Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  As for any history to do with Beechen and Boswell, whose transformations at Comfrey’s Stone remain one of the holy mysteries in the Duncton Chronicles, nomole thereabouts seemed in the slightest bit interested. And then, as for Privet...

  “Well! They don’t seem to want to know round here!” Rees told his friend.

  “Expect they want to forget such things: too much trouble and strife in recent years, and when there’s memories in a place it’s sometimes the darker ones that linger, not the good ones. Moles’ll take decades to forget the coming of the Newborns into their systems, just as they’ve not forgotten the grikes and moles of the Word, if their systems were cursed for a time by their presence. Such moles shut up and keep their snouts low.”

  She broke off into a fit of wheezy coughing and mutely shook her head when Rees offered her food.

  “Well, then, mole, come below into the scrape I’ve made and rest. Maybe tomorrow we’ll get to the Stone you seek.”

  She did so, and weary and dispirited he stanced down near her and drifted into sleep. He woke but once that night, with the strange feeling that his name had been called, and paws touched lightly to his face.

  “Mole, mole!” he whispered.

  He heard only her breathing, rasping and slow, and the hollow echo of his own voice. But the touch of paws lingered on, and a voice he could not quite place drifted about in his mind, calling his name as he went back to sleep.

  He woke only when cold dawn light came upon his face, but he had no need to open his eyes to know the old female had died. The little scrape was deathly still and cold and she, when he looked at her, was grey of snout, and her eyes, half open, were rheumy and yellow.

  He was not afraid of death, nor even sorry that she had died, for he had sensed that she had not long to live. But he would have liked her to have reached the Stone she sought, and in the prayers he said before he left he vowed he would touch it on her behalf if he found it. He whispered too of his gratitude that she had not been alone when she died, but that the Stone had put him near her, to help her, to comfort her.

  “But I never knew her name, Stone,” he said finally, and in wonder, surprised that he had never thought to ask it. But perhaps the pilgrim travels best who travels with no name.

  He looked at her one last time before he sealed up the little scrape, as anonymous a last resting-place as a mole could find, and he thought to himself that her name did not matter: whatmole she had been until he knew her he did not know, and nor did she know what he had been. But for a time they had journeyed together, their past behind them and the Stone ahead, and they had been a help and comfort to each other.

  Rees wept a little, and hoped that she found peace in the great Silence to which she had gone. He left her then, the day grey and chill, and suddenly, like a shaft of sun illuminating a patch of stormy sky, he knew with absolute certainty that he would reach Comfrey’s Stone that day.

  Slowly he journeyed on, at peace and without expectation of what was to come, feeling as strongly as he had ever felt that he was of the earth his paws touched, and the grey sky above, and of life, and death, and the Stone that waited ahead.

  Then, when in late afternoon he came to a rise and peering off to his right saw the form of a Stone along the edge of the escarpment he had reached, he felt it was a destination to which he had been heading all his life.

  He felt no surprise – except perhaps at the simplicity of it all. He paused awhile and thought again of the old female he had left behind, as if he had a last goodbye to make. But then, thinking more, it seemed to him that she was not left behind at all, but with him, and in some way she always would be: nameless, a journeyer, a mole of faith, a mole who accepted what help life gave and complained not at all of the difficulties it put in her way.

  “Come on, then,” he said aloud, unaccustomed tears wetting his face again, “let’s trek this last part of our journey to Comfrey’s Stone together.”

  But when he came closer and saw three moles waiting for him by the Stone he stopped again, snout low, barely able to put one paw in front of another, so moved and in awe did he feel. Two of them came to meet and greet him, a male and a female, with gentle laughs, and an embrace.

  “I... I...” But what could he say before such wonder, and what words could there ever be to explain what power had directed his paws the way he had come.

  “Though I felt sure somemole was coming, I never imagined it might be you,” whispered Arliss through her tears, her paws caressing his scarred eyes with a touch he seemed to have felt the night before.

  “Rees, Privet wanted to wait for somemole, but of course she couldn’t say...”

  Rees, she had said, but that was not the voice that had called his name. He turned to Hodder and knew again what he had known before, that he was a friend for life, though so strangely made and found again.

  “Arliss is right, we’ve been waiting for you,” said Hodder. “Stone knows why, and you might too.”

  Rees broke free of them both and went forward to where Privet waited by the Stone.

  “I heard you call my name,” he said.

  Her eyes were grey as the sky, and light in parts as the Stone that soared away above her.

  “I was sent by three moles to find you,” he said as Hodder and Arliss joined him.

  “What moles were they?” asked Hodder.

  “Brother Commander Thorne was one. Brother Rolt another. And Senior Brother Chervil was the third.”

  “What did they want?” asked Arliss.

  Rees’ eyes were still lost in Privet’s, and the light and depth in them seemed to increase at mention of the names of Rolt and Chervil.

  “They think it is time you returned to Duncton Wood,” said Rees.

  And Privet smiled just for a moment, and glanced at Hodder and then Arliss, and nodded her head.

  “Time to go home,” she seemed to say, though it was not she who spoke the words but moledom all about, or the rough grass, or the clouds, or the dark and leafless hedges that stretched away further than the eyes could see.

