Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  “By the Stone, sir, but that’s the mole Privet, the one —”

  “Adkin, you better get her out of there at once and without fuss,” said Thorne calmly. “Bring her to my chamber. No, that will attract attention. Bring her to those derelict tunnels we passed through a while back; it is best we talk to her unseen by others.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Adkin, still shaking his head in amazement. “Leave it to me, sir. But here? It’s unbelievable.”

  “Get on with it, mole,” said Thorne with unusual sharpness. “If anymole-else realizes who she is...”

  Whatever was in Thorne’s mind at the beginning of his meeting with Privet – a meeting held in dusty tunnels watched over by Adkin, to which Privet had been brought on the pretext of a mole needing urgent healing – by the end of it he had decided to let her go. Once before he had held her captive against his better judgement, and that had nearly resulted in her death, not to mention the death it seemed of Whillan, if not of Rooster. No, Thorne would not take that responsibility again.

  But what to do with her? It would have helped if she had talked, but she did not. She remained silent, mostly with her eyes cast down peacefully, though occasionally and disconcertingly she raised them and looked into his eyes. Her gaze was pale and clear, dispassionate, and Thorne felt when he looked on her that he was floundering into a sea of truth from which he might not have strength to emerge alive.

  “Mole, mole... what are we to, do with you?” he whispered.

  But he knew that the real question her presence posed him was what he was to do with himself. He wished Rolt was there... and he found himself talking about how they had journeyed to Ashbourne, and how he had come on to Leamington. He felt he was talking to the Stone itself, and that it heard and understood his evasions, his half-truths, his hesitations.

  “Mole, finding you puts me in an impossible position.”

  He wondered aloud what he was going to do after Leamington: how to bring the rebels to order with a minimum loss of life on both sides; how to address the problem of Quail. He spoke of his hope that Chervil would be found, and a way become clear, but... but...

  “But, mole! Where am I to put you where you’ll be safe and yet do no harm?”

  The Stone... the Stone knows all, and he felt that in her presence he was before the Silence of the Stone. He must think, he must try. He could not, he would not, he...

  “Adkin!”

  Thorne summoned his aide, and knew that long hours had passed. Time with this mole was not its normal self.

  “Sir?”

  “The Stone will decide what happens to her, not I. It has probably decided already! Now listen. If she would speak she would probably tell me simply to let her go. But it is too great a risk. Anarchy looms over moledom now, and moles such as she, even unrecognized, are vulnerable. No, she needs protection.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  Quickly Thorne told him to go to where a large number of followers had been confined pending Thorne’s decision about what to do with them.

  “You’ve an eye for a resourceful mole, and the Stone will surely guide you —” He stopped, for a look of amazement appeared on Adkin’s face.

  “Not like you to invoke the Stone, sir, I must say!” he said, glancing at Privet and winking at her in a familiar way. She smiled.

  “Well, that’s how it is!” said Thorne, for once defensive. “Now, Adkin, go and find a follower or two you like the look of and you think can look after Privet here, whether she wants them to or not.”

  Adkin grinned. It was the kind of assignment he liked. “As a matter of fact there’s a couple of moles who might just be suitable, if they’re still deigning to be with us. They have a habit of scarpering, and very good at it they are. Yes, they could be the ones!”

  While he was gone Thorne found himself facing the void of Privet’s silence once more. He tried to stay silent also, and could not, but when he spoke, what he Said seemed foolish and wild. It was the lack of response he could not cope with, the peaceful indifference to anything he said. Until he mentioned how it was being said that Rooster had survived the torrent at Wildenhope, and for the first time Privet responded, though still mutely. Her head came back, her eyes widened and a look of pure joy came to her face. Thorne realized she had not known: until that moment her Rooster, as allmole knew him to be, had been dead to her.

  “Privet,” said Thorne, “I’m sorry, I would have told you earlier. But he did survive, it seems, and is now somewhere in the Wolds.”

