Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  Brave Pumpkin! What a leader he proved to be. Cheerful, resolute, modest and able to inspire or shame them into never forgetting what a Duncton mole should be. How many times did he conquer his own fear to lead others on and out of danger? Countless times! But at least he was aided and abetted in these acts of courage by the two moles who had first shown such willingness to help him, Elynor and her son Cluniac.

  And brave Hamble too, who had finally rejected violence and turned his back on Rooster; he lived with his new-found pacifism, applying all his skills of fieldcraft and warfare, not against the Newborns (who might have suffered heavily at his paws in so secret a war as that which could have been waged in the High Wood), but to help the rebels survive.

  So it was that by June, when Noakes arrived, rebel watchers trained by Hamble and posted across the High Wood had spotted the coming of the strangers and spied on them. For molemonths past Hamble had forecast that sooner or later moles would come in from the outside world, to bring news of what was happening and, more important still, to give Hamble and Pumpkin some guidance as to how best to continue their occupation of the High Wood.

  “They’ll need help reaching the safety of these tunnels when they come,” Hamble had warned, and sure enough, when Noakes arrived, if the rebel watchers down by the cross-under had not diverted the guardmoles the newcomers would certainly have been spotted before they reached the High Wood.

  We may imagine the excitement in the rebels’ tunnels that greeted the news that after so long, and so many disappointments, three moles had arrived from the outside world of moledom. But there was some consternation that two of them had lain low, while the other set off westward across the wood.

  “What’s he about then?” growled Hamble.

  “As far as I could work it out,” the watcher said, still breathless from running to report, “he’s off to the Stone in the hope that he’ll find a follower.”

  “Strange they were able to get through so many defences, even if in the end it was our watchers made it possible for them to reach the High Wood undetected,” said Hamble. “It could be one of the Newborns’ little tricks. They send in a few moles from “outside” and wait for us to make contact. Then in come their forces...”

  “On the other paw,” observed Pumpkin, who always took a positive view of moles, “if they are genuine then one or other of them will run straight into a Newborn patrol before the day’s out, and we know what that’ll mean for them. We had better reinforce the watchers already with them and take them in for questioning somewhere neutral where we’ll give nothing away of ourselves.”

  It was in this context, then unknown to him, that there followed a day Noakes never forgot, and an evening he would never wish to repeat. The High Wood through which he travelled seemed to be populated with moles he could not quite hear, and not quite see. Skilled in fieldcraft as he had become, he had the sense that moles were following him who were more experienced than he – at least in that strange and largely silent environment of high and ancient trees, fallen rotting branches, whose mosses and coloured lichens showed they had been undisturbed for many a year, and massive grey beech roots whose shadows could hide a thousand secrets, and many a watching mole. As for moving silently, it was nearly impossible, for the Wood’s floor was covered by a deep layer of golden-brown leaf-litter which rustled and crackled as soon as a mole looked at it.

  By the time the trees thinned towards what he felt sure was the Stone Clearing he was tired out with the stress of it all, and sweat trickled down his back, though it was not that warm. Then, through the trees, not quite fully visible, he saw for the first time a gathering of light about a rising, soaring form, grey-green, powerful beyond the branches. He sensed that he was about to enter the presence of something living and potent, awesome beyond anything he had ever dreamed.

  “The Duncton Stone,” he whispered, putting one faltering paw ahead of the next, his heart thumping, his breathing quickening.

  “Aye, mole, so it is!” said a rough voice behind him as four great paws descended, crushed him down to the ground and held him motionless.

  “Well, and what are you doing here?” the voice whispered heavily in his ear as he struggled in vain to turn around to see the faces of his captors, rather than merely their solid and determined paws which ranged the ground around him.

  Should he say Newborn or follower? He did not know and could not guess. Say the wrong thing and he was done for – though come to think of it, it would be better to claim to be Newborn. If they were Newborn he could perhaps fool them; and if they were not he could seek to convince them of his true identity once... they... had... let... him... go!

