Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  Chervil’s guardmoles hurried Whillan down Wildenhope Bluff, across the meadows, their paws and voices rough, but he hardly seemed to care. They drew nearer to the river ahead, and he was thinking he must try to resist, yet he did not seem to care.

  “Mole,” rasped Chervil in his ear, “listen to me... LISTEN!”

  His head was low, the river almost at his paws and he about to be thrown into it. Death, he saw, was a confusion, like life. Death...

  “LISTEN, dammit, you’re not that badly hurt. It had to look worse than it was...”

  Whillan began to listen.

  “It’s the best we can do, mole. There’s a steep drop and for a moment you’ll be out of sight. We’ll seem to throw you but we’ll let you down as lightly as we can. Listen now. There’s corpses there, Stone help them.”

  Whillan came round all right then, not from mention of the corpses, but from sight and smell of them. He retched.

  “You must throw one in, so the moles watching on the Bluff see it and think it’s you. Now there is no more time – do it, mole, and then Stone help you, for you’re on your own. It’s the best we can do.”

  He was lifted up, hurled outwards, restrained at the last moment and swung thumping down, down into slippery mud, down into the smell of death with the dangerous rush of water no more than a paw’s breadth away.

  “Throw a body in!” a voice shouted down.

  “MOLE, DO IT NOW!”

  He did it, tugging and pulling at the greasy swollen thing, shoving and pushing it, and at last heaving it into the racing water. It sank, floated up again, turned in the eddies and was suddenly torn away out into the flood.

  “Stay out of sight until we’ve gone. Then... then... shit!”

  It was, as Whillan later realized, Rooster charging down, over and out, a huge black shadow against the sky. Rooster taken in the water, taken under it, along with it, grasping at that corpse, and then turning, roaring, looking back and seeing him, and knowing he was alive.

  And Whillan knowing Rooster, his father, who had tried to save him, must surely die.

  “YOU...!” Rooster had roared when he saw him huddled clinging to the base of the bank, alive among the corpses, and he even seemed to laugh. Then as suddenly as he came, he was gone.

  “Disappear mole, that’s the best you can do!” It was Chervil looking down at him. “Leave Wildenhope, go far from here, go to... Mallerstang. Thripp says go there.”

  With that last strange unforgettable suggestion Chervil moved out of sight, leaving only the wind fretting at the vegetation on the top of the embankment high above. Darkness came, and bleeding, hurting, shocked, Whillan found himself alone.

  He did not dare climb up the bank, even if he could have done at so steep a place, for fear of being seen. So he clambered along its slippery base, slipping into the water, chilled and desperate, along and round and into the smaller stream. Then, he slept, woke, then slept again, shivering.

  Finally, a day later, hurting and aching, confused, he crawled at dusk to drier land and hobbled away into anonymity.

  Or nearly so, for there was one place he could go where he was known and might be safe: Hobsley Coppice. There he went, and old Hobsley cared for him until the wound in his body had healed, if not the wound in his heart.

  Spring came among the trees, but it seemed sterile to him. He saw the buds, the leaves, and heard the birds, and felt the first warmth of the rising sun, and yet he knew none of it. It was closed to him, or far off down a tunnel whose end would surely take him moleyears to reach. Hobsley advised him to go north, saying that if he had heard of a place called Mallerstang at all, northwards was where it had been. Somewhere or other.

  But Whillan chose to go west to Siabod, like Bracken before him. If there was anymole left with whom he could identify it was Bracken of Duncton Wood. So, one day, after a brief farewell and not even looking back, though he knew he would never see Hobsley again – but what did he care, nomole and nothing meant anything to him – Whillan set off for Siabod.

  It was mid-May when he reached there and he barely remembered a step of the way, or a single one of the moles he had talked with, or fought with, or stayed with. Not one.

  Then Moel Siabod was before him, dark and well-guarded, and he found the first gleam of light in the tunnel he was in, in the sense that here he would find something alive in himself again. He stayed for molemonths, and one day a mole he knew came to him. Female, beautiful to him but unreachable now, and with pups running about her: Madoc, once his love, once the mole the rest of his life was for.

  “Whillan.” And he remembered afterwards the way she said his name.

  Whillan...

  “That’s not my name now.”

  “You’re fleeing from the Newborns. Stay here.”

  He shook his head and said, I have no name.”

  “What happened to Privet and Rooster and —”

  “They died, they all died at Wildenhope.”

  Madoc smiled and shook her head. She had heard a different tale. Whillan was not himself.

  “Whatmoles are these?” he asked, pointing at her pups.

  “Mine own,” she said, her eyes steady on his, “by Squelch and yet mine own.”

  “What are their names?”

  She whispered them, one by one, all Welsh, and all but one quite unpronounceable.

  “Morwenna,” she said finally, naming the darkest one with the brightest eyes and the most beautiful form.

  “Morwenna.,” he said bleakly, looking at the youngster, who looked at him.

  “She can sing, just as her father could. Sing for him, Morwenna.”

  Morwenna said bold words in Welsh and Madoc translated them: “She asks who you are.”

