She might have been all right had not Fagg come close and whispered maliciously, “Not nervous, are we, not worried about falling in?”
Privet stared at him, while her guardmole friend could only look on in despair.
“We are?” sneered Fagg. “Well, nomole cares if dried-up bitches like you die, nomole at all. But don’t worry, I’ll be right behind...” His eyes glittered, and in them a mole might have seen the reflection of the river raging past.
“Brother Adviser,” said the guardmole, trying to intervene.
“You lead, guardmole, you lead... and I’ll follow,” said Fagg, and there was nothing a guardmole could do to countermand a Brother Adviser’s order. His friend went first, Privet next, and Fagg too close behind, his every word of hypocritical encouragement – “Careful! Watch that bit! Oh, dear, you nearly slipped!” – unheard by anymole but Privet, adding to her fears and turning her paws all awkward and stumbly; the rain got in her eyes, the wind tried to pull and push her from the swaying, slippery girder, and the river surface seemed to boil and break beneath and send waves of water up towards her.
The moles on the other side sensed something was wrong, though from where they watched they could not have guessed that Fagg was maliciously turning a difficult situation into a dangerous one. Behind him the last guardmole, the friendliest, leaned out from one side to another to see what help he could offer, but Fagg blocked his view, and all possibility that he might do anything.
The fear that Privet now began to feel was unlike anything she had ever known – indeed, she might have wondered if she had ever known fear at all until now. From the first moment she put her paws on the girder and felt it twisting and shifting beneath her, its hard, weathered surface offering so little grip to prevent her from slipping towards the maelstrom below, she felt panic coming upon her, and knew she would have trouble controlling it. But as she edged along the persistent voice of Fagg behind caused her to lose concentration, and think thoughts and do things she was trying to avoid. When he said, “Don’t look down or you’ll panic,” she could not prevent herself from looking down, nor from feeling the panic tighten her paws, restrict her breathing, and... “Watch that bit there!”
“Which bit? Where? Oh dear, oh...” The fear was becoming palpable, a black and numbing cloud closing in upon her and blocking out all sight and sound but the swaying stretch of girder ahead, and the blurring rush of water beneath which gave the illusion that her next pawhold was moving away to her right, and she could not breathe, could not place her paw, and she was being drawn over and over and must slip, was slipping now, would fall, on and on the screaming voice of fear was hers and nomole was there, none to help and... and Privet began to freeze where she was, her eyes wide with fear, and her breath coming out now in short audible gasps of pain as voices shouted at her, behind and in front, but she felt out of reach of any aid they might bring.
She did not – could not – see how Fagg was now being perilously restrained from further interfering with her by the guardmole behind him, while the one in front had turned, which was no easy thing on the narrow wind-buffeted girder, to try to reassure her.
But now on the far bank Rooster reared up, and Whillan too, and both were struggling with the guards in their efforts to clamber back on to the girder and give Privet what help they could. In Whillan’s case the struggle was unequal, for the guards were as big as him, and he was outnumbered. But Rooster was throwing guards off himself like a giant mole breaking through dry undergrowth, whilst all the time he was roaring and shouting in Privet’s direction.
But it was Thorne who assessed the situation, and perhaps saved it. He barked out several quiet commands – first to Whillan and those around him, which stilled them, and then to Rooster’s guards, who fell away from a struggle they were beginning to lose.
Then as Rooster shook himself finally free Thorne said, “You go to her, mole, and calm her... now!” And turning towards the river-bank he gave such a sudden and authoritative order to the guard in front to “clear the way” that the mole turned forward again and scurried to the safety of the bank in moments.
Rooster needed no further encouragement and set off rapidly along the girder, but if Thorne thought he was going to simply talk Privet over to safety, he was mistaken. It was not in Rooster’s nature to do the simple thing, nor, as in this case, the safest one either. Muttering to himself and glaring at both the girder and the river below as if they were living enemies, he charged down towards Privet with no concern for himself, and not much for Privet either – his objective was Fagg.
