Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  “Rooster!” cried out Maple, rising from his stance and meeting him in the centre of the chamber.

  “Have come!” said Rooster unnecessarily. “Saw all clearly: past, present, and future. Saw all could be well. Saw how it could be.”

  “When?” asked Maple; “and where?”

  “In water, looking back at Wildenhope. Saw it all and understood. Now have come, with Weeth, and with a friend. Will tell you about him later.” Rooster laughed and suddenly grabbed Maple in the kind of hug that mole gave Weeth moments before. “Have missed you, Maple, like Weeth. Have missed all I love. But future’s coming and we must delve it. We must make all right, so that Privet can bring the Book of Silence to Duncton Wood.”

  The watching moles listened in amazement to this, staring at him, for none but those who already knew him could ever have imagined a mole quite like Rooster of Charnel Clough. And many felt then what they were only able to articulate later, that with Rooster’s coming to join Maple’s rebels it was as if some element of the Stone itself, some aspect of its Silence, had found physical form among them, and the mood of faith and confidence was palpable in the chamber.

  “There’s a tale in this,” cried out Ystwelyn. “Give them food, stance them down, and let’s hear it from beginning to end!”

  “Aye, every bit of it!” cried out many a mole, as food was found, and places too, for Rooster and the quiet youngster he had brought with him.

  “Weeth can begin,” said Rooster, as Maple introduced mole after mole to him. “Weeth knows most of it, if not all!”

  Weeth grinned and held up a paw for silence.

  “It will be my pleasure, fellow rebels with a cause,” he said, “with a little bit of help from my new-found friends, to whom you will be introduced in the proper manner. But I fancy this is only the beginning of the tale you’ll all tell your grandpups when you’re old and grey!”

  “Hope you don’t mind answering questions, Weeth, “cos knowing you you’re not likely to tell us the whole tale just like that!” cried out one of the moles.

  “There’s only one question I won’t answer,” responded Weeth, “and that’s because I don’t know what the answer is.”

  “Which is?” asked Ystwelyn jocularly.

  Weeth exchanged a glance with Maple. It was serious, and concerned.

  “If you ask me where Privet of Duncton is, then I can’t tell you.”

  A hush fell over the moles, for all of them knew of Privet’s retreat, and all wondered how a solitary female, of more than middle age and not especially strong by all accounts, could possibly survive in a moledom dominated by Newborns who were so hostile to her, and unlikely to abide by any edict Quail might have issued that she should be allowed to live. Yet on her, as on Rooster, so much seemed to depend.

  “No...” sighed Maple, “no, we know you don’t know that.”

  “Privet?” said Rooster suddenly, rising and looking around the assembled moles, and then almost benignly on Weeth. “Privet’s where nomole can reach her. Journeying. Nomole can help her. Travelling. Nomole can hurt her there. Privet’s in darkness now. Must pray for her every day. Privet’s journeying for all of us.”

  There was absolute silence at this strange and disturbing utterance. Rooster’s presence now, his words, his very thoughts and feelings perhaps inhibited the speech of others. He grinned suddenly and lopsidedly at Weeth.

  “Not so bad for us though! Tell them how the Stone helped me! Tell them the tale they’re silent to hear. Told you, now you tell them.”

  “I will, strange delving mole,” said Weeth.

  There was a collective sigh and the expectant moles relaxed; Rooster grinned and stanced down again: for Privet, the Privet who was on a journey for all of them, could not, it seemed, be so easily harmed.

  “Well then,” began Weeth, “I’ll tell you how I found our friend here, and how he came to be where he was when I found him, and what he was doing there.”