  “Who am I?”

  “A mole I once knew.”

  Morwenna sang and though he did not understand a word he thought it the most beautiful song he had ever heard, and it made him weep.

  “It’s a song of Siabod,” said Madoc.

  “It’s a song I’ll not forget,” he said, for of all the things he had seen and heard and experienced since Wildenhope, this was the first that made him think that living might be better than dying.

  “I heard your father sing,” said Whillan.

  “When, when, when?” the youngster asked imploring, pleading, angry, weeping when he would not say. Angry and wild and passionate at him.

  “You had better leave, Whillan; we are the past to each other now. Our futures are different.”

  Through that summer he wandered as in a dream, north and ever northwards, often in systems that knew nothing of Newborns, nor much of followers. Old, isolated, forgotten places where whatever name he used others accepted. To some he taught scribing, to some he told tales, and just occasionally, of an evening, he might try to sing the song Morwenna sang to him as if there was something in it more real than anything he knew. But his voice was cracked, he did not know the words, and gradually, as time went by, he could barely remember her young face.

  May passed by, and he began to ask for Mallerstang.

  “Mallerstang? No, mate, never heard of it.”

  “Mallerstang? Can’t say I have.”

  “Maller-what? Rum sort of name, and you don’t even know why you’re going there. Rum sort of bloody journey you’re making!”

  That was the first time Whillan discovered he could laugh again. It was rum.

  Then, days later...

  “Mallerstang? Of course I know where it is. Was up that way before Longest Night.”

  Whillan was south of the Western Dales and had asked the question automatically and for the thousandth time, and here was a mole who had been there.

  “Historical sort of place, you know. Suffered decades ago under the moles of the Word because its moles stanced up for worshipping the Stone their way, and when a Mallerstang mole confronted you, you knew it, so they say. I’ll tell you something about that place: a mole called Merton who was raised there went south and became a holy mole in Uf
fington.

  “Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll give you some names of moles I met, though they’re a taciturn bunch. Not unfriendly, but they don’t say much. The moles of the Word virtually massacred the lot of them and those that survived did so by taking to the fells, and that makes a community cautious. Shadows of that kind have a way of lingering. But they gave me a welcome, and they’ll give you one seeing as you’re Stone-fearing.”

  “I’m nothing.”

  “Well, then, seeing as you’re not a Newborn.”

  Whillan was back in territory that knew about such things, but generally avoided mentioning them. The Newborn Crusades had not reached so far north.

  “I’m certainly not Newborn.”

  “Where are you from then?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “You’ll get on with them like a wood on fire, chum. You’re as taciturn as they are!”

  Mallerstang lies on the western side of Ribblesdale, and Whillan reached it at the beginning of June, and as he climbed up its dry grassy bluffs, and scented the clear air, and saw the fells of Pen-y-ghent to the east across the dale he knew that somewhere here, and soon, he would find some light at the end of the tunnel he had been in. This was as far north as he would need to go.

  They said little, took him in, gave him clean quarters, and set him to a task, which was delving a new communal tunnel along with other passers-by, and a couple of old Mallerstang males.

  He worked hard and long, quite unaware that he was being watched and assessed, and judged to be a worthy mole. Nomole asked him questions, and nor did he volunteer answers. He was happy to have found a place to stop awhile.

  By the end of June he was the longest-staying visitor there, and by July he found that the Mallerstang moles were inviting him back of an evening to their communal chamber, which few visitors ever saw. They talked quietly and shared what news there was, which was not much. The Newborns were distant and in another place, the followers like part of a family that had not been in touch for many years – familiar but strange, their world almost unimaginable. Sometimes the names of moles he knew came up — Stour, Privet, Maple – they were all mentioned in their turn, almost as legends. But Whillan never said a thing.

  One day, one of the elders turned to him and said, “And what of you, mole, have you a tale to tell us?”

  He knew it was an honour, and a sign that they trusted him, and that he must tell them something. A thousand possibilities went through his head. “I... I...”

  A thousand tales and he could not choose one to tell.

  “Tell us what’s in your heart, mole,” the elder said to him.

  “I... I think I have been lost, and I don’t want to talk about the past. It turned from me and I from it.”

  “You can delve, mole, better than anymole we’ve ever seen. Somemole must have taught you that.”

  “A mole did,” said Whillan quietly. “I could tell you a tale of that.”

  “Tell us what’s in your heart, mole.”

  He told them the tale of how the Stone rose at Hobsleys Coppice, not mentioning the names of the moles really there, and when he had done they were silent.

  “What’s your name, mole, that you tell a tale like that?”

  “The name I gave,” said Whillan firmly.

  After that he often told them tales, many tales, always anonymously, never giving the real names of moles or systems, though sometimes he might slip in the name of a mole he knew, for it gave him a sense of veracity. Fieldfare, Husk, Lavender, Bantam, Firkin, Copy Master of Duncton. These names he used, but the ones that mattered or they might recognize he avoided and never used. As for Duncton, well, he located his stories somewhere in the south, with enough variation to confuse anymole, and if sometimes they tried to guess he shook his head and frowned, and they respected that and fell silent.

