, and if she looked behind her occasionally and saw Whillan, they betrayed no recognition. Perhaps her pretence of loving another – the fictional Cripps – now meant that she could not acknowledge the mole who might have given most comfort, and whom she wished to console.

  Of them all, Whillan was having the most obvious difficulty. The battering he had received earlier to make him reveal if other moles were about meant that he now limped, and since one of his eyes was badly swollen he was forced to tilt his head awkwardly to see the path ahead more clearly.

  A long way behind them came Privet, the only one able to see all the others, and with an aching heart she discerned Whillan’s difficulties, guessed the turmoil in Madoc’s thoughts, and imagined the dark confusions that must now have returned to Rooster’s mind. And yet...

  And yet those last words of his, “Rooster knows!”

  “Oh my love,” Privet whispered to herself as they went along, “you have journeyed further than any of us into the darkness which most moles avoid, which lies beyond the shadows of their mind. Where fear and confusions meet, there you have been; and where each step a mole takes heads him further from the safety of his own self And now... Whillan, your son, caught as you have been. Perhaps because of you.”

  How hard Privet had tried to make Rooster talk; but he understood things best in the inarticulate deeps of his great heart, and expressed himself not through words but through the delving arts he had so long eschewed.

  Until now, that is, down there in that scrape of a chamber where he had made a thing of beauty and compassion beyond words – a delving which he had not intended anymole ever to see. A delving which miraculously created life, out of what he had learned of Whillan’s past through the winter years in Hobsley Coppice. It is one thing. Privet mused, to scribe down facts that have been gathered and ideas learned, and a history surmised, but quite another to make a delving that could sound out another’s life, and predict the darkness that lay ahead.

  She remembered again what she knew of Whillan’s terrible beginnings in the cross-under beneath the roaring owl way to the south-east of Duncton Wood. Had she ever talked of that to Rooster? She did not think so. Could Whillan have done? The two moles got on so badly that she doubted it, even if Whillan knew much himself Why, the Master Stour, who was the only mole present around the time of Whillan’s birth, never said anything more about it, as far as she knew. Yet there in the delving was all of it... the desperate last flight to Duncton of Whillan’s mother, Lime, the fatal attack by rooks, and the birth into death of all the litter but for Whillan himself: all had been there, all somehow felt and resurrected into a tragic beauty by Rooster.

  “Oh Stone, protect him, guide him, let him live, for in his talons, and by his suffering for others, he strives to do your work!” she prayed, passionate and vehement in her faith that the Stone would not allow Rooster’s life to be taken. If her prayer was answered, all this they were going through might have meaning and purpose.

  Night came upon them swiftly and by the time Thorne had brought the different groups to a halt, and settled them into places where they could rest securely, dark clouds were looming in the sky and the air was growing oppressive with an approaching storm.

  Privet’s two guards treated her with firm courtesy, finding her food, and settling her into a tussock of grassy undergrowth with the words “It is going to rain – you’ll keep dry here, miss!” One or other of them watched her at all times and from their discipline and the respectful way they spoke of Thorne it was obvious that they were well trained – and well led.

  “It would be nice just to talk to my companions,” said Privet, trying to look as peaceable as possible.

  “No way, I’m afraid,” said one of the guards, “it would be more than our lives are worth!”

  “You seem a little afraid of Brother Commander Thorne.”

  “You could say that,” said one of the guards, “but there’s not another I’d want to serve under. He’s —”

  “What is he. Brother?” said a thin voice from out of the still darkness. It was Fagg, eyes sharp.

  “Strict, sir, he’s very strict.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Fagg without warmth. “Discipline does nomole harm! But I would not advise you to fraternize with this mole. She is not as harmless as she seems.”

  “Only a female, sir.”

  Fagg’s face curled into a chilling sneer. “And past her best if you know what I mean!” He laughed in the way moles do when they fee! it necessary to put others down. “Watch over her well!” he ordered as he left.

  When he had gone one of the guardmoles said, “Yes, well. Sorry about that, miss.” He sounded embarrassed.

  “These religious Brothers,” said Privet quietly, “all seem a little afraid of females.”

  “They would be, wouldn’t they?” the guardmole observed judiciously. “They’re not used to females. Not brought up with them. Not healthy, if you ask me.”

  “And you were?”

  “I’m old enough to have been, yes. The Elder Senior Brother never meant for males to be alienated from females for life.”

  “You mean Thripp when you say —”

  “There’ll only ever be one Elder Senior Brother to me, just him,” he replied with quiet passion.

  “And me,” said the other. “It goes for all us who serve under Thorne. Why, Thorne himself owes his position to Thripp of Blagrove Slide!”