  “Delving, presumably,” said one of his audience. “... and I’ll tell it, if I may,” continued Weeth with cheerful firmness, “without too many more interruptions...”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Quail and his minions, isolated that spring and early summer in the self-congratulatory world of Caradoc and Wildenhope, might have been slow to react to the damaging effect of Privet’s stance of Silence against them, but they were swift to respond to its consequences, and the growing evidence of resistance of the kind Brother Commander Finial had so starkly reported. Orders were quickly sent out to all Brother Commanders to deal harshly and publicly with any sign of rebellion and by mid-June many lesser systems were already suffering the consequences. Public snoutings of the kind used by moles of the Word in the “bad old days” became all too common once more, as did the murder of young moles by the brothers in front of grieving parents, always an effective tactic to subdue opposition.

  Again and again there were the most violent responses to the most innocent of resistance – a careless joke, an attempt to help some confused old mole, an answer back – all could and did result in the deaths of harmless moles. Fear now began to spread out from the major systems in the wake of the Crusades, and these punitive measures, and deceit and treachery among moles who had only recently been friends, became the order of the day once the Brother Crusaders appeared in a system.

  Other historians may dwell upon the tragedies of these times, and describe in detail the many incidents of torture, cruelty and deprivation perpetrated by the Newborns. But here we are more concerned with the triumph that faith in the Stone inspires in the face of such tragedy. Yet even the least scholarly of moles is aware of the vile deaths at Bicester that June, when sixty moles from surrounding systems died; and the valiant defence of the moles of Shepton Mallet, down in the south-west, against their age-old rivals of Frome, spurred on by the brothers, when all but three moles died after an eight-day siege; though perhaps it is the treachery of Fiddick of Shefford, which led to the tragic deaths at the Winstow Massing, that moles remember with most horror.

  But only now, as a product of recent scholarship and analysis of the Secret Orders of the Crusade Council, is the true nature of the foul hypocrisy of the sect under Quail’s leadership emerging. No better example being the fourteenth Secret Order, calling upon all Brother Commanders as a matter of priority to locate and arrest “the mole Privet, originally of Crowden, latterly of Duncton Wood” whom it describes as a “dangerous blasphemer and sexual minion of the dead reprobate Rooster, perverter of morals, traducer of the young” and so forth. In short, Quail had reneged on the freedom of passage and the pardon granted to Privet at Wildenhope, and was now calling for her capture, and, by implication, her death.

  The language of that Secret Order was, incidentally, a lot less foul than that which accompanied its dictation by Quail. According to Snyde’s records Quail was beside himself with fury, his mouth frothing, his eyes bulging, his demeanour nearly insane, when he realized that he had let escape his talons a mole so capable of damaging the Newborn cause.

  “I want her,” he screamed, “and I shall personally drown her, and take time about it, the thin hag-like bitch. To mock us all! To raise the spectre of Silence before our snouts! Having killed her son we shall kill her, for she is the Snake, she is the doubt that entwines our hearts and endangers us. She shall be found...”

  Kenning this now a mole shudders to contemplate what Quail had yet to say when he discovered that Rooster was in fact alive...

  No matter, by mid-June every Newborn in moledom was on the look-out for Privet and most of these would regard it as their duty and privilege to kill her themselves, or deliver her personally to Quail himself.

  But, as we have seen, Newborns were not the only ones who sought Privet. Others did too, many of them harmless moles, not given to bravery or bold doings, but who would certainly have lain down their lives for the Duncton scribe and done all they could to see that she came to no harm.

  Among them was the delightful
and innocent Hibbott of Ashbourne Chase, whose pilgrimage in search of Privet was well underway by that mid-June when Brother Commanders all over moledom were wondering what more they could do to find the elusive Privet – and hoping, no doubt, that time would not prove that she had crossed their territory, and that they were culpable of having missed her.

  “I had then,” Hibbott tells us with charming understatement in his Pilgrimage, “taken somewhat of a wrong turning upon my journey, and arrived at a most inhospitable place. My mistake had been to follow what I thought to be but a modest roaring owl way, from which I found it increasingly difficult to escape as it grew bigger and ever more hostile.

