Which they did not for one moment doubt, and came along most obediently and silently, surprised to be alive at all, and to be witnesses to what was taking place.
What Snyde could not then tell, nor any other Newborn there, was that their coming, and particularly that of Pumpkin and Hamble, was part of what occurred. Chance, or the Stone perhaps, placed both those good moles within sight of Privet, who until then had kept her snout and eyes cast down. She looked up, she saw them, she saw the love and wonder and delight and most of all the support in their eyes and a shudder of relief went through her. She said nothing, but glanced at where Thripp stanced and he, too, looked up, and following her gaze to her dear friends, understood as well that for the first time the trust that each had so long placed in the Stone might be rewarded. Thripp too seemed to shiver with a kind of awed apprehension, and his eyes were beacons of faith shining in the gloom.
“I think that’s Thripp,” whispered Hamble, and Pumpkin nodded, sure that it was, but quite unable for more than a moment to take his gaze from Privet, in whom he saw such change; he was now quite sure – as sure as faith itself – that if the Stone would allow him, he would serve her as aide to his dying breath.
Of the participants in the ritual one alone saw these things, and understood their great significance, and that was Sturne. He had seen Pumpkin’s coming with wonder, he had gazed on Hamble with curiosity, for he had only seen him once before when he first came to the system, though he knew of him in so many other ways, and he saw that with their arrival a new purpose and intent came to Privet and Thripp. In seeing this he knew that the Stone was with them now, urging them on, and that by communion of their spirit they might together subvert the ceremony that had now begun.
Then, suddenly, like the unexpected cracking of a great branch in an ancient oak, Snyde’s voice was heard.
“Those who have authority to do so have chosen Brother Quail, born of Avebury, and a mole of worthy life and sound learning to be Paramount and Prime among the moles of this earth.
“Of those present note before the Blessed Stone, who have sight of this venerable and humble mole, and know that he has suffered the trial of Snake and Worm, and that his body bears the marks and pain of that suffering, we ask this question: Is it your will that he should be ordained?”
There could be no denying the power and authority with which Snyde spoke, and as his voice rose at the end of his question the assembly shouted, “It is! It is our will!” And if, among those shouting, some of the rebel followers found themselves involuntarily joining in, a mole should not be surprised, nor even censorious.
For as they did so, and Pumpkin, Elynor and Hamble heard them, these three began to understand what Sturne had already realized, that the more they entered into the spirit of things, the more in some mysterious way they might succeed in subverting the ceremony.
Nor did these three have to wait long for a chance to join in again, for Snyde followed up the first question with a second.
“Of those here present we now ask in all solemnity, will you uphold Quail, born of Avebury, in his holy ministry?”
“We shall! We shall uphold Quail in his holy ministry!” they all cried out, and Pumpkin and the others loudest of all. Only Thripp and Privet were silent, and they cast down their eyes once more.
The Presentation of Quail having been made, and he having looked up once more at the crowd that proclaimed him worthy by their assent, he turned for the first time to face the Stone. He did so with some difficulty, Fetter and Snyde having to come to his flanks to help him, and all could hear the pain in his rasping breath, and sense the truth in Snyde’s reference to his suffering. Several of the Newborns in the crowd, carried away by a genuine sense of awe and occasion, were leaning forward where they stanced and whispering to him, and offering their paws towards him, as if to give him support and encouragement. In him, it seemed, they really did see something of themselves; in him, as well, they believed the power of the Stone might soon be made incarnate.
Skua now moved slowly towards the Stone and took his place between it and the gasping Quail, every bit the Senior Brother Inquisitor. The time for the sevenfold inquisition had come, though had Snyde had his way it would have been eightfold. But there they were, and there Skua was, gaunt in the evening gloom, the Stone rising most impressively above him. Quail, his back to the crowd, snout low, seemed like a supplicant.
