Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  The silence deepened for a moment more and then was broken by a rasping, gasping voice which spoke to them from out of a place they barely dared contemplate.

  “Brothers.. whispered Quail, “the pains, the p... p...”

  He screamed again and his anguish was all too plain. His paws reached out and as one scrabbled against the Stone the other seemed to seek support from Sturne and then, failing that, from Snyde.

  “Br... Brother Snyde...”

  The voice was abject now, horrified, unutterably afraid and it told moles far better than words could that this was a mole who had been judged, and been found wanting; this was a mole who had not faith that the Stone would help him, or could help him. This was a mole who in the moment that should have been most glorious, not just for him but for all of them, sought comfort not from the Stone but from the contorted form of Snyde.

  Yet Snyde seemed blind to the possibility that this might be how others in the congregation saw it. Instead, all unaware, he compounded Quail’s failure with his own.

  A gentle word might have been enough; a genuine caress; a call for the Stone’s mercy and encouragement and further help to a mole who still, most there hoped, might yet be Prime.

  But gentleness, simplicity, mercy were not qualities Snyde knew or could even pretend to have. In Quail’s decline before the Stone, and his evident descent into a corporeal hell of pain and utter agony, Snyde saw his own ascension.

  With arrogant, almost sadistic slowness he approached Quail, and before he reached out to him he turned to Sturne, and then to Skua and the other moles, and dim though the light, and few though the stars, his smugness, his ambition, and his cruelty shone out from his little eyes and glittering teeth as plain as blackthorns against a grey sky in winter.

  It was now, from some movement of Sturne’s towards Thripp, that others there, like Pumpkin and Hamble, saw for the first time the subtle enormity of what Sturne was trying to achieve, which indeed he almost had achieved.

  But it was Elynor who hissed, and though it was no more at first than the touch of frozen snow blown across ice it was enough to set others at it, and some of the Newborns – some even of the guardmoles. For few liked Snyde, and with his blasphemous ambition so plain to see, most liked him even less. So they hissed, and Snyde retreated a little before it, back towards the Stone, until he was flank to flank with the mole whom he more and more began to see not only as his mentor, but also his victim.

  “Good Brother...” gasped Quail, his scrabbling desperate paw now finding Snyde’s.

  “What is it?” said Snyde sharply, looking now at Quail, now at the hissing crowd and lastly up at the fearful Stone.

  “The pains... the pains have not gone. They are worse.”

  There, Quail had said it, and in saying it he admitted at last to himself that they might not get better. Pathetically he pulled himself round to look at Snyde.

  “Brother, what shall I do?”

  The hissing quietened and stopped and the crowd waited, uncertain and fickle still.

  Snyde looked wildly about for a moment, uncertain too, and then he stilled, and smiled, and feigned calm.

  “You are most holy,” he began, the words calming him and the crowd still more.

  “I am, I am,” said Quail, “and I suffer for all molekind. Help me. Take the pains from me with the anointment of blood and the benediction of the flesh, as you promised, as you said...”

  Snyde winced, for these last words of Quail were not quite suitable now. But he was, perhaps, on the right path.

  “You are most holy, Brother Quail, and worthy for us to begin the Vigil of the Dark Night, for you do not presume to come to this the Stone trusting in your own righteousness.”

  “I do not!” cried out Quail, clutching at some hope in this with the same desperation with which he had clutched at Snyde’s crooked paw.

  “He does not!” cried out one or two of the congregation, though fewer than had hissed. But if any had wondered if a battle of life and death was going on now before the Stone, and one in which all there were engaged, they did not doubt it now.

  “Therefore...” cried out Sturne, seeking to regain the initiative.

  “Aye, therefore...” snarled Snyde, seeking to retain it.

  “Therefore,” whispered Thripp of Blagrove Slide, “I offer up my body for the blood and flesh of the Holy Sacrament of Paramount and Prime.”

  It was nicely done, perfectly done, and his guardmoles did not restrain him from moving forward. Briefly, so briefly nomole-else saw it, Thripp glanced at Sturne and nodded and Sturne came forward and said, “Thy offer is accepted, Thripp who was once great, but who fell and was abject and then struggled and strived with Snake and Worm.”