  She sighed, the nearest she came to speech, and it seemed to Thorne that it was a sigh from a far and distant place, a terrible, fearful place, which he himself would never have strength to reach.

  “Mole, we’re going to get you away to safety, with those you can trust. I’m a Brother Commander, not the keeper of spiritual moles who’ve more to teach us by far than we have them!”

  Adkin returned with two wily, fit-looking moles in tow, a male and a female. They looked wary, a little fe. arful, but also bold.

  “So you’re what they call the Brother Commander of this place, are you?” said the male at once. “How you’ve got the nerve to tell moles how to run their lives when all you lot can do is murder innocent moles, and then keep us captive for no reason —”

  “Mole,” roared Thorne, his usual composure disturbed by the frustrations of his strange meeting with Privet, “be quiet and listen. Now, what are your names?”

  “We’ll tell you that but not much more,” said the male grudgingly. “My name’s Hodder of Rollright, and this is my sister Arliss, and you’ve no right —”

  Thorne raised a paw and with a fierce glance silenced Hodder. He looked at Privet, and Hodder and Arliss did the same.

  “Now listen very carefully, for I’ll say it once, and then Adkin here, and a couple of other guardmoles, are going to accompany you in safety as far as a day-and-night journey will take you.”

  Hodder and Arliss exchanged a wary glance.

  “This is not a trick, but instinct,” said Thorne. “The more I think about it the less I’m likely to do it, so let’s get on with it. In exchange for your freedom I’m going to give you a task. Some would think it an important task, others a dangerous one.”

  “Try us,” said Hodder resolutely.

  “Do you know this mole?”

  They looked at Privet and shook their heads.

  “Is she a follower or Newborn?” asked Hodder unenthusiastically.

  “I would suggest you ask her, but she won’t tell you. She’s not a talkative mole,” said Thorne ironically. Privet smiled very slightly. “I want you to look after her, see her through to safety, watch over her in the coming troubles. Take her far from where Newborns can find her.”

  “Who is she?” asked Hodder again.

  “When she used to speak,” said Adkin suddenly, sensing that Thorne would not mind his intervention, “she called herself Privet; once of Crowden, now of Duncton Wood.”

  “But it can’t be!” gasped Hodder and Arliss together, staring at Privet as if she had fallen out of the sky; which in a sense she had.

  “Well she is, and nomole but Adkin here and myself knows it – yet. Once they do there’ll be problems that will complicate the military task I have ahead of me. I’m not much of a religious mole, and no doubt I should be, but my heart tells me I’m doing the right thing entrusting her to followers. You’re two resourceful moles, even if you landed up here, but Adkin says you keep trying to get away. Now’s your chance to do so, and perform a service for a mole all moledom has been searching for, for ill and for good.

  “And if I know Privet – and I do, just a little – then I’ve no doubt that even without words she’ll help you find out what needs to be done. There, that’s it said and almost done. Take them all off my paws right now, Adkin, for if you don’t I swear I’ll change my mind.”

  “Yes, sir! Now, sir!” cried out his assistant, beginning to herd them out and away.

  For a momen
t Privet and Thorne stared at each other. Then she came to him and reached out a paw to touch his face. It was a strange and moving gesture which brought a broken smile from the Brother Commander; her love was palpable, and in her touch, and in her eyes, was an acceptance of a depth he felt nomole had ever given him.

  “May you return home safeguarded,” he found himself saying, but he knew it was what she was saying to him. Home to where a mole is loved; home to where the search is over, and the restless spirit can be still.

  She turned, joined the two followers, and they were gone, and he was left staring after them and whispering to himself, “What is it I must do, mole? What is it I must do?”

  Why had he let her go? Why did he feel utterly bereft now she was gone? Whatmole was she after all, to him and to all of moledom? Privet of Duncton, formerly of Crowden. He felt her touch upon his face and understood how through the power of her chosen Silence she was surely going to touch all moledom.