  “Stop struggling, Brother,” said the voice harshly, “and answer our question.”

  Newborn, they were Newborn! “Brother” had given them away.

  “I’m just a...” But as he began to speak he caught a second glimpse of the Stone between their paws, rising to the sky, solid, glistening with light, so powerful, so true that the lie he was in the act of telling turned and nearly choked him. He could not deny the Stone, or pretend to be what he was not so near its presence. How many times had moles like Fieldfare and Spurling said that there always comes a time when a mole must stance up on all fours and say clearly who he is and what he believes in, come what may. That moment came for Noakes now.

  “Follower!” he cried out, struggling. “I’m a follower and proud of it. Come as a solitary pilgrim to Duncton to worship before the most famous Stone in moledom.”

  But they seemed not to believe him.

  “Follower, eh!” said one of those holding him, thumping his head into the ground.

  “A pilgrim?” Thump.

  “Worship?” Thump, thump.

  “Famous?” Thump.

  There was a ringing in his ears, and Stars in his eyes as he was dragged up to his paws; his head reeled and he found himself staring into the eyes of a large, fight-scarred mole of middle age with dark grey eyes. As solid a guardmole as he had ever seen, though he carried himself more like one of the Brother Commanders Noakes had heard of.

  “Yes!” said Noakes, his head painful, “I’m a follower and proud of it.”

  “Oh, aye?” said the mole dubiously, with a cynical glance at the two younger moles with him which suggested he did not believe a word. The others smiled bleakly, and looking at them Noakes could not help thinking that they looked mean, thin and hungry, and that he would not like to meet them in a narrow tunnel on a dark night.

  “Yes, I am a follower,” he said firmly.

  The leader seemed about to speak when from behind them, beyond the bole of the tree he had just passed and from which, he guessed, his captors had so silently and effectively emerged, came the cry, “Newborns! Go west!”

  He was summarily grabbed again, and desperately trying to work out what this new turn of events meant – Newborns fleeing from Newborns? Very strange! – he found himself hurried towards the Stone, then past it, across the Clearing and out on the other side before he could catch his breath.

  Then, as he breathed in at last and he began to think that these moles might just be followers after all, the ground seemed to open up beneath him, he was rushed down into a huge tunnel and pushed bodily along it for what seemed a long time. His limbs and head banged against walls, roots, as well as the edges of portals and goodness knows what, until suddenly he was thrust into an echoing chamber and told, “Shut up. Don’t move. Don’t speak.”

  The paws gripping him relaxed; he saw that only one of the thin, mean-looking moles remained with him, and as his eyes adjusted to the gloom he found himself in as ancient and strangely delved a chamber as any he had ever seen.

  But if its carvings and convoluted walls, with all their shadows and glimmering light, at first diverted him, it was the strange sounds that soon took up his attention: paw-steps, thousands of them; distant cries, horrible; straining roots of a tree above that seemed about to fall and crush them both; and shadows, that might be more th
an shadows for all he knew, so dangerous did they feel, so threatening. He looked at the mole who had stayed with him and found sharp, intelligent, weary eyes looking into his.

  “Welcome to the Ancient System of Duncton Wood,” whispered the mole, his words gyring away into echoes about him, “don’t move, don’t speak. We’ll have to wait until they bring your friends.”

  “My...?” began Noakes, appalled that they even knew he had come with other moles. He had thought he had done so well. But the mole put a talon to his mouth to shush him, and then glanced meaningfully around the chamber into whose dark crevices that single word “My” had been sucked, and was now spewed forth back at him, filthy, foul, fragmented and dangerous.

  “Dark Sound?” mouthed Noakes, at once frightened and astonished, yet fascinated too.

  The mole nodded, brought his head close and whispered, “Just in case you’re wondering, you never get used to it!”

