Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  In the weeks after Scirpus presented his Book of the Word to the Library and invited other scribemoles to read and comment on it, Dunbar remained silent, despite the storm of anger and acrimony the Book immediately created among other scribes. Contemporary reports make clear that Dunbar never gave his full approval of the Book, but he did not demand that Scirpus be forced to withdraw it, saying only (to quote a historian of that troubled period), “Cum broders, by the pawe him tak, for dirk and drublie hertes need loffe. Yef youe doo nat then so shall I! Fro this youre lackelufingnesse cums alle our trublie now and I will staye namore but traveyle fro hir.” And when, much shocked – for Holy Moles, once appointed, had never left Uffington before, and Dunbar’s unique decision to leave is one of the great mysteries of the Holy Burrows – his colleagues asked him where he would go, he said he would go with Scirpus, to debate more with him, and if he did not prevail on him to change his views he would be “nought and nowhedyr” – be nothing and go nowhere.

  He was as good as his word, and when Scirpus left, the venerable Dunbar went with him, disputing questions of Dark Sound and the Word all the while. Naturally the decision of so revered a Holy Mole to leave encouraged other moles to follow him, and some scribes and many eager young novices went as well.

  Contemporary accounts, based on the reports of a scribemole who had gone with the original party but who later left it and after a number of moleyears returned to the Holy Burrows and did penance, say that they took with them copies of the Book of the Word and the Scirpuscan commentary on the Treatise of Dark Sound. It seems that the party stayed together as far as the Rollright System, which is to the north of Duncton Wood. Scirpus had by then won many of those who had gone with Dunbar over to the way of the Word: there was a dispute, a fight, and only by the loyalty of moles close to Dunbar did the old mole escape. In the confusion the single scribemole who subsequently got back to Uffington escaped as well, but he was soon parted from Dunbar and on his own.

  The mystery of where the Holy Mole and the pawful of moles with him subsequently went was not solved until some centuries later, when more adventurous generations of scribes established from place-name evidence and oral stories that Dunbar, or a mole remarkably similar to him, travelled eastwards, in the direction of what story-telling moles fancifully call the “Empty Quarter”, but whose proper name is the “Wen” which in Old Mole means a malignant growth on the flank of a body, or the side of a tree. A growth that has a life of its own, and drains the life from that on which it grows. Malignant, parasitic... and odiferous, for when it breaks, the smell of a wen was believed to be fatally poisonous to mole.

  To the east, it was said, such a place existed, where nomole could live because the noise, the dangers, the very air itself was unpalatable and dangerous to mole. There, it was said, twofoots and other great vile creatures roamed of whom the many grim tales were the stuff of which a young mole’s nightmares are made; and it was the home of the roaring owls.

  “But where is it exactly?” a youngster might ask his parent, looking fearfully over his shoulder (for such fears always lie behind a mole in the shadows outside a snouting’s range).

  But the answer was clearer than that: to the east of the most easterly of the Seven Systems, which is Duncton Wood, a mole gets progressively nearer the Wen, but he had best never get anywhere near where it actually starts... Which was answer enough.

  It was towards this supposed place that, much later, travelling scribemoles, bravely reporting on the state of moledom, established that Dunbar had travelled, and probably taken with him a copy of the Book of the Word. Certainly enough records were left behind in the eastern systems to trace his route, until at last specific record of him was lost, replaced instead by stories and legends that he had gone ever more eastwards and was lost for all time in the darkness there. Of his final end, or that of his followers, none knew, but few doubt that it was terrible and grim, and that the fatal Book he carried, and the knowledge he and his few followers had, was forever lost as well.

  Why he took the Book of the Word with him, or whether he took any other book, is never told in the legends of Dunbar, though it is hinted at in the most famous of them, which suggests that somewhere in the heart of the Wen he hoped that the infamous Book would be kept until “the schism is complete and ended’. And when that happened a mole would come forth from the Wen who would bring peace to moledom, and a sacred knowledge, and a hope for all moles.