The Brother Adviser, restrained behind by the guard-mole and now borne down upon by Rooster, notwithstanding that the terrified Privet was in the way, now seemed very alarmed indeed.
When Rooster roared, “You! Off! Out! Leave! Away!” he looked quite terrified. The guardmole understood at once and leaving matters to Rooster he retreated to where he had started from and watched from the safety of the bank, with amused astonishment tinged with awe.
Quite what Rooster meant by his monosyllabic and threatening cries of “Off” and the like was unclear, unless he was advising Fagg to jump into the river below. Certainly Fagg contemplated this as the lesser evil, but one look at the broken, crashing water told him that way was death.
In the time it took him to think this through Rooster had reached Privet, and Fagg looked as if he felt himself safe from actual assault. In this he was mistaken; before he knew what had happened Rooster had clambered around Privet with an agility amazing in one so large, and had reached the hapless Brother Adviser himself.
“Off!” he cried again, and putting his huge paws to Fagg’s quaking flanks he turned him bodily round and shoved him violently in the general direction of the bank from which he had come. How Fagg succeeded in not falling off into the river is one of those mysteries that the moles who witnessed the incident could never quite explain, but as it was he rolled and slithered along and finally tumbled off and down on to the crumbling river-bank whence the guardmole very nearly failed to rescue him before he fell in. With a desperate heave and cry, and with his body muddy from the bank, he finally slumped half conscious in the wet grass, his flanks heaving violently from the effort of escape and the fearful shock of so nearly being taken by the river.
Above him, precarious on the girder, Rooster glared malevolently down before turning back to attend to Privet. Those watching saw him transformed from the embodiment of outrage and menace, ready to kill if need be, to a mole as gentle and patient before another’s fear as possible. He slowly approached her, ignoring his own safety altogether, and eased himself on to the dangerous lower side of the girder, no doubt to block her view of the river below, whilst placing a comforting paw upon her back.
Then, putting his rough old head close to hers, he began to talk quietly to her with words of reassurance, caressing her back as he did so, pointing at last to the distant bank. She nodded her head, slowly began to move forward, paused again, waited for him to come to her once more, and finally set off without faltering to the other side.
Ever unpredictable, Rooster stayed where he was, staring now into the rushing water beneath, while beyond him the remaining guardmole and the barely recovered Fagg waited uncertainly.
Suddenly Rooster cried out, “Whillan! You see! You know!” and his voice rolled and rumbled with the river’s roar.
Privet reached the bank at last, eyes bright, her fear quite gone.
“Whillan should go to him,” she said, going boldly to Brother Commander Thorne. “Some things should be done as they were meant to be.”
The guards looked at Thorne, who shrugged philosophically as if to say, “I don’t understand these followers and Duncton moles, but there’s something about them that makes a mole think; and anyway they’re hardly going to escape from there!”
He nodded at the guardmoles around Whillan and they pulled back from him. For a moment he stanced alone and unmoving, looking from Thorne to Privet and finally to Madoc.
“I know what he sees,” said Whillan quietly. “He may need... company.”
Then he was allowed to clamber back on to the girder and go to Rooster, right in the centre.
“Is it like the Charnel Clough? Is that what you see?” He had to shout in Rooster’s ear to be heard above the roar.
“Know! You know now. Need to know that. Don’t know why.”
Together they stared down at the water, and to those that watched them they might have been two old moles contemplating a pleasing view of a warm summer’s evening. But the onlookers could not hear their words.
“Cliffs there!” said Rooster, pointing towards wet grey sky. “And there, dark, breaking, ending,” he added. “Charnel’s green with moss and grass, like no green I’ve seen again. Was my puphood in that colour, was all hope, all I knew. Whillan, you’re a delving mole.”
“Me?” said Whillan. “I can only scribe. Privet taught me.”
“No, no, no,” cried Rooster. “She taught you to delve. That’s it. Many ways to Silence, so allmole can get there. You can. You’ll delve.”