  “None harder,” whispered Thripp compliantly.

  “None harder,” whispered the crowd.

  “And therefore, the sacrament offered and accepted, we shall begin the Vigil of the Dark Night,” said Sturne with absolute authority. “Thy blood and thy flesh —”

  “And hers, and hers!” screamed Quail, pointing a broken talon at Privet.

  “And her blood and her flesh,” agreed Sturne, motioning Privet forward; she came and stanced by Thripp. Hamble seemed to wish to intervene, but Pumpkin, sure now that all he saw was sham, put a reassuring paw to his and shook his head; “Sturne is on our side,” he whispered.

  “But the dawn is too long to wait for their blood and flesh, too, too long, and my pains, I need... them, I must... she stares at me.”

  Quail gabbled and mumbled and moaned and Snyde wriggled at the end of the dark tunnel into which he had led himself, and tried to find a way out. He did not want any more delay.

  “Let the sacraments of blood and flesh be made now, that Brother Quail shall have sustenance for his journey unto dawn.”

  Snyde raised his cruel talons, and peered at Thripp and Privet with eyes that sought to rend their flesh for that same blood and sustenance.

  “No,” said Skua firmly, with a look of pleasure on his face that was only thinly disguised as piety, “as Brother Snyde has rightly said, thus far Brother Quail has been most holy. Let him be holy unto dawn! And let us all be holy, with Brother Snyde to be an examplar for us and the supplicant’s sponsor throughout the night.”

  The crowd only half understood the terms he used, but their meaning was plain enough: neither Thripp nor Privet was to be touched until the light of dawn, Quail was to prove his worthiness by waiting until then, and Snyde, as his friend, was to stance by him and help him through.

  “Yessss...” sighed the crowd in agreement, and perhaps with the beginnings of triumph, for to some it seemed that the “Yessss” ended with a hiss.

  “Begin the liturgy of the Vigil,” commanded Skua of Sturne, and Sturne did not delay.

  “Almighty Stone, hear our prayers now for your servant Brother Quail who would be Paramount and Prime and whom you have summoned out of this world...”

  It was the ancient prayer spoken over the body of the departed, but Quail was not departed, and he muttered and he whispered that he was not, clinging to Snyde, weeping piteously, and screaming weakly of his mortal agonies.

  “... but who struggles and strives still with the Snake and the Worm. Be with us, O Stone, at the start of this Vigil, comfort us as you lead him through the portals of death and to judgement.”

  “I... am... not... dead!” said Quail.

  “Does he not struggle?” interjected Skua in his best inquisitorial style, a style taught him by Quail himself. “He does! Does he not strive? Oh, he does! Blest be that we are witness to this suffering for all molekind!”

  “Blest be!”

  Sturne resumed the liturgy, his voice drowning Quail’s cries.

  “Great Stone, you pursue us with the power of thy love and dispel the shadow of death with thy glorious Light...”

  “I... am... not... dead!” sobbed Quail.

  “Blessed are those who have died in the Stone: let them rest from, their labours for their goo
d deeds go with them.”

  “I... am... they... are... I... COMING.”

  But he could not finish telling anymole that he was not dead, or whatever else it was he tried to say. They are? Who or what? Coming? Where...?

  For though he was not dead, the pain suddenly became too great for him to speak. As a strange and awesome darkness began to overtake the Stone, which until then had been visible enough and, with the stars, had even given out a certain light, Quail began to struggle and to strive in the night, and to tear at himself as he screamed, as if to pull out the Snake and the Worm from his own body.

  Then the Stone seemed to fade, the night grew black and blacker still, until all stars were gone, and the Vigil of the Dark Night began as Quail begged to die and whispered, “I do not want to be Paramount and Prime.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Of that Vigil towards dawn no words, no description, no record could be adequate. Those who have meditated upon Longest Night, and witnessed the mystery of the seasons’ turn, which is a progression from darkness back to light, may have a glimmer of what occurred.