  Evening. Night. Stars, and for a time Brother Commander Thorne abandoned his command to subordinates, to wander among the tragedy and emerging triumph that was the aftermath of Leamington. Sometimes he met moles, and they stared at him and fell away from him whispering.

  “Sir!”

  Not now mole, not this long night.

  “Sir!”

  Newborn or follower? He could not tell them apart now, for there was no difference, none at all.

  “But sir!”

  It was dawn, and he turned at last to attend to yet another guardmole who had come to him. An old campaigner, one of Adkin’s friends.

  “Brought you some food, sir. Here, sir. Yes, you lay down there, sir.”

  “Mole, there’s been others asking for me.”

  “It’s no matter, sir, if Adkin was here he’d tell them to wait. They’ll wait all right. You eat this, sir, and you sleep.”

  “What is it, mole?”

  “Nothing, sir, you sleep now, you... It’s all right, sir, it’s been a long few days here, days we want to forget. I’ll watch over you, sir; it’s all right...”

  Thorne was in a vale of tears. Those chambers, all those moles, all dead and dying, all lost. And Privet’s touch upon his face, and now, now, sleep, dark and troubled; sleep, slipping into it at last. Lost, and a paw reaching out to him, yes, oh yes.

  Thorne woke to the afternoon sun. The kindly paternal guardmole, Adkin’s friend, was at his flank, tired but at the ready.

  Thorne smiled.

  “Better now, sir? Food here, drink over there.”

  Thorne attended to his needs, and felt better than he had for molemonths past.

  “Adkin’s coming, sir.”

  Thorne’s assistant came hurrying – concern and then relief on his face.

  “Thought we’d lost you, Thorne, sir, but... but you were looked after.”

  “I was, Adkin,” said Thorne, smiling appreciatively at the guard who had watched over him.

  “Well, now there’s moles come, sir, important moles,” said Adkin mysteriously and with some awe in his voice.

  “Send them to me.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Adkin with obvious pleasure and relief. His Brother Commander was himself again. He hurried off. Thorne stretched himself again in the sun; shadows fell, and he turned.

  “Greetings, Brother Commander! I trust you slept well, for there’s work to do.”

  Thorne found himself staring into the hard, glittering eyes of Chervil; with him was Brother Rolt. Behind them were ranged Chervil’s bodyguards – Feldspar, and his powerful sons Fallow and Tarn. Instinctively three of Thorne’s own guardmoles came to his flank along with Adkin, including the one who had watched over him with such sympathy and care through the night – and who would not mention his commander’s tears and strange distress to anymole, until he was old, and scribemoles tracked him down and persuaded him to talk of those times.

  “Greetings,” replied Thorne, his mind as clear and purposeful as it had ever been. “Yes, there is much work to do now, and we shall do it.”

  “Aye,” said Chervil, dismissing all but Feldspar, as Thorne dismissed his own guardmoles, “I believe that with your help, Brother Commander, and Brother Bolt’s here, if we act swiftly and with resolution, all is not lost. Now, listen...”

  Across the surface of Leamington, and through its newly ordered tunnels, the word went out that Brother Commander Thorne, and Chervil, son of Thripp, and that important Brother Rolt, assistant to Elder Senior Brother Thripp himself, were deep in conference, and the future was being planned.

  “It’s all happening now,” said the guardmole who had watched over Thorne to Tarn. “I tell you, this is where it’s at now. There’ll be things happening soon we’ll be telling our pups about one day.”

  Tarn nodded his head grimly: “If we’re not pushing up daisies first!”

  “Not with the Brother Commander in charge, mate. Talk about being Newborn – he looked reborn when he woke up this afternoon.”

  “He’ll need to be if Senior Brother Chervil’s involved!” said Fallow. “Now, let’s get some food ourselves, for they’ll be talking till dusk or beyond.”

  Which they did – far beyond, and into another night.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Leamington Massing was but one of many excesses that had afflicted moledom since Quail’s assumption of power at Wildenhope the previous Longest Night.

