Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  “What moles are they?” asked Hibbott, setting forth again through the chamber to reach the other end, for he fancied he heard the sound of moles that way.

  “Oh, you mustn’t disturb them, whatever you do. He shouts and roars if you do..

  “He’s not...” began Hibbott, suddenly thinking what-mole it might be that shouted and roared. Not that he had at him on the one occasion they met.

  “Rooster, that’s the one.”

  “And his assistant, Frogbit?” said Hibbott with delight.

  “You know them!” exclaimed Purvey. “Then you’re a delver yourself?”

  Hibbott explained that he was not, and that he was only too happy to pause awhile until the delving was finished. He knew enough about such things not to wish to disturb work in progress.

  But he did not have to wait long, for dusk had already begun to fall; the sounds beyond became sporadic, and eventually pawsteps approached and Frogbit appeared, looking dusty and dishevelled.

  “Oh,” he said, seeing Hibbott and not seeming to recognize him.

  Hibbott reminded him who he was, and how they had met in the Wolds; Frogbit, mute and wide-eyed, stared at him and when he had quite finished, and after a silence, said, “I know. I remember. He’ll be pleased. Said you went ahead of him, now we’ve caught you up.”

  “Er, yes,” said Hibbott, unsure what all this meant.

  “No good going to him. Delving’s not gone well for days past. Reached a natural end, I say. But what am I? Only his assistant!”

  “An end!” exclaimed Purvey in alarm. “But you’ve only just begun. I mean the grand scheme, the Great Chamber, the —”

  “Beginning’s the most difficult bit,” said Frogbit matter-of-factly. “Delvings grow by themselves after that. Others do them. You’ll see, I expect. Hibbott’s coming’s the end for now, I reckon. That’s what I think. Could be wrong. Often am with Rooster, but getting better. Know what I mean?” He grinned briefly and said, “He’s coming now. No he’s not, he’s stopped. Thinking he is, about the northern portal. Difficult, bit of a bodge, that is.”

  Whether Rooster had been coming Hibbott did not know, since he did not appear.

  Purvey leaned towards Hibbott and whispered, “He’s usually right. Queer fellows, delvers. Ears like snouts: hear things you and I can’t.”

  They all fell into a pleasant silence, so relaxing that as the light faded in the chamber Hibbott’s eyes began to droop and sleep was beginning to come over him.

  Then Rooster appeared, quite suddenly, as if he had been lurking just out of sight and had decided to surprise them all by rushing in. One moment he was not there and the next the chamber seemed full of him.

  “Hibbott the pilgrim mole we talked to at Bourton’s here,” said Frogbit.

  “Hibbott,” said Rooster coming near and peering hard at him. “Why? Privet?”

  Hibbott told him of Privet’s coming to Duncton, and, as best he could, the situation around and about Duncton: pilgrims massing, Thorne coming from the north, rumours of Maple and the followers fighting the Newborns in the south, and Quail safely beyond the well-defended cross-under through which Privet had now gone.

  “Privet’s near end of her beginning, like us here and now, and I should be there,” said Rooster at the end of it all, most mysteriously. “You’ve come to get me.”

  “Have I?” wondered Hibbott.

  Rooster nodded, scratching his face from which the reddish dust of soil came up in clouds and made Purvey sneeze.

  Frogbit blinked in surprise and said, “Bless you.”

  “Did she have the Book?” asked Purvey, dabbing at his snout. “I mean...”

  “She did not seem to,” said Hibbott.

  “No,” said Rooster, “no, no. Not outside Duncton. Inside. That’s what Duncton is.”

  Hibbott looked uncomprehendingly at Rooster, who frowned as ferociously as ever, though his eyes were warmer and his stance easier than before.

  “You tend, if I may say so, to talk oddly,” said Hibbott. “What do you mean by ‘Duncton is’?”

  Rooster ignored this altogether and grumbled to himself instead, finally declaring that he was hungry, at which Purvey bustled off and found some worms.

  “Duncton,” said Rooster finally, “is where we must all go. Is where the Book of Silence must be, which we are, all of us, even...”