Skua paused, no doubt for effect, but in that pause the crowd noticed for the first time, perhaps because there came the slightest of breezes to the branches high above, and then down to the surface below, an odour: the odour indeed, which all had heard about but of which few had suffered the full-blown scent. They suffered it now and it was a most wretched and retch-making thing, like the smell of excrement mixed with the bile of a dying mole. So bad was it, so foul, that there was a tremor through the crowd, a sort of group recoil, which was steadied only by the resolution of the guardmoles, and a sudden departure from the rite by Snyde.
Sensitive as he was to danger and attuned to all that was best for his own purpose, he swung round to face the crowd, raising his paws as he did so, and declaimed, “Blessed are we to suffer the odours of his corporeal decay as now he who shall be Paramount and Prime commences his lonely journey towards the Dark Night, casting off the rottenness of his weak flesh to assume the holy form of the White Mole he shall become.
“Scent his odour, moles! It is thine own! Scent his decay! It is thine own! Scent the beginning of the death he must suffer and the pains he must endure before the Vigil we shall celebrate!”
There was silence at first; then, like fickle reeds blown first one way by the wind, and then another, most of the moles there cried out their approval and delight at Snyde’s words. Then, incredibly, horribly, some – not many, thank the Stone – broke through the cordon formed by the guardmoles in front of the crowd and running to Quail’s hinderparts, sniffed and snouted the odours therefrom like dogs, and as if intoxicated and a little nearer holiness themselves, wandered ecstatically back in among the crowd. “Blest be!” the others cried. “Blest be!” Skua now began the First Inquisition, which, since Sturne had only scribed it earlier that day, he was not wholly familiar with, and so was forced to peer at a crumpled birch-bark text thrust at him by some minion or other; he then kenned it with the talons of his right paw. Nevertheless, this kenning lent the Inquisition a certain air of learning and seriousness, which added to the rapidly escalating sense of drama and excitement.
“Do you believe, so far as you know your own heart, that the Stone has called you to perform the highest and most sacred office of Paramount and Prime?”
“I do,” rasped Quail in a voice that was beginning to seem to come out of a void of terror and fear, of pain and of suffering, “oh, I do...”
“Do you believe,” continued Skua, moving on to the Second Inquisition, as his eyes seemed to catch the light of the first stars that were now beginning to show in the eastern sky, “the doctrine of the Stone as granted incontrovertibly and exclusively to those moles of the Caradocian Order who are Newborn?”
“I do believe it,” gasped Quail, reeling to one side and grasping his flank and then pressing at it as if to hold in something that wished to get out.
“He suffers for us... he cries out in pain for us... his is the perdition of the Snake and the Worm, for all of us,” members of the crowd cried out, as if to urge him on further through the Seven Inquisitions.
By now the odour was thicker still about the Clearing, and moles all about were openly snouting at it and breathing it in, their eyes streaming, some no doubt with tears of ecstasy, and others with the bitter tears of those who feel they are choking to death. Yet still they stanced their ground, Pumpkin and Hamble and Elynor among them, carried along now by the momentum of the liturgy itself; and only Privet and Thripp were still, and silent, and seemingly unmoved.
As the Inquisitions proceeded – and each was longer than the first and padded out somewhat by song and ch
ant, and various interruptions from the increasingly hysterical crowd – it seemed that Quail’s agonies began to deepen and increase. What had at first been gasping replies became cries, and then moans, and then sobs and then finally, with the seventh and last Inquisition, a scream.
“Will you then be a faithful witness of the Stone to those among whom you live, and lead them by virtue of your office as Paramount and Prime to make disciples of the Doctrine of allmole, and bring to judgement and perdition those who permit the Snake and the Worm of blasphemy and doubt to live within?”
“I will,” screamed out Quail, his body seeming to spasm so that his back arced down, his paws up, and his bald swollen excrescence of a head rose towards the Stone. The scream came from his open, toothless mouth, and with it, almost palpable in the air, like stinking mist, and accompanied by the untoward sounds of the expulsion of decayed air from his bodily orifices, an odour worse than any yet.