  So Dunbar went from history, to remain only in memory as a mole who established a race of mythical Wen moles, beings who live in a place that nomole can reach, far to the east, where to breathe the air is death for a mole. Of course there are many legends of the Wen, and the notion that special moles survive there is a common one, as, too, is the idea that one day, from such a place, a great saviour will come at a time when the shadows are long and dark over moledom and he is most needed. Whatever the truth of that, the legend concerning Dunbar was right to talk of a schism, for many date the beginning of the decline of the faith in the Stone in moledom from the Scirpuscan revolt and Dunbar’s strange departure from Uffington.

  Indeed, something is known of the fate of Scirpus, that most dark of moles. After the split from Dunbar he trekked northward, back towards the system from which he came, and so charismatic was his leadership that many joined him. His trek north became a march, which many joined, and he led them to a place which lies beyond the Dark Peak and the inhospitable moors where nomole had lived. Yet there Scirpus brought his followers, a place of enormous tunnels and rushing water, and dangers uncharted. It had no name, but in time moles gave it one after the mythical evil system of legend and story, where malevolent giant moles were said to roam: the System of Whern.

  It was there that Scirpus developed the first Scirpuscan Community, and it became notorious for its harsh discipline and punishment. There he first tried out ideas later incorporated into the set of principles (which he later called a Rule, the Rule of the Word) by which systems should be ordered, establishing clear hierarchies (which are anathema to faith in the Stone) and punishment to death for transgressions of the Rule – such punishments as snouting which no true believer in the Stone could even contemplate practising.

  There, so it was said, Scirpus scribed anew his Book, but adding to it dark prophecies which forecast the end of the Stone and the ascendancy of the Word. Trouble would come, and strife, doubt and argument; then fear and a final decline of faith in the Stone. Plague would come, Uffington would be destroyed and then moles would Atone at last, and under the direction of a great leader the Word would be the saving of moledom.

  So scribed Scirpus, and through the decades the memory of him waxed and waned. From time to time followers of Scirpus emerged from the north, usually in the wake of periodic plague, claiming the hour of the Word had come. Some for a time ran their own systems as Scirpuscans, where the dark arts of the Stone were said to be practised, and where the Word was preached. Scribemoles had over the generations bravely investigated the Scirpuscan movement in the north – “bravely” because many did not come back – and in the time of the Blessed Arnold of Avebury, one of the longest serving Holy Moles, a successful war was waged against them. They were routed from their new systems and driven back to the very edge of Whern itself, and up into its bleak and wormless heights. Whether or not any survived, none knew for none dared follow them, and whether they reached the notorious system of Whern again, if such existed, none knew either.

  Nor did there seem need to know, for Scirpus and his followers were forgotten in the centuries that followed. So much so that, when the Stone did go into decline, few remembered the dark prophecies. Nor did many connect the coming of the plagues with any chronology of doom for moledom. Moles in danger of their lives, their systems in collapse, do not dwell long on memories of a sinister medieval scholar, and a Book all copies of which were thought to have vanished long ago.

  So when stories of the grikes came at last to an already enfeebled Uffington, no
ne there immediately associated them with Scirpus, even when it was said that these grikes preached the Word.

  But then, at the end of that August, there came to Uffington two direct accounts of the methods these northern missionaries were using – one from a devout female of the Lovell system, which lies north of the Thames; a second from a youngster who, somehow or other, had reached the Holy Burrows, and who came from Buckland, the system of Spindle’s master Brevis.

  Both moles reported that the grikes massacred any who did not agree to follow the Word, and even though, out of fear, moles agreed to do so, many were terrorised or given “Atonements” which involved physical abuse.

  When the grikes had come to Buckland, they had killed many moles, forced others to convert to the Word, and then driven the few braver moles who refused to concur with the Word up the slopes above Buckland to Harrow-down, a small adjacent system known for its devotion to the Stone.

