One murky and gloomy day, but with light enough for him to see something of what went on, he heard guardmoles’ jeers and laughter as they harried a mole along by the cells. It happened that they stopped within sight of Tryfan’s cell, but were too absorbed with the mole they were tormenting to notice Tryfan watching.
“Oh yeah?” one of them was saying. “Scribe can you? And write your name in rock no doubt. Ha, ha, ha! Very clever.”
“He’s a clever one he is, clever at lying!”
With some difficulty Tryfan made out a mole who, even by that light, he could see was broken in body. His back and flanks were so gaunt that the line of his vertebrae and ribs could be seen through them, and his fur was patchy and torn from ill-treatment. His snout was low and he moved, when he moved at all, with pain and difficulty.
His voice was the barest whisper and what it said, continually, was, “I am, yes, yes, yes. I am. That I am.” A final, desperate, affirmation of the self he had nearly lost in this place of torture. At first Tryfan found it hard to make out the mole’s words, but when he did he noticed immediately that he spoke in the same precise manner as Boswell did and, hearing him, Tryfan was deathly still, and whispered a prayer of help to the Stone.
“What are you, mole? A scribemole or a liar, or both?” mocked a guardmole.
“No, no. Yes, yes, yes. I am, I am!” whispered the mole.
“Then scribe on rock for us, mole. Go on, scribe my name. Burr’s my name. Can you scribe that, so my name lives for ever?”
“Nomole can scribe on rock,” said the mole.
At that they hit him viciously saying, “The WordSpeaker can scribe on the Rock of the Word and may one day scribe our names!”
And they pushed the mole against the walls of the tunnel and forced him to raise a paw to the black flint.
“Now scribe, mole!” they said, laughing. And they forced his talons pathetically over the flint’s shining surface.
Tryfan, watching, saw that even as they did this the mole not only continued his refrain of, “I am, I am!” but contrived to move his other front paw on the floor, to scratch it... or....
He is scribing! said Tryfan to himself, scarcely believing his eyes. But what it was Tryfan could not make out in the half-light.
The grike guardmoles lost interest in their game and drove the mole on, and all Tryfan could do was stare at the spot where he had been, and at the weak scribing left on the chalky floor.
The next time Tryfan was taken from his cell he contrived to pause at the point where the mole he had seen had been, and he ran his talons over the meagre marks the mole had striven to make in the hard chalky subsoil of the tunnel floor.
“I am, I am,” the mole had whispered again and again, and there in the floor, even as the guardmoles had mocked his failure to scribe on flint, he had scribed who he was, and Tryfan touched it, and knew it, and gasped. For the name the mole had scribed was BREVIS, the scribemole who had been Spindle’s master, and who had escaped Uffington before the massacre there by the grikes. The scribemole who had reported on the Buckland system, and whose home system this was. Brevis was alive.
And there in the few moments he had, pretending weakness and confusion, Tryfan scribed something in return, that Brevis might find it and be heartened.
For days after that Tryfan waited until one evening, as night fell, the mole was led down the tunnel again. Tryfan saw that he was weaker now, his paws hardly able to drag his frail body along. He passed over the point where Tryfan had scribed and, as Tryfan breathlessly watched, his paw ran across the scribing he had made, seeming not to recognise it. Indeed he slowly carried on until, a moment later, he seemed to hesitate and pause and reach back as if, from a great distance, the words Tryfan had scribed had been heard by him.
“Come on, old mole,” said the guardmole who was one of the kinder ones. “No dallying.”
“But I... but there’s...” Brevis whispered, wanting to reach back to Tryfan’s scribing and yet, perhaps, not quite daring to, and he was pushed on.
But Tryfan knew – or hoped – that Brevis would return that way later, and watched on. Until at last, seeming even slower now and dreadfully weak, he was dragged past by the guardmole.
“Rest,” whispered Brevis as he reached the spot again. “Rest a moment...” And so he contrived to pause at Tryfan’s scribing.
“Just for a moment then,” muttered the guardmole.