  “How come?” asked Privet, glad and surprised the guards were so willing to talk.

  “Spotted his talents. Saw he was interested in strategy and leadership, not religious matters. Some are born to worship the Stone with deeds, some with words. Thripp said that, and he didn’t mean by it any criticism of those who are into words, like the brothers.”

  “What did he mean?”

  “He meant there’s more ways than one of touching the Stone’s Silence. No one way’s exclusively right.”

  “So why are Stone followers like me to be persecuted then?”

  “Ah well, yo
u’ve got me there, miss. I mean, I believe the Newborn way is right and that orders have got to be followed. That’s what we do. But fairly, and we only get rough if we have to.”

  “True Stone followers would say that there’s no need ever to “get rough”, as you put it.”

  “They might say that, but they would be wrong and no disrespect meant. Before the Elder Senior Brother gave his teachings and proper leadership, moledom was in a right mess.”

  “Was it? Not in Duncton Wood it wasn’t.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard, again begging your pardon. He said that the lessons learnt in the War of Word and Stone in our grandparents’ time were being forgotten.”

  “And what lessons were those?”

  “Tolerance, respect, making time for the Stone, family and kin, keeping a clean snout – that kind of thing.”

  “And Thripp taught that?”

  “I only heard him once, more’s the pity. When he spoke, you listened. He could make rocks weep and flowers open before their time!”

  Privet laughed.

  “Oh, I’m serious,” said the guard, mildly offended.

  “It’s not you I’m laughing at!” said Privet. “It’s just that I never expected such things from a Newborn guard holding me as a prisoner and taking me to Wildenhope to be judged by Quail.”

  “Quail’s a different mole altogether from Thripp,” said the guard darkly. “Why do you think the Brother Commander’s so eager to get away to Cannock? Mind you, it’s obscurity for him, more’s the pity.”

  “Obscurity?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t say it, but Thorne’s the best we’ve got. You can feed the commanders Quail favours to the roaring owls as far as I’m concerned. Whatmole was it neutralized Siabod? Thorne. Whatmole was it avoided real conflict with Rooster and that not so long? Thorne. Whatmole kept the peace when Quail’s lot wanted violence? Thorne! But since Quail’s taken control things have changed. I reckon he would eliminate Thorne if he dared, but he’s done the next best thing and sent him north to obscurity.”

  The guardmole fell silent, taken aback it seemed by his sudden outburst, and peered quizzically at Privet.

  “Humph! You make a mole talk, you do! I can see what Fagg meant – you’re a dangerous mole.”

  There was a long rumble of distant thunder.

  “Here it comes!”

  And shortly afterwards the rain did come, heavily and with driving winds so that the two guardmoles squeezed in with Privet for shelter. She had felt strangely comforted by their conversation, and humbled too – some of the Newborns at least were decent moles after all, and their words confirmed the impression of Thripp she had formed at Caer Caradoc: he was not by any means all bad, and nor did she believe he was all finished either. Now each of them must seek to fulfil their task, once they had found out what it was.

  “What is my task. Stone?” she wondered.

  The storm seemed to circle about them through the night, but the only lightning she saw was distant, and diffused by cloud.

  “I know what my task is,” she admitted to herself in the darkness, and she was afraid, terribly afraid, for it was one nomole would help her with, not even Rooster. Her fear completely overrode the apprehension she felt about what was to happen to them at Wildenhope, however terrible it might be. She felt comforted by the warmth of the guardmoles’ flanks on either side of her and sometime between a distant flash of lightning and the dark sound of thunder, she drifted into sleep.

  When dawn came, and all the moles were instructed to move off once more, the storm had passed by, but the rain still fell. It was persistent, though not heavy, and it came out of the low grey base of clouds swirling only a little way above the trees of the wood that ran the length of the top of the Edge. The ground was now wet and slippery, and as the day wore on the moles followed one another in silence, tired and depressed, the way ahead seeming interminable.

  In the afternoon they turned upslope through a gap in the wood, whose trees dripped dankly on either side of them as the route ran gradually to the crest of the Edge itself As they neared it their ears were assailed by a roaring sound which they took to be wind driving up the escarpment’s face from the west and stirring the trees. Certainly a fresh breeze blew and nagged at their wet fur; it chilled them, and kept them wanting to move.

  But the roaring was more than wind: it was the rush of water. Despite the lowering, murky sky the view down to the vale below was clear enough, if grey, and they saw that the river they had crossed much further upstream before ascending the Edge with Maple and Whillan was now white, and full, and angry. In several places along its course temporary streams of flood-water, yellow-white, flowed down into it, swelling it; as they picked their way along the slippery path and could see it more clearly they saw that it grew angrier and more dangerous the further downstream they looked.