  “It’s time at last,” said Arliss.

  And later, when night was come and they had stanced down in nearby tunnels to rest before beginning their journey “home”, Arliss whispered to Rees, whose paws were about her, “Since insisting in that silent way she has, far more powerful than any words she might speak, she has been waiting here for days. None knew we were here, or who we were, though many passed us by. They seem unable to see the very mole they’re searching for. But how did she know you were coming? How?”

  Rees chuckled and said he had no idea. He had come and now they were all together once again. His was not to reason why. He knew only that now they would travel on together and it would take every Newborn and follower in moledom to part them again.

  “I didn’t know what I would feel when I saw you,” he whispered.

  “Nor I,” she said.

  “Well, you do now,” growled Hodder out of the darkness. “Go to sleep.”

  Rees started up and said, “I haven’t touched the Stone. There was a mole... I promised her... I...”

  He went to the surface, Arliss with him, Hodder grumbling as they went and Privet sleeping deeply.

  The Stone rose above them, now black against the night sky.

  “Was this where Comfrey died? And Boswell was...?”

  Arliss nodded, holding his paw.

  He reached out and touched the Stone and said, “I don’t know her name, but she’s here, very close, and she’s in pain no more.”

  “Rees,” whispered Arliss, “I feel I’ve known you all my life, long before we really met.”

  “I feel I’ve been coming here all my life. But what’s ahead? I can’t even begin to think.”

  “How did she know you were coming? How did she know?” repeated Arliss in wonder.

  Rees shook his head and said nothing, as silent as the Stone he touched. They stanced down where they were, and when they woke it was dawn; the sky was pa
le and a watery sun was rising in the east.

  “Remember us?” called Hodder cheerfully. He was stanced with Privet by some grass nearby, and they had finished eating some food he had collected. Privet was already looking westward across the high bleak landscape.

  “Time to go,” said Hodder, coming closer. “She’s been up since before dawn, and I think she wants to go.”

  Arliss and Rees hurriedly prepared themselves, Rees rubbing cold dew in his face to wake himself up, an old guardmole habit.

  “Let’s be off then,” said Hodder impatiently.

  “To Duncton Wood,” said Arliss, trying to make it the most natural thing in moledom. But it did not feel as natural or as light as she sought to be, and though the sun rose slowly behind them, the sky ahead remained dark, and full of foreboding.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The astonishing speed with which even the strongest and most entrenched of leaders can lose support and power, and be forced into flight or a final confrontation with their enemies, is always a surprise – especially to the moles who suffer it.

  To the historian however, who can take the longer view, and has an accumulation of evidence not available to moles bound up with the events at the time they occurred, the rapid demise of the great and the good – or the great and the bad, as is fortunately more often the case – is no surprise at all. Indeed, the surprise lies only in how long the vilest and most evil of moles can sometimes cling on to power.

  Which brings us now to Quail, and Snyde, and Squilver, and all their minions from Wildenhope, who had shared in the planning and execution of the Crusades since the previous Longest Night, and in the privileges and perquisites that had resulted. It was as if the black looming clouds that Rees and the others had observed towards Duncton from their vantage-point of Comfrey’s Stone, and towards which they set forth without demur, now hung over Quail and his fellow malefactors, and a storm seemed about to break.

  Yet had they not arrived at Banbury, and had not Brother Commanders like Sapient of Avebury hurried north to confer with them, in a mood of sublime confidence? They had. It had seemed then but a matter of deciding a final strategy by which moledom would be cleansed for all time of the followers, and its territories divided up between moles who could govern them easily in the name of the Caradocian Order. All so simple, all so plain...

  No doubt Quail, with Snyde’s connivance and, before his disgrace and confinement, Skua’s as well, had worked out how to spread power about moledom in a way that ensured that local Brother Commanders remained at loggerheads with each other, and the Crusade Council retained the power to promote, and execute. At the same it is beyond dispute that Elder Senior Brother Quail, having gained supreme temporal power, would soon be seeking to move on towards a new spiritual authority, which in the course of time would allow him to confer upon himself an inviolate holiness. A position in which he would need a clever and astute subordinate, whom he had found to perfection in the nauseating form of Snyde.

  But then, pride before the fall... Despite their instincts and reservations, driven by wounded vanity and over-confidence, without proper information about the nature and strength of their enemy, Quail and his friends had allowed themselves to enter into the struggle with Thorne. Yet not just Thorne, but Chervil and Bolt as well, and all the moles they led.

  It must be said, however, that though Quail began this civil war with reluctance, his Council, and in particular Squilver, prosecuted their attacks with considerable vigour. Squilver might have had little experience of strategy and the grand cause, but he acquitted himself passably, aided no doubt by the cunning of Brother Commander Sapient and his very ruthless guardmoles. Perhaps, too, they gained the benefit for a time of the natural reluctance of Thorne to be involved in such a war with fellow Newborns, and his unwillingness to let his own force behave with quite such efficient brutality as the moles under Squilver and Sapient.