Whillan stared at the river and felt no fear, only sudden love for this mole he did not understand.
“When I left the Charnel Clough I said goodbye to pup-hood. All that was gone. Left moles I loved behind.”
“Glee,” said Whillan, “and Humlock.”
“Them both. One small, one big, one white, one blind, one and one were all my world. Miss them always and for ever.”
“Rooster,” cried out Whillan, unafraid, “you must delve again. You must. That’s what you left the Charnel Clough to do.”
“Did many times like what you saw. Secret places. Hidden. Destroyed most of them. But the delving need does not die, not like the past, not like what I left behind. You’re...”
“What am I?” asked Whillan, still not knowing.
“Want to say it,” said Rooster, “want to show you, want many things I cannot have or do. Whillan, you never do what I did and make it impossible to go back. Never, Whillan. You never kill a mole, you love when love’s before you, you cry when tears are there, you shout at the Stone or with it, and you live in the light I lost. You do that, mole? Mole?” Rooster placed a paw on Whillan’s and stared at him fiercely. “Yes?”
To love, to cry, to shout, to live?
“Yes,” said Whillan quietly, feeling that though he did not understand all Rooster’s words, and but few of the things to which he referred, he understood this: that nomole, not even Privet herself, had ever tried so hard to give him something that really mattered as Rooster tried now. And the love in the giving, and the receiving, lay in the trying. Whillan felt Rooster’s love, and in that he understood at last why Privet loved Rooster so, and why in their love the Stone’s Silence found expression. It was enough.
“We better go back to firm land,” said Whillan with an adult smile.
“We better!” said Rooster, with a laugh.
“And captivity.”
“Privet says the Stone’s in everything!”
“Then we had better start praying it’s in this!” said Whillan, before leading the way back to where the guards waited to take them into custody once more.
“You Duncton moles are... different,” observed Thorne later that day to Privet, “and in your way, impressive.”
“Different but normal,” she replied, “and anyway, Rooster is not of Duncton.”
“Nor is the mole Madoc,” said Thorne grimly.
They were resting for a short time; after the tribulations of crossing the river, they had rapidly escaped up to higher ground, from which they had watched the water-meadows slowly flood as the river rose higher and spilled out on to them. The approach to their crossing-point was already blocked by flooded fields on either side, and still the rain fell in dark swathes across the vale. If they had not crossed when they did, they would not have crossed at all. The river ran through the middle, yellow-white and powerful, a terrifying sight. It was a pity, Privet thought, that Brother Adviser Fagg had not delayed on the far side a little longer still, but “her” guardmole had helped him across, and he was much humiliated and was now, all too evidently, the bitter enemy of all of them. But these thoughts were replaced by fears for Madoc, now that Thorne specifically mentioned her. Had he come especially to Privet to talk about her? Perhaps.
“She is a harmless mole,” said Privet carefully. “She was doing her best to convince us of the error of our ways. She should not be held captive.”
“Oh, I agree,” said Thorne with a twinkle in his eye, “but not for the reason you give. I know perfectly well what mole she is – one of Bowdler, I believe. One of our guards recognizes her.”
Privet said nothing.
“Her life will not be worth living if I return her to Senior Elder Brother Quail. And yet if I let her go – assuming that I could – I betray my own beliefs. A pretty dilemma, Privet of Duncton Wood.”
“How will you resolve it?” Privet turned and looked into his eyes and wondered how it was that the Stone had put such a mole on the opposing side.
“You’re a scribemole, they tell me, the first female one I’ve ever met. You might tell me if there’s a simple resolution to such problems.”
“Usually,” said Privet. “And prayer is the best way of finding it, not discussion.”
Thorne smiled. “Rooster is like nomole I have ever known,” he said quietly. “They say he is a Master of the Delve. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, I do.”
“When I saw you together poised over that river it seemed to me that you knew each other well. You seemed as one.”