  The two moles looked at each other and exchanged a wry, conspiratorial grin, and as evening approached and the light dimmed, and the sounds grew worse, all Noakes could think to do to stem the rampant tide of fears that the Dark Sound put in his mind was to remember his brief glimpse of the Duncton Stone. He now understood what he had vaguely sensed as he passed it so swiftly; that in coming to it, he was a mole who had come home.

  He remembered old Raistow’s account of his journey to the Duncton Stone so many years before, and the speech at the debate in Seven Barrows that had sent him on his way here. Well, he supposed he was here now, and trusted that his friends were somewhere and with someone as safe as he was.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was not until the next day, after a terrifying night of Dark Sound followed by a trek through echoing tunnels lit only by the dimmest of dawn light, that Noakes was reunited with his friends. It had been “too dangerous’, he had been told, to meet up earlier; the Dark Sound in the tunnels had been stirring malevolently since the previous evening and the rebels had lain low, Noakes and his watcher at one end of the Ancient System, his friends and the rebels who had found them at the other.

  The big mole who had treated him so roughly on the surface was Hamble, and he had taken the opportunity to interrogate Noakes’ companions, and heard their story. All was now friendly and jocular, though apologies for the head-thumping and battering Noakes had received were perfunctory: that, it seemed, was a risk moles took who dared venture into the High Wood.

  The position regarding the Newborns was swiftly explained to the visitors, before they were taken into a chamber mercifully free from Dark Sound, wind-sound or any sound at all, except for the excited chatter of an ill-fed, mostly old, yet strangely inspiring group of moles led, “Not by me,” as the warrior mole Hamble mysteriously explained to Noakes and the other two, “but by Pumpkin – who will be with us shortly.”

  Pumpkin! The mole Noakes had most wanted to meet, and for whom he had many messages from Fieldfare, whose friend he had been in the days before the Newborns. What a leader he must be to be in charge of such moles as these, with a formidable character like Hamble deferring to him!

  He had never really believed Fieldfare’s description of the “library aide” as thin, old and mild. How could he be?

  Hamble had asked Noakes and his companions to postpone more detailed telling of their story until Pumpkin joined them, but it was not easy with so many moles clustering about, as eager for news as for sun at the end of winter.

  Suddenly there was a cheer, ragged at first as the moles only slowly realized that Pumpkin had slipped in amongst them, then louder as he was seen, grabbed, and raised on high. Relief in the chamber was palpable. Noakes had never seen so many moles so happy all at once.

  But he they cheered was lowered back to the ground, struggling to be let down sooner than he was, blinking with embarrassment, frowning with the dismay of a modest mole upon whom attention has centred, and Noakes realized with a shock that this was Pumpkin.

  His snout was thin and scholarly, his eyes gentle, his fur so patchy about his face that the skin was creased and crinkly, his paws pale, his manner diffident.

  “I must apologize for my friends,” were his first words, “but they are somewhat over-excited by your arrival here, and attribute it to me, though of course it is the Stone’s doing, not mine. Now...”

  But Noakes, bold mole that he was, and with an instinctive sense of the right thing to do in an assembly of moles such as this, raised a paw and said, “Pumpkin, sir, before anything else is said there is something I must do!”

  There was an immediate and expectant hush.

  “I won’t say it’s an easy thing to do, seeing as I hardly know you, but I did promise that I would do it, as my friends here will confirm.”

  The two moles nodded their heads and grinned.

  “Yes,” he continued, approaching nearer to Pumpkin and looking somewhat embarrassed, “I am not a mole to promise to do something and not deliver. Fieldfare’s last words to me before we left...”

  There was a sigh amongst the Duncton followers at this mention of the much-loved Fieldfare, and Pumpkin, always an emotional mole, blinked once or twice.

  “... her last words were, and she’s not a mole easily denied in matters of the heart...”

  “That’s true,” said Pumpkin quietly.

  “... her last words were, ‘Noakes! The first thing you do when you see Pumpkin is to tell him Fieldfare loves him through and through and that he’s as brave a mole as ever was, and give him a hug from me!’”