  There, on the pretext of some ultimate transgression, the grikes snouted all the moles, using the barbs of the wires that surrounded Harrowdown Copse. The youngster managed to hide and then escape, making for the distant Holy Burrows as the only possible sanctuary he could trust. But his memory of the sight and sound of such horror left him in such fright and despair that he shook constantly, and could not be left alone. He died three weeks after reaching the Holy Burrows.

  Naturally the scribemoles were distressed at these stories, but none more so than Brevis. He and six others decided to defy the edict of Medlar and set out to investigate what was happening, each travelling to a different system. They agreed to return before the end of September and then prepare a report for the Holy Mole on what they had found. In the event, only one of them was ever heard of again, and that was Brevis....

  But before that, while Brevis was still away and before the full significance of the grike rumours was really understood at Uffington, two travelling moles arrived at the Holy Burrows whose coming was more ominous than could ever have seemed possible at the time.

  According to Spindle’s account, they gave false names on arrival, and the unsuspecting scribemoles, welcoming anymole who might give them information about what was going on in the outside world, accepted them rather too readily. Historians since then have added the fanciful report that the Blowing Stone sounded deep warning notes on their arrival, though Spindle did not remember such a thing. But it might well have done, for those moles that came to Uffington were none other than Weed, agent and adviser to the highest grike leadership; and the female Sleekit, as cunning, scheming and askew a mole as ever lived below ground, or on its surface.

  The two claimed to be on a Stone pilgrimage and to have travelled from a system some way to the north. The Holy Mole saw them and was impressed by them. Weed already had some scribing, though of a crude kind, which he said had been taught in their system more than a generation before by a scribemole of Uffington who had come there and died in it. Yet one or two of the scribemoles were doubtful of them, and Spindle overheard them expressing concern about Weed’s script which had deviations of an unfamiliar and sinister kind which they did not like. What these were Spindle himself could not properly know, not being a scribemole, but he afterwards remembered, when he had to handle some of Weed’s work and his talons ran over it, there was a certain cruelty in the style, a leftward slant, a hint, even, of dark sound.

  Of the two, Weed, as moles later knew him to be, was the dominant. Physically he was not immediately striking, being of average build and having motley fur. His snout curved a little to the left, which gave anymole talking to him the feeling that he was turning all the time. He smiled a lot, and his eyes seemed warm unless a mole could catch them unawares (which was very difficult) and see that when he was not engaged with another mole, and thought he was quite alone, they were as dark and cold as pure flint. A curious thing about him was this: when he ate worms there was not a single sound – not a crunch, not a suck, not a lick. One moment the worm was there, pink and succulent, next thing that worm was gone.

  But the most disconcerting thing about Weed, which all moles who got to know him reported on, was that it was hard, however much a mole might suspect him of evil and duplicity, not to like him. Those eyes, though cold, had intelligence, even humour, and he had a quick wit and winning way and, as fast as another mole might think, Weed gave the impression without saying or doing very much, that he thought faster, and knew more.

  When Weed wanted a mole to talk – and Weed was a mole who positively thrived on information, gossip and rumour – he would say “Yes?” in a way that was difficult, if not quite impossible, not to answer without giving more away.

  “This way here, now that’s the Lower Route, yes?” he might typically have asked – for he had a great desire to know all the routes and ways into and out of the Holy Burrows, which moles more worldly wise than the scribemoles of Medlar’s time might well have recognised as reconnaissance.

  “Yes?”

  Why yes of course it was, that one the side route, and that one the middle lower route and and and... and then, when the poor questioned mole thought he had completely finished and had nothing more to say at all, Weed would wait until the silence got embarrassing and then say, “Ye... es?” and somehow a mole could not help adding more, even things he had forgotten he knew, just to fill up that unbearable silence on the far side of which Weed waited, his eyes so pleasant.

