Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

“Yes,” said Quail, happy to hear Skua’s dry clear voice again. He was so much easier than Snyde, who confused him.

  “And then?” asked Skua.

  “We shall make sacrifice,” said Quail, his eyes never leaving Skua’s.

  “And after that?” said Skua, indifferently it seemed. “What mole shall utter the prayers before thy ordination, if not...”

  Quail winced and said, “Oh, you, mole, you do it.”

  “But, Master, I...” hissed Snyde, furious. What of the sacrifice?

  “Skua shall do it. The more he does the greater I shall love him, Brother Snyde.”

  Which could mean anything.

  The two enemies looked venomously at each other over the misshapen, swollen head of Quail.

  “And whose paw is this, Elder Senior Brother,” asked Skua, indicating the text of the liturgy, “for this is not Brother Snyde’s, which we all know so very well?”

  “A mole called Sturne. A Keeper.”

  “He scribes well. He seems to know his texts.”

  “He...” began Snyde, trying to stop Skua going on. But Skua was not to be stopped now, and nor did Quail wish it.

  “And what part shall this Keeper Sturne play in the Holy Rites to honour you?” asked Skua, sensing this might weaken Snyde. “It is not the tradition that he who utters the Declaration should proceed to the liturgy of ordination. Is that his role?”

  “Master, I...” snarled Snyde, for the ordination was his role, his glorious role and could not, must not be taken from him.

  “Fetter... will know Sturne,” gasped Quail, the pains returning. “Ask him. Summon them both. Skua, do it for me.”

  “As I love you, Master,” said Skua smoothly, nodding to one of the guardmoles who had always been an ally, “they shall be brought to your holy presence now.”

  “Not holy yet,” said Quail with false modesty.

  “Most holy is he to us,” replied Skua unctuously, “who the Stone hath chosen to be Paramount and Prime.”

  “I like that,” laughed Quail delightedly, “let it be part of the liturgy! ‘Most holy is he to us who the Stone hath chosen to be Paramount and Prime’.”

  He sang the. words, so far as his cracked and weakening voice allowed of singing, and then he said, “Summon my dear Squelch as well. He shall make a song of those words you spoke, Skua, and play his part as well.”

  “I am honoured, Master.”

  So it was that Sturne was there in Quail’s chamber when the final decisions were made about what the liturgy would be, and what the form, and whatmole would play which part.

  Snyde got his way over the ordination at least, and that seemed enough to him. But Fetter, being inferior in rank to Skua, must precede him in anything he did, and so to him was allotted the task of the Ministry of the Word, which is to say certain readings from ancient molish texts, and more modern ones, and the singing of a canticle, which Fetter would first speak, and Squelch then sing.

  Sturne was left with what seemed the lesser task of uttering the introit to the Vigil of the Dark Night, which preceded the Commendation and Committal of Quail’s pain-racked body to the Stone before the ordination. That would occur with the dawn light, when he would be made Prime at last.

  “Whatmole shall conduct the Commendation and Committal?” whispered Snyde, hoping that it might be he, thereby bringing him back into the centre of affairs.

  “Shall I do it?” said Sturne with due humility, “for it is meet that a mole who does not know thee personally should conduct you out of the perdition of this life into the mystery of Paramount and Prime.”

  “Is it meet?” asked Quail.

  “It is most meet,” concurred Skua, pleased to be the cause of a further diminution of Snyde’s role.

  “It is so,” added Snyde, “and meet too that one should welcome you into the ordination at dawn who knows you well, for we shall be joyous then.”

  “Good, good,” said Quail. “Keeper Sturne, you are a mole of sense.”

  “And the sacraments of blood and flesh, Elder Senior Brother?” said Sturne, suddenly forceful.

  “Those! You utter them, for the rest of us will be quite lost by then!”

  It was Quail being jocular, and they all laughed, except the guardmoles in the shadows all about. But Snyde frowned once more, for in that last decision he sensed danger, though why he did not know. Perhaps Sturne was more than he seemed.