  There were certainly many more such “excesses” – some well known, others that were only discovered or revealed in the years and decades following, and many that will remain ever unrecorded, unless the shadows and ill-winds that lurk still in the tunnels and vales where they took place be taken as evidence.

  Certainly, few moles now venture through the broken portals and into the crumbling tunnels of such systems as Swindon, south-west of Duncton. There is every reason to believe that the complete disappearance of moles from that formerly populous system in Newborn times was accompanied by an appalling orgy of violence and extended suffering. Only screams on a wild winter’s day, and untraceable whimperings in the night, heard by frightened travellers who hurry quickly on, now tell of what once happened. All else is lost.

  But evidence of an even larger and viler massing than Leamington has recently emerged at Malvern, in the Welsh Borderland, possibly involving the infamous dark-furred moles of the Forest of Dean. Many local moles, and even some visiting researchers, have said that the curious red stains on the tunnel walls, and up the lower trunks and trees of Malvern, were made by followers’ blood. Others, less superstitious, have said the cause is simply a local variety of the poisonous death-scent lichen. No matter: there is truth in fancy as well as fact, and both speak with equal force of those harsh times.

  Yet morbidly fascinating though such local tragedies may be, a historian is aware that they were but symptoms of the deep and vile malaise that had overtaken moledom after Quail had supplanted Thripp as Newborn leader. Some historians have said that Quail was already suffering from a growing dementia by that fateful Longest Night at Caer Caradoc when Thripp lost power, but “dementia” is only a convenient label for a vile and evil condition of the spirit.

  Much of our evidence concerning Quail at that time comes from Snyde, whose meticulous records of the high councils of the Newborns are especially detailed where Quail was concerned, indeed, obsessively so. It would seem that having weaselled. his way into Quail’s confidence, Snyde did everything he could to exploit and extend the power of his position.

  What makes Snyde’s scribings so horrible for those who ken them now is his evident pleasure in Quail’s insane energy and his gradual surrender to seemingly uncontrollable rages and evil lusts. It is all too plain that Snyde saw Quail not only as master, but as an object of study as well, observing his progress into madness as dispassionately as an adder might watch the death struggles of a vole. Not only that, but Snyde and one or two others who contrived to gain Quail’s trust learned how to encourage and connive at his madness, and use it to their
own advantage.

  Thus, for example, did the mole Squilver, whom Thorne had demoted in Cannock, who had fled to Wildenhope in the hope of gaining advantage, have his rivals for command eliminated. This with the help of Snyde, who was aware that he himself did not have the qualities needed to take military command and was always eager to help those who did, and so gain their favour. The emergence in the third part of July of Squilver as Supreme Commander of the Newborns says as much about Snyde’s cunning and Quail’s clouded judgement as it does about the deviousness of Squilver himself.

  The title “Supreme Commander” was a new one, but it was almost meaningless from the beginning since the few competent Brother Commanders in the field had taken local matters into their own paws and were openly ignoring the Crusade Council’s orders. It may seem odd that Quail should permit another to bear so exalted a title, especially a mole as relatively unknown as Squilver, when allmole knew only too well that if anymole was “Supreme Commander’, it was Quail himself. But perhaps Quail enjoyed the unctuous flattery of Squilver, and liked even more the knowledge, shared by many at Wildenhope, that one so easily raised to “supreme” command might as easily be reduced to supreme humiliation.

  Yet while Squilver’s methods can never be condoned, killing to gain position seems somehow less shocking than murder for sexual gratification, which was Snyde’s predilection. We have seen already that his secret pleasures were taken with corpses, and we know now through the evidence of his own scribings that he was well aware that the decline of his master’s reason gave him the opportunity, frequently taken, of having innocent moles done to death that he might be rewarded with their cadavers. For Quail was dominated by evil lusts; in plain language, he took a sadistic delight in perverting and destroying the lives of young moles – whether male or female mattered not to him. It was now the province of the crooked and deformed Snyde, acting as his pimp, to bring these unfortunates to his private chambers, night after night.