  Rooster cast around for somemole or other who might be generally considered not to be part of “all of us”, or only a very peripheral part, and Frogbit offered up a name.

  “Snyde?” he said.

  “No,” said Rooster, “Snyde’s important. Can’t have Silence without him.”

  “Quail?” tried Purvey.

  Rooster shook his head and said, “Like Snyde. Would be nothing, all of us, without him.”

  “Then, how about me?” said Hibbott, perfectly happy to be peripheral.

  Rooster laughed generously and patted Hibbott on the back with his great right paw, so that Hibbott was nearly flattened on the ground and Frogbit had to come hurrying and help him up and dust him down.

  “No!” said Rooster. “Like Rowan’s descendant.”

  “Who’s he?” asked Hibbott.

  “Long time ago, was Rowan,” said Rooster. “Spindle and Mayweed knew him in old days, when modern times began, when Book of Silence began to be again. Before I was born. Rowan lived in the Wen.”

  Light dawned on Purvey’s face and he said, “My, you have a good memory, Rooster, sir, not many would remember him. He was very insignificant.”

  “Nomole is insignificant. That’s what I meant, not even Rowan’s descendant.”

  “But who is he?” asked Hibbott.

  Rooster shrugged and Frogbit said, “Who knows? Rooster doesn’t know. I don’t. You don’t. Purvey mole doesn’t. Therefore, peripheral. But important all the same, like the delving at the edge is important to the part in the middle.”

  Rooster nodded approvingly and said, “Frogbit’s learning. One day Frogbit will have learnt. One day Frogbit will be a delver true, through and through, from snout to talon, from head to heart. That day gets nearer and will suddenly be.”

  Frogbit was so surprised and embarrassed by this unexpected eulogy that his snout blushed bright red, and he tried to hide it between his paws.

  “So, Purvey mole, we must go,” said Rooster not unkindly. “Must go to Duncton now that Privet’s come to ground. Nomole is alone, though all must travel alone. Now Privet needs all our help.”

  “But what about the delving still to be done, the Great Chamber, the southern tunnels, the lower extension, the... the...” Purvey’s voice faded as his dreams seemed to crumble before his eyes.

  “Tell him, Frogbit.”

  “Did, Master. Said. Others will come, now beginning’s been made. Cuddesdon is on the way to fame!”

  Rooster laughed. “Master of the Delve will come again, Purvey,” he said gently, “so you stay here. You help best here. Be ready and Master will come as I came.”

  “But you are the Master of the Delve,” whispered Purvey, thoroughly miserable.

  “Another will be. Another is in the making. We made tunnels and chambers new, ready for life to come: another Master will bring life and Rooster and Privet will be made happy.”

  Rooster stayed where he was for some hours more, not because he did not want to leave, but because, as Hibbott reported, he sensed that Purvey needed to talk a little, and express his sense of disappointment and loss. More even than that, he sensed that he needed to show Frogbit that being Master of the Delve was more than delving, it was being with those a delver delves for, too.

  But finally, deep in the night, with Purvey consoled, Rooster said, “Must go now, must go to Duncton Wood. All things coming, all moledom waiting, and soon now the Book of Silence will begin. Like a great delving it is, like Cuddesdon, like the Ancient System of Duncton, like Whern, like Hilbert’s Top, like Hobsley Coppice... one mole’s paws make a delving begin, many make it grow, one must com
plete it. For the Book of Silence Privet is that one, and we must help her.”

  Purvey sniffed and snivelled in the darkness but nodded his head.

  “I’ll come and see you off, like I’ve seen other moles. If you see Hamble, tell him it would give me much pleasure if he came this way again. Tell him I enjoyed his company and missed him when he left. As I shall miss you. Will you tell him that?”

  “Will,” said Rooster and with a last deep chuckle he led Hibbott and Frogbit out of Cuddesdon, and back towards Duncton Wood.