  There was a great cheer at these words and the sincere way Noakes said them, and an even greater cheer when, without more ado, he took Pumpkin in his paws and gave him such a hug as lifted him right off the ground for a second or two.

  “Well!” said Pumpkin, wiping away a tear and straightening the ruffles on his meagre fur. “Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to know Fieldfare is safe and well and unchanged! Always warm-hearted, always thinking of others!

  “But there’s news to impart and we all want to hear it, for we’ve been besieged here without sight or sound of other moles for far too long. Therefore Noakes of the Seven Barrows and your good friends, welcome! If you have slept and eaten and are refreshed then we would be glad if you’ll tell us all you know!”

  As Noakes began to report the many things that Fieldfare and Spurling had instructed him to impart, beginning with the Wildenhope killings and what was known of Newborn advances in the south, the mood in the chamber changed. Pumpkin and his doughty friends had already been prepared for some of it by Hamble, who had been the first to bring confirmation of Chater’s death, a grim fact that Noakes had only so far heard as a surmise by Fieldfare herself

  But this was altogether different: that Whillan had apparently been killed, and Rooster had died trying to save him; and Privet had wandered off alone and had by now probably been done to death by the Newborns. How dark did the feelings run! How sombre the moles, their silence interspersed with tears and cries of grief Were they then alone now, without hope of being saved?

  “No, moles, we are not!” cried out Pumpkin. “The Stone is with us, and it will be with those we love, who I do not believe for one minute have died! We shall fight on!”

  This did something to cheer up the beleaguered moles, as did Hamble’s affirmation of faith that all would be well – now was the hour when they must keep their nerve, and plan for victory...

  There then took place the kind of debate which Noakes had already been part of in Seven Barrows, in which moles cut off from others, and feeling the threat of the enemy, discuss the options open to them and must strike a balance in the end between those eager to rush off and do anything just to feel they are doing something, and those made passive by events and unwilling to act at all.

  Naturally, much was said of Privet’s retreat into Silence and its possible meaning, and Pumpkin was able to add something to the ideas expressed that Noakes for one had not heard before.

  “You must understand that Keeper P
rivet is first and foremost a mole of the heart, before ever she was a scholar. Driven by a love of Rooster, Master of the Delve, a love she lost on the Moors as she believed, she journeyed to Beechenhill, and then by slow and tragic degrees to our own system here, in search of the very thing that my Master Stour begged her to set forth and seek once more: the Book of Silence. Be in no doubt that this great Book exists, awaiting a mole worthy enough to find it for the moledom that awaits its coming.”

  Pumpkin spoke quietly, and though he never for a moment let moles forget that he regarded himself as no more than an aide to others greater, yet the moleyears of Newborn repression that had forced reluctant leadership upon him had given him a strange and benevolent authority. Few leaders in moledom’s modern history have been as gentle, mild, self-effacing, and yet as effective as Pumpkin, library aide.

  Now, as he spoke of the Book of Silence in the context of Privet’s courageous and historic retreat the moles began to understand for the first time what the goal and purpose of that retreat might be, and it seemed, when it was explained, so obvious: “To find the Book of Silence, that’s Privet’s hope and deepest desire,” as Pumpkin put it.

  “But moles must understand the paradox in what she does. She seeks what cannot be sought; she desires what cannot be desired; she journeys that she may find a way back to the still centre of her heart. It is a journey others have set out upon, from which none have returned to this life.”

  “Will she be successful?” asked Noakes, speaking for them all.

  Pumpkin shrugged; “I do not know. It has been my privilege to serve some of the greatest scholars of moledom – beginning of course with Master Stour himself Many a student I have seen come to Duncton Wood and emerge years later as a scholar, able to ken the most abstruse texts, able to explicate the difficult, and gloss the obscure, and make associations which others have missed. Yet few of these moles have had what I call heart, or love, for fellow moles: not the deep and abiding love that comes from suffering, from humility, from turning the scholarly snout from text and argument to life and emotion.