  “The dangers were many and varied – hunting kestrel, scavenging rook, malevolent fox, not to mention the heat, the fumes and the roaring owls themselves. The way became unpleasantly elevated, far from soil, or trees, or natural running water. In consequence, to survive I found it necessary to eat what scraps of rotting carrion I could find, and drink the tainted water which I found in the crevices, cracks and conduits of the way itself But I was not despondent! Not I! Did I not have the glorious prospect of meeting Privet of Duncton Wood somewhere on the path before me! Did I not have the Light and Silence of the Stone to comfort me! Did I not have memories of friends and home to divert me, and to encourage me, the prospect of returning to them one day with much to tell? I did! And did I not have my health? I did!

  “But when these encouragements failed and I felt myself slipping towards the slough of self-pity and despond, I said to myself “Hibbott, what is this? How can you call yourself a pilgrim and let yourself be beset by these trivial problems? Do you imagine that Privet of Duncton Wood, whose path is so much harder than yours, would allow herself to be diverted from her course by such concerns? Of course she would not! Then again, think of those good friends, and your kin, who said goodbye to you when you left Ashbourne Chase, think how downhearted they would be to know you failed them. Therefore Hibbott, put your best paw forward and press on, for what is a pilgrimage without a little local difficulty!”

  “With words such as these I encouraged myself to continue on my chosen path, having faith that before too long my journey would become more pleasant.”

  In fact, without realizing it, Hibbott had taken a route right towards the very heart of the Midland Wen, a dangerous and sterile two-foot system almost as big as that which lies east of Duncton Wood and is simply called The Wen. For many days he was lost in this great artificial wilderness, supported only by his deep faith in the Stone, and the hope of better things to come, the chief of which was a meeting with Privet of Duncton.

  The days passed by; he lost weight, and often he could not find strength to travel on, but he rested patiently, trusted in the Stone, and fought his way forward – past what dangers, and through what fears, a mole shudders to imagine.

  Then one day, one glorious day, the walled and elevated way he took dropped down nearer the real ground and taking a kind of steep slipway off it he found himself on soil once more. To learn of his many trials and tribulations in that wasteland in which he found himself, and of how he had to take to the elevated way once more to escape it, a mole must ken Hibbott’s own story. But finally the roaring owl way turned south, countryside appeared distantly ahead, and with the two-foot system now largely behind, or to right and left flank, he felt his trials were nearly over. Yet he now recorded a strange reaction.

  “There were many opportunities now to leave the roaring owl way and resume my journey through the fields which lay adjacent to it, even if the two-foot places were nearby as well. Yet I had grown accustomed to the narrow life of the way, and its dangers had become my friends; its limitations, my security. I had, in fact, grown afraid of the reality which lay awaiting me in the fields below – and I made various excuses not to join it, but to stay in the sterile world to which I had grown used.

  “Then suddenly, one day, peering down to the fields below from my elevated position, with the roaring owls rushing past, I saw something I had not seen for many a long molemonth – the earthy delvings of mole stretching across the grass I surveyed. Added to this I felt a strange conviction that my way to find Privet of Duncton was now on real land again. She was, I thought, near at paw, though perhaps only in spirit. I had rediscovered the impulse that first drove me on my pilgrimage, and feeling myself saved at last from the long journey on the roaring owl way, I took a slipway off it again, and never joined it more.

  “I then made my way to the mole system I had seen and in faltering language – for I had not spoken Mole in a long time – I introduced myself and told those I met of my quest. I was ill for many a day after, but they looked after me.

  “The “system” I had fallen among was no system in the ordinary sense. Its members called themselves a “community” – the “Community of Rose”. Their spiritual leader was the remarkable Sister Caldey, a large robust female about whom, it seemed, various “waifs and strays”, as they cheerfully called themselves, had grouped. They had named themselves after Rose, the Healer of Duncton Wood, known to allmole for her dedicated work a century before.* Sister Caldey was large and ungainly, with paws more masculine than feminine and a habit of frowning ferociously when she was thinking or striving for a cure. However, like many before me, and more since no doubt, I found her to be the kindest and gentlest of moles, even if at times she could be brusque and dictatorial!