  Quail said, “I shall sleep a little, and then we shall not delay more. Is all else ready?”

  “It is, Master,” Fetter was the first to say. The day was darkening.

  “My pains have almost gone,” said Quail. “I am minded not to sleep at all, but to begin now.”

  There was absolute silence. Discussion was one thing, now reality loomed. Snyde glanced at Skua and Skua at Snyde, and Fetter at them both, all assessing, all calculating.

  It was Sturne who dared take the initiative once more.

  “Why not, Master?” he said gently. “There is no time like the present, and we are eager to celebrate the coming of Prime.”

  “Even I cannot advance the coming of the dawn when the Vigil shall be kept, but you are right, Keeper Sturne, it is a celebration and as such will give me strength for the Commendation and Committal, and the Vigil that follows... and I like you. Stay close by me. We shall begin now.”

  “Now?” whispered Snyde.

  “Yessss,” said Quail, “for I am weary and I would begin before the pains return, which in sleep they might. Sturne advises well. Now it shall be. Yet, I am nervous.”

  He looked about them all, with that fearful look that sometimes crosses the face of a female about to pup who has never pupped before, not unlike the expression that may cross the face of a mole about to suffer punishment or execution.

  “Moles, help me through the trial to come.”

  They all murmured that they would, but only one there felt a vestige of pity, slight though it was, yet pity all the same.

  “We shall,” said Sturne once more, wondering how it might be that after so long living in the Newborn darkness he should feel pity for this most foul and vile of moles. Perhaps it was that he saw the tyrant become his own most pitiful victim.

  He followed along in the procession that now left the Library, and headed towards the Stone Clearing through the morning light. He did feel pity and shame, but then he put that all behind him, and hardened his heart as he repeated to himself that part of the liturgy that he was especially to speak, and pondered the coming Vigil of the Dark Hour, which is the vigil unto death. He contemplated some of the words...

  “Renew in him, most loving Stone, whatsoever hath been decayed by the fraud and malice of the Snake and the Worm, or by his own carnal will and frailty...”

  Even as Sturne repeated these words to himself in readiness for the rite to come – and there were many more of the same in the liturgy he had put together for Snyde – the sky seemed to darken further and ahead of him Quail cried out in pain, mortal and profound. Then he who would be Paramount and Prime faltered, and staggered, and put his paw out to one he still trusted most of all – Snyde, who stanced firm, though to Sturne, watching from the back of the procession, it seemed that Snyde was only as firm as rock that has been twisted, turned and contorted, and so malformed by the fires of the deep.

  Sturne saw how massive was the deployment of guardmoles in the High Wood, for they were everywhere he looked, in every shadow, by every gap. But as the procession wound on in among the larger and more formidable beech trees of the High Wood, he could not but think that with their massive roots and trunks, and leafless branches thrusting up towards the darkened sky, they were surely guardians of something far more ancient and venerable than a mole who sought to be Paramount and Prime.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Although Squilver had been among those in the procession to the Stone, moments before the Clearing was reached moles came running up from the south-east slopes with news of the first sighting of Maple and the followers.
Thorne’s coming he already knew about, and that threat was contained, but the arrival now of Maple, half expected for several days, was not good, and most inconvenient.

  We do not know if Squilver seriously expected to long survive the coming of Thorne and Maple, though probably he did. The news of Sapient’s death had, perhaps, given him some pleasure, even hope. That mole’s departure from Banbury had forced the Elder Senior Brother’s retreat and now the Stone had arraigned him, judged him, and found him wanting, and his death was a just punishment.

  Possibly Squilver hoped that a war would be fought between Thorne and Maple which would so weaken both of them that if he could stay within the sanctuary of Duncton Wood he might live on as Supreme Commander. We do not know...