“You observe well, mole,” said Privet.
“A leader must. Now tell me, what were Rooster and Whillan talking about so intently out there, where none could hear?”
Privet shook her head and they were silent for a moment, then she said impulsively, “I spoke with Chervil once in such a position as this. We were his captives, though that was not the word we’d have used.”
“You know Brother Chervil?” Thorne was both surprised and pleased. “I knew him well once upon a time.”
“And Brother Rolt?”
Thorne looked surprised once more. “He was our teacher when we were pups.” He hesitated and then said, “You are a mole of many parts it seems, Scribemole Privet.”
“If you must give me a title call me Keeper Privet, which is how I am known in Duncton Wood.”
“How do you know Brother Rolt?”
“Oh, well, it’s a long tale that, too long to tell you now. And anyway. Brother Commander, I am not sure you should be talking to me. The good mole Fagg is glancing this way and does not look happy.”
“I can deal with him,” growled Thorne.
“But can you deal with those he answers to?”
Thorne shrugged non-committally. “So tell me, if you won’t talk of your past acquaintance with Brother Rolt, what did you make of Chervil? I suppose you met him in Duncton Wood? His father – the Elder Senior Brother I mean – sent him there.”
“For his own good, I imagine. To escape Quail’s influence.”
“You lead me on to ground as dangerous as that we crossed today.” His voice hardened. “The followers cannot win this struggle against the Caradocian way. You know that, don’t you?”
“The Stone will win it,” said Privet. Though she smiled, her glance was hard.
“And if we lose it?”
“You will lose it, if you do what you know to be wrong.”
“I know that taking the mole Madoc to Wildenhope is wrong,” he said very softly. “Some of Quail’s underlings in Wildenhope are unspeakable. They do things for which I would kill my guardmoles if I caught them at it. There is a mole called Squelch...”
The expression on Thorne’s face turned to utter disgust.
“Yet you fight for them!” said Privet.
“I fight for the Stone. I fight for Thripp of Blagrove Slide. I fight for what is right.” He spoke
calmly, even matter-of-factly. “But who will fight for you?” he added suddenly. “Does Duncton still produce leaders as great as it did with Bracken and Tryfan in the days when we were threatened by the Word?”
Privet thought of Maple, and wondered if indeed he would ever be called “great’. Maple seemed inexperienced compared with this strong and self-assured mole. Yet there had always seemed to her something certain about Maple, something solid.
“Moles will emerge when they are needed,” said Privet. “Perhaps Rooster, and I, and Whillan, and...”
“You were going to say Madoc,” he said, smiling again.
Privet gave him a sharp yet not unfriendly look. He was, of course, quite right.
“Well anyway,” she continued with a little frown, “you may be sure that even if we” – she waved a paw in the direction of the others in a way that might have included Madoc – “do not survive our coming meeting with the inquisitorial Brother Quail, there will be many others who will uphold the values in which we believe, and which Duncton moles traditionally represent. I hope you may meet them. I hope you may listen to them as you listen to me. You are a mole, Brother Commander Thorne, of the kind who might be surprised at how much you would feel at home before the Duncton Stone.”
“And you are persuasive, if I may say so.”
“Thank you!” said Privet, tartly. “So will you let us all go free?”
“No, I won’t.”
“So I’m not that persuasive then.”
Thorne grinned amicably. “You have not said one harsh word about me. Nor about the Caradocian way.”
“Whatmole am I to judge another? It is not just history that has taught me that, but life itself She looked away from him, wanting to talk; and she felt that fear, mortal and terrible, that had come on her occasionally in recent times. “You know,” she went on softly, “the time will come when you realize that for these few days you have had in your power —”
“My care, you mean.”
“I am happy that you use that word. In your care then, you have had one of the most remarkable moles of our generation. Rooster is a mole whose paws can express through delving the essence of the Stone’s Silence. No sect, no faith, can or should try to contain such a mole as him. Now then...”
Duncton Stone Page 10