  *See Volume I of The Duncton Chronicles.

  “Her story seemed to me remarkable, though she herself rarely mentioned it, and what I learned came from certain of the more talkative brothers and sisters in the Community. It seemed she was born into a group of nomadic moles whose territory was in the hills to the south of the Midland Wen. Though she was robust as a pup, she was taken ill as a youngster and finally abandoned to the care of the Redditch Stone, she being by then frail and a liability for wandering moles.

  “When she was near death she prayed to the Stone, promising that if it would cure her she would dedicate herself to healing others, and to giving a home to those who had been abandoned, until such time as they were capable of stancing on their own four paws again. The night of that prayer a mole came to her, a cheerful female, who laid paws upon her the long night through, and in the morning she knew she had been cured. When Sister Caldey asked the mole’s name she would only say, ‘Thank Rose of Duncton Wood, and thereby thank the Stone.’ Soon after the mole left her; remembering her promise, Sister Caldey decided to dedicate her life to helping others. Convinced that it was Rose the Healer who had come to her in time of need, she travelled, seeking out healing moles wherever she could find them to learn all she could of the healing arts. In time she became a recognized healer herself, returning to live for a long time near the Redditch Stone where she had received her visitation.

  “Many moles came for her ministrations, and some to learn from her, until she felt the need of a rest from the demands made upon her, and a period of peace. She found a place to be alone, but she was taken ill, as severely as she had been when a youngster. She discovered in that dark time that there are no healers for healers – that it is a solitary life indeed. With great difficulty, she made her way back to the Redditch Stone, and there she was cured a second time by a visitation from the mole she took to be Rose the Healer. Her recovery was slow, but the day came when ‘Rose’ said she must depart.

  “‘Why have I been ill?’ asked Sister Caldey. ‘Tell me that before you leave.’ For she guessed there had been a reason for it – to learn something more of healing no doubt, but what?

  “‘You must leave things to take their course more than you do,’ replied Rose, ‘and listen more. It is not you who heals, but the Stone through you. You can only help moles know the Stone’s healing grace more clearly, you can do no more. Therefore listen, trust, and let things be.’

  “‘Where shall I go?’ asked Caldey.

  “‘Where the next mole tells you!’ laughed Rose, and Sister Caldey knew that in those words were trut
h and wisdom.

  “She therefore resolved to wait by the Stone for the next mole that came, and go where he or she told her to. The first mole that she met was one sent to her, she suspected, by Rose herself His name was Meddick, after the healing herb, and he came to beg her to come north with him to the southern edge of the Midland Wen, where his two surviving kin lived a frugal life. Both were ill.

  “Sister Caldey did not hesitate and together the two moles journeyed to where I found them so many years later, along with other moles who had, so to speak, drifted to their simple tunnels and stayed awhile. What they had started became the Community of Rose. The Community was celibate, and the males and females called themselves brothers and sisters, many adopting names of healing herbs as a token of their changed life – for many were ill when they came, and found a cure in that inspiring fellowship. But I cannot say I myself was eager to change my name, since “Hibbott” had served me perfectly well all my life, and so I did not.

  “There were some fourteen moles there, of whom five had taken a vow of Silence and spoke not at all. They were a peaceful lot, and numbers at home on any one day varied since it was their practice to journey forth to nearby systems, mainly to the south since the Wen itself lay in all other directions, and there offer their healing services.

  “It was only at the end of my sojourn that I discovered to my great surprise that Brother Meddick was still alive, though since he was one of those who was ‘in the Silence’, as they put it, unfortunately I could not converse with him. He was very frail, and constantly attended by two silent sisters, themselves not much stronger than he was!

  “Sister Caldey was, as I have said, a somewhat large female, getting on in years. She embodied a sort of practical holiness, and was nothing at all like a mole might imagine a spiritual leader to be. But the sensible, and I may say sensitive, pilgrim must keep an open mind if he is to learn from the experiences which the Stone puts in his way.