  But by now they were not the only moles heading in that direction: all of moledom seemed to be doing so. The word had already spread abroad that Privet had finally been seen at Duncton itself, and though most had merely heard what Hibbott himself had witnessed, that she had delivered herself into the paws of Quail, this did not deter anymole at all. Just the opposite in fact, for now it was not only pilgrims that were apaw, but anymole with half a spark of life and faith in him, who sensed that now great things were happening, and he should be party to them.

  For some it was simple curiosity; for others an opportunity to direct their anger against the Newborns, whose evident growing weakness in those parts gave them courage to come forward now. For many more, however, it was more than that; it was the feeling that a time had come, a time of history, which might have to do with the Book of Silence, or might not. But whatever it was, it was a time when a mole who professed faith in the Stone must stance up and be counted.

  Not that all the many travellers Rooster and the others met were followers. Many were Newborns, though these were less willing to profess their particular brand of faith, and perhaps few of them were brothers in the strict sense of the word, but rather moles who had come under the influence of the Newborns and, for now at least, adhered to their belief.

  The nearer they came to Duncton, the busier were the routeways. There was a strange mood abroad, part festive, part concerned, part belligerent, part awed. Mole looked at mole suspiciously, or with a welcome, depending what they looked like and who they said they were.

  Nomole yet recognized Rooster at all, though he remained what he always had been: the most striking of moles in any company – larger than most, wild of fur and eye, huge and unbalanced of paw, charismatic. Some pilgrims seemed to think he was an idiot mole, for more than one whispered sympathetically to Hibbott, who looked like a pilgrim if ever a mole did, “Going to be healed, is he? Hoping she might lay paws on him and make him whole?”

  “I certainly am hoping!” Hibbott heartily rejoined, once he realized that Rooster did not mind their mistake at all.

  “Am fool at heart. Have been always,” he said cheerfully. “Masters of the Delve must be to delve at all. Can’t delve a true line if you worry about beginning, and worry about end. Got to be free with your talons in the middle. See?”

  “Er, yes,” said Hibbott, eyeing Rooster’s paws warily, for at such moments, even though he spoke in a low voice and was doing his best not to attract attention, he was inclined to let his passions get the better of him and wave his paws about, always frustrated that his words could not convey all he wanted to say. In addition, whenever he spoke of delving, he was inclined to make delving motions in the air, which always seemed to Hibbott very wild indeed. Hibbott had no wish to be flattened again.

  Strangely, Rooster did not hurry, and nor did he seem overly concerned with any particular plan to help Privet. He was going to her now and that was enough.

  “Pleased, he is,” said Frogbit when they stopped to eat some food – food which had been hard to find along the path since the many who had gone before had found the obvious worms, and driven the rest away. “Pleased and happy. So am I.”

  “What’s he going to do when he gets to Duncton?”

  “What do you do?” asked Frogbit unexpectedly.

  “Me? I wander where my heart takes me and as the spirit moves me,” said Hibbott, a little dreamily.

  “That’s what he’ll do,” said Frogbit.

  “Talking too much,” growled Rooster, his brow furrowing and his eyes narrowing. “That’s what you are.”

  “Sorry,” said Frogbit meekly.

  “Don’t no more,” said Rooster.

  Frogbit did not.

  Not having hurried themselves, it was getting towards midday when they came over the last rise before Duncton Wood itself, and for the first time the festive mood shifted towards something more sombre. It was not hard to see why, for groups of very solid-looking moles were posted some way off the path, watching the crowds intently.

  “Uh, oh!” muttered Frogbit: “Newborn guardmoles.”

  Others had clearly come to the same conclusion, for the chatter had ceased, and moles were either looking in every direction but the guardmoles, or only in their direction, and belligerently.

  “Keep your snout low and mind clean,” said Rooster, cuffing Frogbit, who was staring at the guardmoles a little too pointedly. “Not looking for them,” he added grumpily.

  Hibbott wondered what they were looking for, and might even have asked Rooster had not two of the guardmoles detached themselves from some others and come heading downslope straight towards them.