Tryfan saw Brevis run his talons over Tryfan’s scribing, not once, or twice, but three times, the guardmole suspicious but not interfering, for he would not recognise scribing himself. Brevis was still and seemed wondering, and then, from his cell, Tryfan softly spoke out the words he had scribed. Ancient words they are, and magical, the words of greeting one scribemole makes to another, words Tryfan had never spoken as a scribemole before, nor ever, perhaps, imagined that he would have the chance.
“Steyn reine in thine herte,” he said.
Then Brevis turned to the darkness from where Tryfan’s voice came and spoke out the proscribed response, using the same old language, his voice full of awe:
“Staye thee hoi and soint.”
“Me desire wot I none,” replied Tryfan, wondering if the guardmole would intervene. But he seemed bemused by the language the two moles were speaking, and stilled perhaps by the peace between them. More than that he was taken aback by the evident strength that, so suddenly, seemed to infuse the body of the old mole who moments before had seemed near death. For his snout was up now, and his body alert, and he spoke out the last line of the greeting firmly, and with a love that silenced any protest the guardmole might have wished to make, and which also brought tears to Tryfan’s eyes:
“Blessed be thou and ful of blisse,” said Brevis, adding for good measure, in a voice full of joy: “Blessed be thou, mole, whatever thy name!”
It took some moments more for the guardmole to find his senses, so suffused did the tunnel seem with light and strength.
“Eh now, what’s this?” he said. “No talking, you know the rules.”
“He’s a friend,” said Tryfan from the darkness, the Stone giving his voice the power of command and persuasion. “Just for a moment....”
“Well, then...” said the guardmole doubtfully, retreating a little and letting the two moles talk.
“Whatmole art thou?” said Brevis, his voice full of wonder.
“A friend of Boswell, Tryfan my name.”
“Boswell! Does that mole live still?”
“He lives as the Stone lives,” said Tryfan.
“And your name is Tryfan?”
“Tryfan of Duncton. And one you know is alive, and here in these cells. His name is....”
“Good Spindle!” said Brevis joyfully, though scarcely able to keep his stance now, so weak was he and affected by Tryfan’s words. “I thought I heard, I knew I heard his voice. Tryfan of Duncton, I have prayed for such a moment. But art thou...?” He pointed a talon back at the scribing on the floor but did not speak the word “scribemole’.
“By Boswell made at Uffington.”
“Then blessed is this moment, blest be this day! I thought I was the last!”
“And I!” said Tryfan, tears coming to his eyes again. “And I.”
Then the sound of other guardmoles approaching could be heard and Tryfan whispered urgently, “Be of faith. We will have need of thee, Brevis, for this is your home system and you know its tunnels. Have faith!”
“I have faith I’ll be snouted at Midsummer,” said Brevis. “It’s what they’re keeping me for.”
“Well, then, we must set you free of this place. And in any case there are other tasks, more important tasks, and you will be needed now, for there are few of us.”
“Do they know what you are, Tryfan?” whispered Brevis, even as the guardmole roughly took his shoulder to pull him away. The other guardmoles were near at paw.
Tryfan shook his head.
“Boswell wished it so,” he said. Then he said to the guardmole
with a voice of authority, “Treat him well lest one day you answer for not doing so!” And there was something about Tryfan that was to be obeyed, and, with a final exchange of blessings, the two scribemoles were parted. Then Tryfan turned back into his cell, and, drained of strength, thanked the Stone for the coming of this hour.
Chapter Twelve
For the next few days Tryfan remained buoyed up in a state of hope and confidence at the discovery that Brevis was alive. But no more meetings proved possible, for Brevis was not brought past his cell again, and despite questioning of the more friendly guardmoles he could get no news of him, nor of Spindle either.
The guardmoles left him alone, and he was not taken for further questioning – interludes, he now realised, he had enjoyed as a respite from the lonely darkness of the cell. Despite the dampness he could tell that the summer was advancing, for the air grew a little warmer, and he became even more plagued by fleas.