It was as well the Clearing was now so dark, for many in the crowd gasped and retched, and some seemed to vomit, and yet... and yet this moment passed and the crowd cried out its jubilation as Skua proclaimed, “Quail, born of Avebury, you have answered all of the Inquisitions truly, and I pronounce you spiritually clean. Now are we ready for burial and interment into forgetting of thy broken body, whose fragrant decay gives us such witness of thy worthiness.”
“Fragrant decay!” muttered Sturne to himself savagely, and though his stomach was in his throat with Quail’s effusions, he did not now delay in coming forward to take up the next part of the ceremony. For Skua had departed fractionally from the proper words, and that fraction might now be everything. He should have said “Now art thou ready...” but he had said “we...” and Sturne recognized in that “we” an unconscious shifting of attention from the needs of Quail to a concern for the needs of the congregation about him.
There had been a wresting of power from the individual to the community, and through the coming Commendation and Committal of the body he intended to exploit it. As if to bolster and support this intention a whispered voice from out of the congregation repeated, “Now are we ready...” Sturne stared into the murk of faces all about and saw one pair of eyes clear upon him, clearer and more penetrating than any other that then looked at him, and they were Thripp’s.
“Now are we ready...”
Thripp had said it; Thripp understood what Sturne was about, and was showing the direction in which he might go. Thripp knew!
In the brief moment it took Sturne to step into the centre of the Clearing and coolly displace Skua, as if by right of the ceremony itself and because the imperative of the congregation demanded it, he became aware of several startling implications in Thripp’s soft interjection. One was so astonishing that Sturne saw it and put it to one side, for it implied that all of this – right back to the elevation of Thripp to power at Caradoc in the first place – was Thripp’s doing; that this was ordained indeed... right back even beyond Caradoc, back to that first bittersweet meeting between a Confessed Sister and an anonymous Brother Confessor in Blagrove Slide so many years before.
Sturne had to glance at the Stone for support at the thought of this... and then he could ponder it no more, there was no time.
The second implication was simpler and more immediately important. It was this: he, Sturne, could rely on Thripp for support, and it was support he would need, and need desperately if in the hours ahead the unholy ceremony upon which they were now embarked was to be subverted by the Light and Silence of the Stone.
These thoughts were exciting and exhilarating to Sturne, though not a trace of them showed upon his benighted face, except perhaps an extra gleam and purpose in his eyes. He raised his paws over Quail in what he hoped looked like a gesture of gentleness and sorrow and invited everymole there to pray for Quail as he embarked on a journey that Sturne hoped might be rather more final than intended.
“Before we enter the period of Vigil, when each of us shall journey forth in spirit as companions of our departing Brother Quail, let us together take corporeal leave of him...”
Not only was Sturne’s look gentle, almost avuncular, but his voice succeeded in sounding sweet and most solicitous.
“Trusting in the Stone we have witnessed our Brother’s Inquisition and now we come to a last farewell to his mortal, flawed body before its resurrection before us with the glory of light of coming dawn, when we shall see him become Paramount and Prime and his body, which is the outer form of his inner holiness, will change to that of a blessed White Mole.”
“Blest be!” cried out a mole or two.
“The pains, the pains...” whispered Quail, staggering from where he stanced to grasp hold of Sturne, his paws so wet with sweat and inner filth that his grasp slipped, and he had to grip yet tighter to take a hold.
“Help me...” whispered Quail, his eyes rolling and wide with pain, his agony real.
For a brief moment Sturne felt a return of pity, but he had only to reflect momentarily on this mole’s life to see in him the very embodiment of the forces that had so long striven to destroy the followers; worse, to see a mole that had always and for ever put himself before the Stone. And, now, he dared seek to elevate himself through its power to be... Prime. Sturne could hardly bring himself to even think the word and knew he must feel no pity, none at all.
“See, Brothers and Sisters,” Sturne continued, “how his inner being struggles and strives to be free of his outward form!”