  Each mole present held his own thoughts; none could see another, nor even their own paw if they held it up against the night sky. The black of night was palpable as Quail’s odour had been.

  Aye, had been. For one thing all noticed was that with the disappearance of the Stone into the black of night Quail’s odour was gone, to be replaced by nothing but his screams and groans. But for those, indeed, a mole might almost have thought he had gone as well. But they heard him, and some pitied him, for in the absence of the merciful Stone his pleas to die, to be released, went unheard.

  Yet though it did not seem quite possible, he had worse to come. Something so foul, so spiritually noxious, that each mole without reference to the next raised a taloned paw towards the blackness where Quail was, as if to keep at bay an evil the very touch of which could taint them for ever.

  It was Brother Snyde, that was what it was. And he was... purring in the dark.

  Then they heard Quail’s screams intermingle with sighs, and sensual gasps, and for one moment – nearly the worst of all – with a snatch of laughter, the cracked crying out of Quail’s voice. “NOOOOO...!”

  Quail himself had often heard that final wretched hopeless “No!” from the victims, young and innocent, yet his cry that dark night sounded just the same.

  Then, after that chilling laugh, Quail screamed again, and it was absolute, rending, mortal, into and out of a nightmare come true.

  Then, after that – and here if those raised talons had faltered they were raised more strongly in the dark, and pointed more severely at the heaving monster in the night – there were the grunts and gasps of effort, rhythmic and thrusting, and as Quail’s screams mounted so did the filthy sounds of the unseen congress in the dark.

  Until, at last, there came a scream of release which should have been the end, but was not. For it continued, faltered briefly, seemed surprised and then as suddenly as Quail had cried out at the final horror of defilement by Snyde, that cry of release changed into a scream of shocked and unbelieving pain, and Snyde in his turn cried out, “N... N... NOOOOO...!”

  And Snyde began to beg for death, as out of the darkness there came a new scent, not malodorous, but clean – the scent of a thousand nettles, crushed.

  Dawn light came quite suddenly, first upon the Stone, and then across the shadows that besieged it. The trembling crowd of moles slowly let their taloned paws slip towards the ground, and stared at what lay dead, and what crawled, in the centre of the circle they had formed on all sides but where the Stone rose straight.

  “See where the White Mole is, Paramount and Prime,” whispered Sturne, and the horror in his voice spoke the horror in all their hearts.

  For Quail was white, white with the crawling of a thousand talon worms whose struggles and strivings glistened in the November dawn light. Out of his body, from the sacs on his head and rear, from his mouth, from his eyes, from his hinderparts, and from out of his cracked paws they came, departing from what could serve them no more.

  All about the clearing Newborns departed too, backing away in horror, their dream, their faith, all dashed.

  Squelch scrabbled away, and Skua, and Fetter too, backing off with their minions, and the guardmoles who had sustained them so long, departing from a horror that was theirs and which they could not face. Departing into the warriors, and the followers and the pilgrims who, in the night, silently, without reference one to another, had advanced little by little, step by step up from the cross-under, up the pasture slopes, and thence into the High Wood.

  No blows struck. No commands given. Nothing but the slow advance of moles of liberty like a rising dawn, and the retreat through them of moles of doctrine and restraint, who had been the night.

  While Snyde, alive still, his face filled with pain and agony, lay gasping on the ground, staring at the worms that still crawled out of Quail’s body towards him; powerless to stop those that already crawled over and into him, and the many more that followed.

  “But... I... am... not... dead,” he whispered. He was unable to fend them out of his eyes; they entered even those, and he began to know the meaning of dark night.

  Nearby, Privet held Thripp close where he lay. The night had weakened him, its stresses too great for his frail body. His eyes had been on Quail and Snyde, and on the worms that crawled between them. Now he lifted them to the Stone, and the light of the sky beyond it.

  “It is done,” he whispered, “it is done, my dear. May I be forgiven for the harm I did, and remembered for...”

  Privet held him silently.