  Sleekit was a different kind of mole and as a female her admission into the Holy Burrows caused some consternation. There were precedents, however, for travelling females accompanied by a male were allowed to stay in the visitors’ burrows, and even, if the Holy Mole was willing, permitted to view some of the communal burrows and meeting places.

  Sleekit was the kind of female whose elegance of fur and carriage, and annoying calmness of voice, was such that other females are intimidated by her while males, impressed by an outward show, tended to be struck speechless or fawning in her presence. Other wiser moles might have seen beyond her elegance to the strange mix of coldness and vulnerability it sought to hide. She was sharp of tongue, and clever, and moles watched what they said in her presence. Her real role – one of the select sideem of the grikes, watchers and schemers and spies – could not possibly have been guessed at the time she arrived in Uffington. But the scribemoles, with the exception of a few of the more worldly ones, were so impressed by her good looks and her seeming interest in what they did that they almost fell over themselves to inform her of their ways and the work they did; and well, very well, did she mask her true intent, which was to complement the information that Weed was gathering about what texts they had, where they were kept, and what the scribemoles’ routine was.

  Yet where Sleekit went, discord among males always followed, especially among celibate males such as scribemoles. The older they were the worse it became, for there was something about the way Sleekit came close to them, looking so vulnerable and innocent, that stirred in them feelings and produced actions which they themselves, jostling in a rivalrous kind of way for her attention, might have called fraternal, or avuncular, or possibly paternal, but which, in truth, went beyond the acceptable bounds of all three.

  Insidiously, like the spread of rotten root disease beneath a raft of mat-grass, the divisions and ructions in Uffington that preceded Brevis’ departure, seemed to deepen with the arrival of Weed and Sleekit.

  Not that any mole then saw that they caused it – indeed, none would have guessed it. For were not the newcomers most ardent in their worship of the Stone, and most respectful (especially that young and most caringly intelligent female), and willing to learn?

  Were they not also charitable and balanced in their views on the invasive grikes, suggesting that, after all, the stories had been exaggerated and the grikes were a lot better than they seemed? The rumours were unkind and unfair. The grikes were hospitable and learned and lived by a code which, if other moles abided by it, was just and probably sensible for the rougher and more dangerous systems
they came from. What was more, they seemed to have evolved a way of dealing with the plague based on strict observance of worship and cleanliness... All of which was just what the scribemoles wished to hear, assuaging as it did their doubts about what was going on in moledom, and giving support to the prevailing view that the grikes were not a real threat at all and scribemoles were best advised to do nothing. So, unknowingly, the scribemoles allowed two leading grikes into their midst, a spying sojourn broken only when suddenly, unexpectedly and dramatically, Brevis returned.

  It was in the middle of September, and he came up the slopes from the north, tired, badly cut about with talon-thrusts, and looking as if he had aged a cycle of seasons. Yet he insisted on an immediate audience with the Holy Mole himself. In the course of it he not only gave the most dire warnings of the grikes, and much evidence of their ruthless cruelty, but learned, to his horror, of the fact that two strange moles had been admitted into the Holy Burrows... moles whom he was able immediately to identify from hearsay as Weed and Sideem Sleekit.

  But too late: Weed and Sleekit had gone, leaving grim evidence of the urgency of their departure. A cleric, Fawn, and a scribemole, Weld, were found dead on the westside, as cleanly talon-thrust to death as moles might be. Murder expertly done. They must, surmised Brevis, have become suspicious and tried to stop the two fleeing grikes. Yet even faced by this evidence, the scribemoles led by Medlar would not act, for was there not some other explanation possible, and might the two not have been killed by other moles, unknown?

  “No!” declared Brevis.

  “It is possible!” said the intellectual scribemoles, unwilling to believe that their judgements could be so wrong, and therefore to admit that preparations for defence might now be wise. So, in that prevarication, the fate of the scribemoles of Uffington, and perhaps of the Holy Burrows themselves, came to be sealed.