  If Rooster saw them he did not say, but with his head thrust forward, his eyes on the ground, and his shoulders hunched most formidably, he set off at a fast pace down towards the largest group of moles he could see. Frogbit and Hibbott had almost to jog to keep up with him, and the two guardmoles, who were coming at a tangent, began to lose ground; throwing dignity aside, they began to run to catch up, shouting as they came.

  “Hey, you there!”

  “You, mole!”

  The crowd of moles towards which Rooster hurried them was spread across a terrace of grass on the near side of the vale up whose far side the pasture ground rose to Duncton’s High Wood. Along the vale’s bottom, and someway below and beyond these moles, the roaring owl way that cut off Duncton Wood so effectively ran from north to south.

  Because they were hurrying, and the Newborn guardmoles were catching them up, they had not time or inclination to take in much of the scene, or what was happening in it, but it was clear that the crowd was a restless one, for it was milling about and full of excited chatter, and moles seemed to be craning to see things below them, first on the right flank, and then on the left.

  Even in the short time since Hibbott had been there the numbers had increased, but they had fallen back from the cross-under, which lay directly in the vale below.

  “Yes, you mole,” said one of the guardmoles finally reaching Rooster as he mingled with the crowd. The guardmole s voice was noticeably less commanding than it had been, and he seemed aware that other moles were watching him, and that they were none too friendly and that he and his companion were out-numbered.

  “I’ve seen you before, Brother,” he said, quite softly now, as if he wished to attract as little attention to himself and his burly colleagues as possible.

  Rooster turned slowly and stared at him, and if moles stared even more curiously it was, in truth, less because of the Newborns, than because of Rooster himself. He towered over most of them, and though he answered quietly his voice had a rough resonance and depth that caught others’ attention.

  “Have seen you,” said Rooster, “seen you many times.”

  “Why, by the Stone, it is him,” said the second guardmole to the first, his voice quiet but excited.

  Surprisingly, Rooster smiled and went closer and the moles about them relaxed and seemed to lose interest, as if they saw, or thought they did, not an arrest of the kind they had seen so many times before, but merely a meeting of old acquaintances.

  “Aye,” said Rooster, “is him. But don’t say it. Don’t let others hear my name. Better not.”

  “By the Stone!” muttered the first of the guardmoles, peering into Rooster’s eyes and then down at his paws. “It really is. Saw you at Caradoc, mate. Then at Wildenhope. Saw you drown. How did you get away with it?”

  “Did drown
. Lived again. Newborn!” Rooster laughed suddenly, and rather too loudly, at his own joke, and for a moment others looked around at the group again curiously. Then whatever was happening in the vale below took up their attention once more.

  “What do you want?” Hibbott ventured.

  The guardmole stared at Hibbott vacantly, and then turned his attention back to Rooster.

  “You can run but you can’t hide,” he said, “because I’m going to keep an eye on you.”

  “Not difficult,” said Frogbit brightly, “he’s very big.”

  “Go and inform somemole that our old friend the Master of the Delve has deigned to put in an appearance, will you?” said the guardmole calmly to his friend; and he was off just as fast as he could go.

  So now they were four, and an odd lot (as Hibbott was later to put it) they were. His account is not the only one, nor even the best known, of what happened in the following hour or so, but it is the most straightforward, and possibly the most accurate. He was, after all, right there, and his view was more objective and less coloured by the emotions and stresses of the day, than most.

  “Surprising as it may seem,” he scribes in his Pilgrimage, “I did not feel worried by this latest turn of events. There was such a strange inevitability about what happened that day that a mole was wise not to think beyond the present moment. I was therefore rather less concerned than I might otherwise have been about what moles were now to be informed of Rooster’s presence, and what they might do.

  “In any case, such events were unfolding on the ground below us before the cross-under that I doubt if anymole in that crowd, except the guardmole who had said that Rooster could not hide, was interested in much else.

  “By dint of talking to those about us, and from what we could see for ourselves, it soon became clear what was apaw, and of all the many strange and exciting sights I had been witness to on my long journey from Ashbourne Chase, this was to be almost the strangest, and almost the most exciting. I say ‘almost’ advisedly, for there was one more to come, of which I shall scribe in due course.