  Nevertheless, Maple had arrived at Duncton inconveniently soon, and we know that Squilver left the High Wood reluctantly, before the ceremony really started, giving very strict instructions that he should be informed when it began so that he might hasten back. Meanwhile – and for this commentators on his conduct as Supreme Commander give him praise – he made sure that the guardmoles about the High Wood were very well deployed indeed.

  One other thing we know, which gives a historian no pleasure to relate. At about the time that the procession started off from the Library, Arvon and the few moles he still had under his command made their last brave bid to reach the High Wood and the Stone. They were caught and held only shortly before Squilver’s reluctant trek back through the High Wood and so it was before the Supreme Commander himself that they were brought.

  He looked at them and wondered whether to spare their lives long enough for them to be used in the sacrificial rites that he knew would soon be part of Quail’s elevation. But his mind was on the imminent arrival of Maple, and dealing with three captured rebels was an irritating diversion.

  “Kill them,” he said, “and let them lie where they fall as warning to others who may seek to come this way. No,” he said, turning back for a moment, “put their bodies out at the edge of the trees above the pasture slopes down to the cross-under. They will be more easily found.”

  His words were as brief and brutal as the talon-thrusts which, but moments later, put to their deaths Arvon of Siabod and the last two moles he led. They had lived by the talon, and themselves had killed moles, as they were killed then.

  Stolid, silent, with what last memory of Siabod’s mountains, or what last sight of the soaring branches above their heads, we know not, they died as such warriors so often die: not in glory, not in light or triumph, but somewhere; anywhere, unremarkable, ordinary, unmemorable, forgotten. Moles who seek that site in the High Wood today look for signs of it in vain. Trees are trees; roots, roots; and the rotting surface litter of the wood always looks the same, though it is always changing.

  Before he died, did Arvon think of what the moles Rees and Arliss had told him, that Privet would not have thanked him for rescuing her? Did he wish he had seen Ystwelyn one more time? Or did he, perhaps, think finally of Cluniac, who he had trained in the covert arts he knew so well, but whom, despite every entreaty, he had refused permission to accompany him back into Duncton?

  “I was born in Siabod, mole, and I am a warrior through and through. So may the Stone grant that I die. But you, why, mole, you are a Duncton mole and in you, despite your bravery, I see another way. Therefore, though we have need of you, and this is your system, you shall not come with us. Stay here with these... pilgrims. Wait for Maple’s coming, which cannot be long delayed. If I do not live, tell him that I was loyal to his cause to the very end. Then, mole, pray for me at the Duncton Stone and wish me well.”

  Such were his last words to Cluniac. Perhaps in his final moments he remembered his refusal to let the Duncton mole come with him that day with gratitude, and felt that the Stone had been with him then, as he hoped it was with him now.

  Perhaps... but we do not know.

  But there was nothing uncertain about the pomp and circumstance with which Quail was led into the Clearing to take his place near the Stone. Squelch preceded him with a motley choir of younger moles, followed by Brother Inquisitor Fetter, the choir humming while Fetter chanted the first part of the Ministry of the Word – as Sturne and Snyde had redrafted it within the Liturgy of Prime.

  “Almighty Stone,

  With grace you sent Balagan, First Mole

  Who was Prime,

  Father of White Moles and precursor;

  With grace you decreed the Blessed Boswell

  To he the Father of Beechen, who came to us

  And gave his life for us.

  By the same grace,

  Show us obedience, through you...

  Discipline, through you...

  Silence, through you...

  And prepare us for the transformation

  Of our blessed Elder Senior Brother,

  Quail of Avebury,

  Into Prime.”

  These, more or less, were the words Fetter uttered, and it must be said that as he did so and the chant continued, and Squelch moved the choir’s humming on into a counter-pointing song, a certain sense of awe and majesty came over the proceedings.

  Subsequent reports have sought to persuade us that the unholy ceremony that was now beginning, and would not be complete in all its ghastliness until the following dawn, was wholly without true purpose or merit. It was, such commentators argue, merely about the exaltation and elevation of a foul mole, and nothing more at all, and had no virtue.