  Behind them in the still and silent crowd of followers all about the clearing’s edge Pumpkin reached out towards her, wanting to help yet not knowing what to do. Then he turned in mute appeal to Hamble, and together they looked among the crowd, in which there were so many moles they knew. Maple was there, Rooster, Weeth, Rolt, so many more. Fieldfare was among them, and, and...

  “Which is Chervil?” whispered Pumpkin.

  Hamble pointed and Pumpkin went quietly over to him where he stanced, dark and still.

  “Go to them,” said Pumpkin, “go on, mole. She needs you, they need you.”

  Chervil went out into the Clearing, stared briefly and dismissively at the foul sight of Quail’s dead body, and Snyde’s still living one, and stanced down with Privet and. his father.

  Thripp reached up to him as he continued to whisper: “... remembered for the love we found, and the promise to Privet that I honoured.”

  One paw held Privet’s, and the other reached out to hold their son’s.

  “Chervil, call Brother Rolt to me,” he whispered.

  But Chervil had no need to look for Rolt, for he had come, and looked into his beloved Master’s eyes with love.

  “It is done, all done, Master, as you decreed,” he said. “You have honoured your love for her, and redeemed the wrongs committed at Blagrove Slide. There is no bloodshed now, only peace across the High Wood of Duncton, and spreading out beyond.”

  “Not as I decreed, good Rolt, but as the Stone decreed. Now Chervil, listen, and you Rolt...” But suddenly he said no more, and his clear eyes looked upon the Stone again, and saw a vision simpler but greater than any he had ever had.

  “Not I, but the Stone,” he whispered again, his voice at peace. “And it will help you now, and her.”

  “Help her, Master?” whispered Rolt, glancing at Privet, then at Thripp once more.

  “Find the Book, mole, find the Book,” said Thripp with a touch of his old impatience that a new vision he had seen was not yet understood by others.

  “The Book of Silence,” said Chervil.

  “Yes,” said Thripp firmly, and if he saw the Light and the Silence before him then, it was not at the Stone he looked, but into Privet’s eyes. Then he was gone from them, like a breath of wind at dawn.

  Yet near them Snyde still heaved, still he died, and still Quail’s rupture
d body desecrated the Clearing by the Stone.

  None would touch them or go near. Not Privet, not she. Nor Chervil. Nor Hamble. Nor any one of the followers who stanced so still, and stared, and wished to cast out what had come among them, and befouled them. Nomole had the courage to touch that defiled corpse, or the corpse-to-be.

  But one.

  A warrior, as true to the Stone as anymole there, yet flawed in himself by a single act, and needing, as he thought, absolution: Maple.

  He had led the followers to the Duncton Stone and now he led them one more time in an act whose courage and significance will for ever be remembered and debated by moles who ponder the story of the coming of the lost and last Book.

  Maple came forward, slowly and steadfastly. He gently moved moles aside. He stanced above Quail and Snyde and whispered some prayer to the Stone that rose above them; he looked down at them, and then, with a roar as mighty as a thousand moles”, charging the vilest of enemies, he bent down and took Quail and Snyde up together in his great paws, white talon worms and all.

  He turned from the Stone and ran roaring with them out of the Clearing, out to the west side of the wood, out as others followed, out into the light of the new day and on to the western pastures beyond.

  “To the river,” somemole shouted, and down the long way to the river they went, down and down, thundering down, the dead paws of Quail limply flailing, the living paws of Snyde clutching at Maple’s thick neck, and the worms, the worms, clinging on to Snyde.

  They reached the river and Maple turned from it, swung, and with a final roar he hurled the bodies far out into the dark flowing water. They turned, they sank, they bubbled, and they surfaced once again, drifting away in the cold, cold water of the Thames.

  Quail sank once more and was gone; Snyde seemed to try to swim, seemed to try to rid himself of that which clung to him, seemed to try to scream. But he could not, and nor could he rid himself of any of the worms, struggle and strive though he might. He drifted and they saw come glistening out of his body one bigger than the brood. Fat, puckered, legged, with head of Snake and body of Worm, in Snyde and out of him, the mother of them all. Once Quail’s; now Snyde’s.