It was then, at the time of despair and anticlimax that arose in the weeks after seeing Brevis, and greater physical discomfort and weakness, that Eldrene Fescue and Sideem Sleekit resumed their interrogation. To them Tryfan would be taken by bullying guardmoles and forced to suffer their questionings. That much he remembered subsequently, and that for answer to any questions they asked about Boswell or the scribemoles of the Holy Burrows, and others about Stillstones and the Book of the Word, the original copy of which they seemed to be seeking, Tryfan chose to talk about something quite different, which was Silence and the place he told them it might be found, which was in Duncton Wood. He remembered that this seemed to infuriate them, and that Sleekit, despite her involvement in the Seven Stancing was as ruthless as Fescue in ordering the guardmoles to hurt him.
But there came a time when their beatings and talonings had no more effect, and he retreated from them into a world of his own in which they could not reach him. So that then, when they told him Spindle was dead, their words had no effect on him, for he was able to evoke the memory of his friends so vividly that the Spindle he knew, like Bracken, and Boswell, and Rebecca, and good Comfrey, were alive and in his cell.
“No, no,” he would call out. “Spindle isn’t dead! He can’t be, he’s here, look! Spindle, talk to them!” When he started talking like that the eldrene seemed to go away and not come back, and Sideem Sleekit stared at him and then was gone, quite gone.
So Tryfan survived. But then there was a period of doubt, and uncertainty, and one he survived by prayer to the Stone and by practising his scribing on the dusty floor across whose narrow length, for two short periods each day, a dull grey light from some distant entrance cast itself. Here he wrote the names he loved – Boswell, Comfrey, Rebecca, Bracken, Spindle... and places he dreamed of visiting again – Uffington, the Holy Burrows, and... Duncton Wood. And he knew those moles were not in his cell at all. All gone. Even Spindle, too, it seemed. And Tryfan wept and did not touch the food the guardmole left.
Then, too, he strove to meditate on the teachings Boswell had given him, doing his best to use that time of enforced solitude well, as he felt Boswell himself would have done. He had often heard Boswell talk of his time in the silent burrows of Uffington, where moles sometimes chose to live isolated from all others for moleyears at a time, and some, even, until death took them to the Stone. He remembered that they ate little, but that they did eat, and drink, especially drink. So he did the same, licking the foul walls of his cell, eating the filthy food they left. Surviving.
It was then that Tryfan of Duncton, already disciplined by his years with Boswell, found a yet sterner discipline, and through the practice of meditation kept some measure of balance and harmony between his mind and his tortured body.
Throughout that dark night of his life Tryfan always thought of Spindle, not believing he was dead, but praying that the Stone might give the cleric strength to survive. And at darker moments still, Tryfan permitted himself the indulgence of reverie, remembering again the warmth and light of his puphood, when the beech trees on the high part of his beloved Duncton Wood had caught the light, and the leaves, first young and bright green and then bigger and duller, but yet magnificent, had fluttered in the breezes high above him as he explored the system in which he had been born.
“I will go back there when we are free of Buckland, go back there and find companionship and help, go back...” And though he did not know it he began to speak such thoughts aloud, mumbling the words in his weakness, his mind reaching the limit of its endurance and beginning to drift now... “Yes I will, and Comfrey will come to greet me, and I’ll find Boswell once more and show Spindle, yes Spindle, that was his name, a mole I knew long ago, Spindle....”
It seemed that he heard moles calling sometimes, and that sometimes it was night when it should be day, and that light across the floor of his cell was so dark, yes, yes it was, and those creatures there not meant for eating, unless they be there to eat him up! A blessed relief! Yes, yes, and he could laugh, and did, silently, and brought his mind back to things that made sense, names he remembered, like B – Bos... yes, yes, and R – Re... What was her name? Spindle, that was a name and a mole too. Ha, ha!
“Spindle!” he mumbled. “Spindle...” And Tryfan called out to the blinding light that seemed to come into his cell, and felt tears on his face fur. “Spindle....”
“Tryfan! Tryfan! Can you hear me? Tryfan!”
It was Spindle, talking to him from somewhere among the trees near Duncton’s great Stone, calling to him....
“Tryfan!!”