  But they are wrong, and misunderstand not only the subtle and brilliant achievement of Sturne in subversively transforming a vile ceremony to something redemptive, but also that it is in moments of life’s greatest darkness that the Stone’s Light may shine forth at its most bright. This was the paradox of those crucial hours which were indeed about death and rebirth, of which the elevation of Quail was but a context, and a parody.

  However, despite the ceremony’s confident beginning all was not quite well. The Stone was larger and more impressive than Snyde remembered it, and the Clearing rather wider, and the trees that formed it rather taller. Which meant that all in all, a mole like Quail, striving as he was to look grand, even holy, despite his hideous swellings and baldness, managed only to appear paltry, foul, and dwarfed. This last impression was strengthened by the fact that though there was a crowd of moles, it was of a size to spread along only one part of the Clearing’s edge.

  Snyde was very displeased by this, and calling a temporary halt to the proceedings, he whispered fiercely to Fetter to put things right. Much annoyed, the Brother Inquisitor had to scurry about and draft in some of the guardmoles from about the High Wood. But this was easier said than done, for though more guardmoles were summoned, to make things look busier, yet the space was vast, and seemed to grow vaster as little by little the light gave way towards dusk, and the Stone grew more massive in the gloom, and the beech trees seemed more towering still.

  None of this appeared to affect Quail at all; having been brought before the Stone, he now stanced by it with his swollen eyes shut, muttering incoherently to himself. And dwarfed though he was by the Stone, and the High Wood, there was in fact no denying that he was, in some strange, ghastly way, impressive.

  Equally, there was no denying that the moles who would be offered up in sacrifice as blood and flesh, which is to say Thripp and Privet, looked very unimpressive indeed. Though Thripp was stronger-looking than in the Wildenhope days, by virtue of being fattened up for the ceremony, he was old, and his head was low, his eyes downcast.

  Privet seemed to have retreated into some inner place, leaving her body grey and slumped, and her face wan.

  Though their eyes had pierced Quail to the heart when he had seen them for the first time a day and a half before, now they seemed dull and dim, and tired. Which perhaps he sensed, for at the end of Fetter’s chant, and while Snyde was having the crowd augmented and re-arranged, he looked up, searched among the moles, saw them, noted how they did not look at him, and drew himself up somewh
at and felt more confident.

  The Ministry of the Word was now resumed by Fetter, with Skua beginning to play a part in such a way that it was made quite plain that he was the superior of the two. This effect was achieved by having Fetter utter interminable canticles of obscure mediaeval texts, the last line of which Skua would repeat more loudly, much as one mole might crunch up a worm only to have his superior take up and eat the juiciest morsel.

  If there had been any sense earlier that Duncton Wood was besieged by moles beyond the cross-under, whose numbers had steadily increased in recent days and who must surely before long break into the system by persuasion or by force, it was not much felt by the Stone that evening and even less so as the ceremony continued.

  For as the liturgy unfolded, interspersed with chant and song, a kind of enchantment fell about the Stone which allowed no concern for what went on beyond it.

  The world beyond, indeed, was becoming inconsequential, and all that mattered was the here and now of the ceremony itself. Most fortuitously, it was at this time, and with the lack of numbers still worrying Snyde, who had imagined something more glorious for a ritual whose ending, he secretly hoped, would be with him, that news of the emergence of Pumpkin and the others was brought to him.

  Had not Fetter been so heavily engaged, and stanced in the centre of the Clearing before Quail, the news might have reached him first, and the outcome been very different, very peremptory, and very violent. But it did not, and Snyde, hearing that Pumpkin had been caught, and regarding him as of no real consequence but as fodder for the coming ceremony, gave instructions that he and his rebel companions be brought to the Clearing and placed near the other captive moles.

  “Tell them they shall be obedient, and silent, and that if they are not they will be killed forthwith,” he said.