  He got to know only a few of their names, for the Mallerstang moles really were as taciturn as he had been told, and many were no more than faces to him, which was as he liked it. Even then it was only the males he knew – for in their community the females kept to themselves, appearing only on holy days and festivals. So it was that he first saw most of the community together at Midsummer, for like most systems he had ever heard of, they celebrated it as the time when pups born that spring passed through the portal into maturity.

  He was made welcome, very welcome, yet not a part, for their rituals were much different from Duncton’s and, though evidently ancient, seemed lacking in a certain warmth. But he watched and listened, and was surprised to see that he himself was an object of interest to many of the youngsters and females, most of whom he had never seen before.

  He felt lonely that evening, and began to feel he should move on. The tales he had told stirred memories and yearnings in him, and one in particular, one that had come to dominate all others. Though he had never talked of the Moors he wanted now to journey to the Charnel Clough and see where Rooster had been born. Perhaps he had not talked of it so far because Rooster’s background was, in a way, his own. But that Midsummer’s night, when the rituals were done, and moles gathered on the surface of Mallerstang, he found himself drawn in to tell a tale.

  If, as he began, he noticed a good many there draw closer, and the attention of them all grow deeper, he did not let them know. He guessed it was because they had heard he could tell a tale better than most, and once he started nomole could quite tell where he would end. They had never known a mole like him.

  It began simply enough with the previous tale-teller turning to him, as was their custom when one tale was done, and saying, “I’m sure there’s moles here would want to know how you celebrated your first Midsummer, mole, all the more so since here in Mallerstang this is the first occasion youngsters are allowed into the community at night, to hear us older moles tell our tales.

  “So, seeing as you’re the only visitor here tonight – and a welcome one, for we know you as a worthy and serious mole if somewhat of a mysterious one” – there was laughter at this, and nudges and winks – “tell us how your home system is celebrating this holy night.”

  Whillan was silent for a time, which was his way with tales, remembering always the elder’s injunction to speak from the heart.

  “In my heart tonight there is sadness,” he found himself saying, “because the system where I was born and raised is under the thrall of the Newborns.”

  Their silence grew deeper, their eyes more serious, and parents took their youngsters to their paws and settled them. They could sense more than a tale coming.

  “We have a Stone in our system, which rises in the wood’s highest part, and at Midsummer that’s where we gather, family by family, kin with kin. The elder in my time who spoke the words was called Drubbins, and he was old and wise like...”

  Whillan nodded towards the Mallerstang elder who laughed and said, “I’m old all right, but as for being wise...”

  “The words we said were these,” continued Whillan:

  We bathe their paws in showers of dew,

  We free their fur with wind from the west,

  We bring them choice soil,

  Sunlight in life.

  We ask they be blessed

  With a sevenfold blessing:

  The grace of form...

  As he spoke the Midsummer Invocation he did it not from memory of Drubbins’ rendition, but from Privet’s, learned in her turn from Fieldfare. He spoke it clearly, and let himself linger over the seven graces of form, of goodness, of suffering, of wisdom... linger as Privet had lingered, teaching not just the words, but the silent meaning between them as well.

  We free their souls with the talons of love,

  We ask that they hear the silent Stone...

  The moles who heard him were hushed and silent when he came to these concluding words, and he himself was lost in a memory that intermingled Privet and her tales – tales that he had repeated so often in the days past – with the Stone.

  “When I learnt how to scribe,” he continue
d, quite unaware of the stir this caused, or the way one or two there seemed to come closer and peer more intently at him, “those were the words I practised on. Pumpkin, that was the mole who taught me to scribe though my mother Privet could scribe as well...”

  There, he had said her name, and try as he might to pull back from it, and to talk of other things he could not deny the name he had used.

  “Privet, you did say Privet?” an old female said to him later.

  “I did,” he answered uneasily.

  “And you did mean Duncton Wood, didn’t you?” said the old male with her.

  “Did I?”

  “We think you did. That invocation of the graces you spoke, that’s of Duncton, I’ve heard tell.”

  “Yes,” said Whillan.

  “Yes,” said the two moles almost as one and looking at each other. “Privet of Duncton, formerly of Crowden in the Moors. Was she your mother?”

  “Adoptive mother,” corrected Whillan.

  “Well then, there’s a thing! There is a thing.”

  “Why?” asked Whillan.

  “Because... well, let’s just say it’s not entirely a surprise, shall we?”

  “What isn’t?” wondered Whillan.

  “Were you sent?”

  “Who by?”

  “Hmmph! We’ll talk more of this, mole, more before...”

  “Before what?” asked Whillan, as exasperated as he had ever been, and yet as still as well. “Yes, I was sent,” he said impulsively. “I was sent by a mole called Chervil.”

  They looked suddenly afraid, almost lost.

  “Mole, we had best talk.”

  When there were fewer moles about they began to talk, with the elder as witness, and though Whillan said nothing more of Privet then, he told them something of his tale, until at last they said, “No more for now. Tell them to their face.”