  Whatever the reason, through mid-October, the moles of which Quail was Elder Senior Brother, who gave him their loyalty out of fear and awe, or for self-aggrandizement, gained some early tactical victories against Thorne. Here and there the loss of life was heavy, though Thorne’s skill was such that though initially in retreat he succeeded in reducing his losses to a minimum – the heavier losses being on the initially more successful side.

  But wars often drag on which both sides are confident will be short and sweet, and by the last third of October, with Sapient now very anxious to turn back south, for he had long feared that the very disaster that was about to afflict his forces in Avebury would occur, the two sides were deeply dug in north of Banbury, neither giving quarter, neither gaining ground for long. The situation was made worse by the series of storms and heavy wet weather that set in about then, creating muddy, cloying conditions that clogged up a mole’s paws, and seemed to clog up his mind as well.

  This deadlock might have continued for a molemonth or two more but for the arrival in Banbury of a mole who had travelled night and day with news that was to change everything, and directly bring about the downfall of Quail and Squilver, and lead to their headlong flight south into Duncton Wood.

  This mole, the tough and unpleasant Newborn commander Dirke of Devizes, deputed by Sapient for precisely this kind of intelligence work, had come hot-paw from Avebury to report that system’s devastating capture by the followers under Maple, and the danger that now confronted Buckland.

  To be more accurate, Dirke had come from Avebury by way of Barbury Hill where, “We caught them napping, Sapient, sir, and killed a good few in the Stone’s name.” In short, it was Dirke who should have been among those arraigned and executed by the followers for the crimes of Barbury.

  But he had got away, and now he was speaking to Sapient privily, for he knew enough not to tell anymole-else what his errand was, though his condition – filthy, tired, and cut and torn along the way – provoked questions aplenty. But Sapient’s guardmoles knew him well and acted as his bodyguard when they brought him north of Banbury and into Sapient’s presence.

  Nothing can describe the raw rage and anger of Sapient as he heard how quickly and totally the system and area he regarded as his personal territory had been taken over.

  “Moles will die for this!” he hissed, digging his talons savagely into Dirke’s chest and peering at him with so much malevolence that a lesser mole than Dirke might have thought he was about to die for it. But Sapient was not Quail, and retained control of both his temper and his talons. And like all successful tyrants and bullies he knew advantage when he saw it, even in what others might consider failure.

  “But anyway, mole, this may be just what we were planning for. We did after all make provision for a hasty retreat if need be, for as you know well, I have long believed that Buckland is the real centre of the south, and the system I desire to be in control of. Turling has resisted that, but now an opportunity arises, does it not?”

  “It certainly does, sir.”

  “Does Turling of Buckland know yet of the Avebury retreat?”

  “I doubt it. It may be one of his moles has come north on hearing news of it, but if they have they would not have made the speed I did. Night and day, sir, night and day.”

  “It is what I expect of you,” said Sapient coldly. “Now, this matter of Barbury Hill?”

  “We hoped it would slow them down, sir. None were left alive, though in such circumstances one can never be sure. But it will have frightened them, caused them to regroup and slow down, and our main force deliberately headed south for a day or two to lead them away from Buckland when they came in pursuit, just as your contingency plans arranged.”

  Sapient nodded, well satisfied. “Tell only as much to Turling as you need to, and concerning the future of that mole, await my personal instructions. Matters here are not good. The Elder Senior Brother is... well, shall we say he is less reliable than he was. It is a matter only of time..

  He said no more on that subject: Dirke had no need that he should, for he was a mole
who worked best in the shadowy world of the half-spoken word, and the meaningful silence. Dirke could construct a whole series of orders from Sapient out of almost nothing, and he would be right about every one of them. There was no love lost between Sapient and Turling, he knew that. Nor did Sapient any longer feel that Avebury fully satisfied his talents and ambitions. Had not the Elder Senior Brother himself once been Brother Commander of Avebury? He had. And look at how he had had to move away to rise up in the world!

  “Aye, look at him now,” muttered Sapient. “No, we can dally here no longer, Dirke, and I regret not returning south earlier. Quail will not like it, Squilver even less, but needs must, for if we do not get to Buckland fast that system may fall to the followers and the south will be much harder to regain control of.”

  “I have to say that they are doughty fighters, sir, and well led too.”

  “Hmmph!” said Sapient. “They will be no match for my guardmoles when I order them to stance their ground. The easy victory we allowed them at Avebury will have made them complacent, you mark my words! Now... rest up the night, Dirke, and then be ready to travel back with me, for I shall have need of you; there is work you alone must do. Change is coming now and we must be ready, and act swiftly if we are to secure the future for ourselves, and for moledom.”

  There was a glint of excitement in Dirke’s eyes, and of ambition and hope of reward.

  “I must talk to Turling now,” said Sapient. “Our withdrawal from here has been long planned, and I fancy Squilver has guessed as much.” Then he continued, almost to himself: “Well, he can’t fight two wars at once against his own side, and will not be able to stop us leaving him.

  In any case, he should not need us to hold the territory here, his own forces should be capable. So rest up, Dirke, for we shall leave on the morrow. Be ready to brief me more fully at dawn on what I might expect in the territory south of here.”