  One of Privet’s guards stopped momentarily and pointed a talon downvale into the distance, where the river’s torrential flow was lost in rain and what seemed swirling mist in the middle of flat meadowland on the far side of which the landscape rose into wet haze. Sometimes the mist shifted and the dark and lowering line of an ancient river terrace could be seen downstream on the far side of the vale.

  “Wildenhope,” muttered the guard; “Stone help us all!”

  Chapter Five

  It was April and Hamble had reached the last stage of his long journey from Caer Caradoc. But the mole he was with was reluctant for him to leave... “So you’re going to Duncton Wood, Hamble? Well, yes, you’ll not mistake it when you see it! Half a day’s journey and you’ll be in sight of it, and as near the place as you’ll ever wish to be. It rises dark these days, on the far side of a roaring owl way nomole in his right mind would try to cross. What rose glorious in the morning sun when I was a pup is now en-shadowed by moles who are not likely to be removed in my lifetime. No, no, it’s not a place to visit. But you’ll not be the first mole who felt the need to at least go to just look at it, to remind themselves of the great things we have lost and will never find again. Oh, but I shall miss you, mole...”

  Hamble listened to the old mole patiently, though he was anxious now to get away and make the final trek to the system he had travelled so long to reach. The time had come to end the journey begun when Privet had sent him away from Caer Caradoc, which had become, he found to his surprise, a kind of personal pilgrimage. How little he had known himself in the days he was with Rooster. How much he had discovered since; how much more there was to find out.

  His friend’s name was Purvey, and Hamble had found him living alone and frightened among the ruined tunnels of Cuddesdon, to the east of Duncton Wood, a place of prayer and scholarship founded a century before in the glorious days when the followers had defeated the forces of the Word, and made Duncton a centre of reverence and freedom once more.

  Instinct had driven Hamble to Cuddesdon after he left Rollright in early spring, and curiosity too. The instinct he no longer tried to fathom or understand, but followed with an easy and wry good humour.

  The curiosity arose because a mole – a Newborn indeed – he met along the way mentioned “ruined Cuddesdon’, revealing that “Newborns do not bother to occupy it now, it being wormless and somewhat off the beaten track and quite inconsequential’. But Hamble remembered Privet mentioning it to him when they had talked at Caradoc, and the journeymole Chater had told him a little of Cuddesdon and his last visit there before he had died.

  Why, Chater had nearly been killed by the Newborns who had taken it over, and it was said not one of the quiet and ageing scribemoles who lived in a brotherly community had survived. So when Hamble realized he was near it, and knowing he did not yet feel quite ready for the dangers of entry into Duncton Wood, he had made his way to Cuddesdon and climbed its desolate slopes to see the place for himself.

  There he had found the mole Purvey, who had survived the Newborn massacre by virtue of being away from Cuddesdon for a few days in a nearby system. He had had the
terrible experience of coming back, discovering the mutilated bodies of moles he knew and loved, and then being forced to retreat when he realized that Cuddesdon was occupied. Whatmole knew the terrors he suffered in the moleyears that followed? Like a forlorn pup without a home, he had lurked about the streams and banks of the vales below Cuddesdon, unable to go to the only place he knew, yet without another sanctuary.

  Then, that spring, when the Crusades had begun again, Purvey had seen the Newborn Brothers leave in haste; he ascended the slopes of Cuddesdon, and ventured timidly into tunnels that had once echoed to the soft pawfalls and gentle chants of the brothers who had raised him, and taught him all he knew. There, skulking still, fearful of the Newborns’ return yet unwilling to leave the place again, he had lived alone through the spring years, the sun, the high song of the larks, the budding of dog’s mercury and the flowering of yellow celandine all beauties he could not enjoy.

  But he had prayed for the Stone’s help, as reverent followers will, for comfort, for strength through his time of trial, and for deliverance, and to occupy himself he had collected what fragments of texts and books the marauding Newborns had left behind. He sealed them up in the deep chambers where over the years the Cuddesdon brothers had hidden away the few texts and folios that told their short history, or which various of their members had been inspired to scribe, along with a few copies of texts that had been donated to them by Master Librarian Stour of Duncton Wood. As the libraries of moledom go this was modest indeed, but it was all Purvey had to guard, to protect, and to give him reason to go on living, and hoping, and praying.

  Then one April day he thought the end had come. Up the slopes came a mole fiercer-looking by far than any Newborn he had yet seen: scarred, tired, frowning with the effort of the climb and looking keenly about, as if for a fight.