It was Spindle. But here, really here, in the sudden light at his cell entrance, which the guardmoles had unblocked.
“Spindle?”
“Yes, Tryfan. Me. Spindle. Your friend.”
An old-seeming Spindle, even thinner than before, his flanks gaunt and hurt with half-healed scars, his talons broken and blunted, his fur ragged and patchy... not the Spindle he had known....
“Tryfan... They’re taking us out of here! – and not, I think, to snout us.”
Tryfan’s paws seemed slow to move, and his body ached, and the guardmole had to come in to help him towards the entrance of the cell before he was able to whisper, “Spindle? You?” And he reached out and touched him as if he doubted his ears and eyes. And they wept and praised the Stone that brought them together again.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“But you look so old,” protested Tryfan, suddenly bad-tempered. “You’re a fraud!”
A weak smile came to Spindle’s face.
“No more than you,” he said. “Come, we’re to leave here now! Come Tryfan.” And Tryfan permitted himself to be helped out of the foul cell that had been his world too long.
As he went he tried to remember something, something he had to remember, must remember to tell Spindle, if this was really him. Something scribed.
“Brevis!” said Tryfan suddenly. “I saw him. He’s here, Spindle.”
“Yes, I know,” said Spindle. “These last few moleweeks I have been better cared for, as he has too, and I have been in a communal cell with him. I’m afraid I did not have your strength for isolation, Tryfan, but I am better now. Much have I learnt of Buckland that may be useful.”
“Good, good,” said Tryfan, stopping, so that the guardmoles cursed him. Ahead, across the tunnel, fell a shaft of sunlight, and it was this that Tryfan had stopped to stare at. And the sound that seemed to come from it: of birdsong out on the surface above, high and beautiful, and life busy and good.
“We survived,” whispered Tryfan. “We did, Spindle. And by this confinement the grikes have made us stronger. It is the Stone’s will.” To Spindle’s astonishment he seemed to have found something of his old strength and purpose, for he asked boldly, even if he did totter against the tunnel wall as he did so, “Now tell me, where are we going and why?”
They soon found out, for after making a journey down tunnels in which guardmoles jeered and buffeted them, they were pushed before Eldrene Fescue in that same communal chamber they had good
reason to fear, filled once more with a mob of moles, talking and eating excitedly, as they seemed to like to do before an Atonement or a punishing.
How loud and big and strange so many moles seemed to Tryfan, who had known only solitariness for so long.
Fescue crouched with Sleekit at her side, both looking smug. Tryfan looked to see if he could find the slightest trace of pity or concern in the eyes of Sleekit, for he could not comprehend how she had shared the Seven Stancing and yet be so cold ever since. Unless she had been afraid of that Silence she had heard. Yes, thought Tryfan, a mole might be afraid of that and need much help towards it.
“Well, well!” said Fescue coming close to Tryfan, her talons poking painfully at his shoulders and ribs, lingering there a little too long. “I see your Stone has not protected you. See!” she cried out, her harsh voice silencing the rabble of guardmoles who turned to listen, sadistic smiles on their faces. “Here we have two Stone followers. Won’t listen to the Word. Don’t want to know the Word. I and Sideem Sleekit have questioned them and got the most we can expect to get. This one here even knew one of the Uffington scribemoles, a White Mole no less! Now I’m wondering....”
Her voice dropped to a whisper as she paused for effect. “I’m wondering what to do with them....”
Tryfan and Spindle instinctively moved closer together, as if each might protect the other from the hostility about them.
“Snout the bastards!” shouted a guardmole.
“Aye, snout them slow!” cried another.
A guardmole came up to them, breaking past the ones who had brought them there, and thrust his yellow evil-smelling teeth towards each in turn.
“Thought you were scum, said you were scum, now you are scum,” he snarled. He was the grike who had first accosted them in the burrow, and who had ordered them to call him “Sir’.
“Snout the scum,” he shouted suddenly, turning towards his friends.
Fear is a numbing thing when there is no recourse to hope or escape, and Tryfan and Spindle began to feel that now as the grikes shouted all around, calling for their death.
Duncton Quest Page 20