“We see, we see that struggle!”
“It is the Snake that struggles!” cried out Skua suddenly, quite carried away it seemed.
“It is the Worm that strives!” shouted Snyde, almost as if he had made a great discovery.
With Quail’s slippery paws about his own, the pace of Sturne’s delivery now increased and he moved rapidly through the Commendation to the Committal, omitting whole words and phrases as if he sensed that Quail, and to some extent all those with him, were now being inexorably borne along towards the darkest hours by the very words of their own liturgy.
“Mole is born of mole and hath but a short time to live and is most full of misery,” cried out Sturne, freeing himself from Quail’s grip and placing his own paw on Quail’s shaking shoulder, as if to direct him once more towards the Stone – as if, in fact, he were a father herding a recalcitrant youngster towards a portal through which he had no wish to go.
Nor did Quail now seem to wish to move, for as he found himself forcibly turned towards the Stone, and felt Sturne’s firm grip upon him, a grip that was not friendly, nor sympathetic, nor gentle in any way, he seemed to see some light upon the Stone’s dark face he did not like, something he might well fear; something that might not take the pains away, the hope of which had sustained him this far, but instead make them far, far worse.
“No,” he whispered at this sudden realization, struggling but unable to be free.
“Yes, yes!” Snyde shouted ecstatically. “The Snake struggles, the Worm strives but we shall not let them be free!”
Quail turned briefly to his former ally and saw that he too was part of this nightmare march towards that... this... those eyes of painful light that stared at him from the Stone.
“No!” he cried out, but the moles about him cried out yes, and Sturne’s voice took him on and on towards that void of pain.
“... yea, is full of misery. He cometh up but is cast back down, like the flowers of the field. He fleeth as it were a shadow, and never stances at peace. In the midst of life we are in death. Of what may we seek succour but of thee, Stone...?”
Here, despite Quail’s screaming protests, Sturne shoved him bodily forward until his snout was thrust against the Stone, which rose sheer above him towards the night sky.
“... of thee, Stone, who for our sins art justly displeased.”
“Justly displeased,” came the whisper of Thripp again, a touch louder this time. It was the most perfect timely emphasis.
“Aye, justly displeased,” chanted the crowd,
as somewhere in the darkness, quite carried away, Squelch began a falsetto requiem which melded most beautifully, most perfectly, with his father’s scream.
“Oh holy and most merciful Stone,” cried out Sturne, his voice sharp, and accusatory of the mole he now pressed so hard against the Stone itself, “thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee, but...”
But?
For the first time a look of alarm and suspicion came into Snyde’s eyes. But? There was no “but”. Sturne should have reached the end of that part of the liturgy and be moving now to the committal itself, but he was not...
“But,” thundered Sturne, defying anymole to stop him, most of all Snyde who was alone in his doubts as the rest of the congregation roared and cried out for this casting-off of Quail’s flesh in expectation of the glories yet to come. “But this mole, you alone shall judge, Stone, and if the Snake and the Worm struggle and strive in him still, even now, thou shalt cast him out, even if in all else he is worthy to be Paramount and Prime.”
It was cleverly put, using all the arcane language of a dead religion, and Snyde could not quite find fault with it; yet somehow it had put doubt in moles’ minds by suggesting the possibility that after all the Stone might find Quail wanting.
“In this wise,” continued Sturne, not letting up for one moment, “we commit our Brother’s body to thee, that his blood be turned to earth once more, and his flesh to that same earth, in sure and certain hope of his resurrection into wholeness and purity if he is worthy through thy love, Stone; which is the only thing that can transmute our vile body into oneness with thy Silence.”
The committal was done and Sturne pulled back sharply from Quail and fell silent. Then all were still, waiting for some sign that the Stone had judged Quail favourably, or...
Unfavourably. Yes, now that possibility was countenanced. Sturne had put into the congregation’s heart the very Snake and Worm against which Quail and his representatives had so long railed: doubt.
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