Duncton Found

by William Horwood

  “Then, too, our Rule is concerned with the reality that is now and here about us and not with a world of perfection yet to come. This is why lies and deceit do not help a mole but hinder him and the community in which he lives for they mask the reality all need to know.

  “But to know reality, and see it plain, requires discipline, and that is hard. Again and again you have in different ways told Beechen that a mole’s life will be hard. Lying simply seeks to ease the pain.

  “Our Rule helps a mole with that by showing that hard though the truth may be, hard though right vision may be, lies and obscurity are finally harder. They are a confusion a mole makes about himself and become ever harder to escape.

  “Yet what of change? How do we escape from confusion? How do we learn to give all we are to the communities in which we live? The Word teaches that a mole must Atone for both what he has done wrong and what he has not done right before he is judged worthy. In short, the Word punishes mole for being mole and says that only through punishment and suffering can he be saved.

  “Our Rule does not point a mole that way, and nor do I believe it is the Stone’s will that it should. Rather we say that as nomole is perfect so all moles will, to some degree, carry their confusion with them. That is their reality. But the way to help them escape it is not through punishing them, which merely confirms that a mole is wrong, but by teaching them that at any moment, any time, they can turn back towards the rising sun, which is the light of the Stone, and see that by reaching out towards it they can cast off their confusion in a moment. In a moment.

  “This turning to reality – which may take years to come, or but a moment – is what the scribemoles of old called grace. But we have almost lost the word, for its meaning lies in wonder and belief and those we have almost lost. Grace is not a state that stays. As it comes it may go and a mole will not find it again unless with patience and with discipline he turns his snout towards the rising sun once more.

  “Yet I know that many of you have been so graced here in Duncton, and often without trying, and without Atonement or austerity or punishment. You have turned a corner, seen the sun with truth, with your eyes open wide, and left your confusion behind you. How can this be, that the diseased and outcast have found grace, and in throwing off confusion have begun to find community? And more than that, though none of us is perfect and all of us slide back into confusion, how have we been able to give Beechen so much to take from here?

  “This answer lies, too, in the Rule you have helped me scribe. Many of us came here angry, and full of dark purpose, and full of hatred. We loved not our neighbours, we trusted not our friends. We hurt others because we were hurt ourselves. So did this outcast community begin, and in its painful birth did many die. Yet, slowly, left alone with but the Silence of the Stone to heed and the wise cycle of the seasons to attend and listen to, which shows us daily what we creatures are and were and will become, which is not much unless it is seen for what it is, which is everything... we have each stopped striving for what we could not have. Some have stopped complaining, some have found the peace that lies in the simple burrow, some have found that by listening more they need say less; and many have learned to raise their snouts from their own miserable concerns and see the eastern sun rise each day and know the joy of it, and feel their own true worth.

  “So, gradually, within ourselves and learning from one another, we have ceased to strive so hard for what we did not really need, and found how greatly wormful is the soil which the Stone has given us. Then, getting older, growing slower, striving even less, we have turned the corner and seen the sun.

  “The Rule you helped me make tells much of this. Its way is finally not hard but only seems so when moles are lost in their own confusion. Yet how slowly do we learn not to be afraid of what we are, or ashamed, or sad. We are, as the rising sun is, and because the Stone knows us, and knows what we truly are, we can accept ourselves without deceit. There is great peace in that and it is the Stone’s great gift to us, and somewhere in the whole acceptance of it we shall discover Silence.

  “All these things, and the way towards them, are in our Rule. We know them, we have learned them, and we have given them as best we can to Beechen. They are the simple things we know which the striving of our lives has made us too often forget.

  “Moledom has forgotten them. And now its longest winter’s night is coming and it is ill-prepared. All our lives it has been coming, all our lives.

  “Yet there is hope. As if it knew that such a time would come, our forebears, of which we are but the living part, made a myth of the Stone Mole, and said he would be a saviour. We thought he would be more than us, stronger, wiser, better, more powerful.

  “But he has come and he is but ordinary mole. He is like us. Outcast here like us. Flesh and blood like us. Fallible like us. Afraid like us. Boswell, White Mole, bearer of the Seventh Stillstone which is of Silence, sent his son as Stone Mole and honoured Duncton with his rearing. For better and for worse we have done the best we can and now, on the eve of the long winter to come, we must do that which is the last thing of our Rule. We must trust ourselves to let him go.

  “To make him free to leave us, to make him know we trust him to go forth, is the last and greatest gift we have. As in the nature of our welcome does our community grow stronger when new moles come, so in the nature of its farewell is that strength preserved. Our rite of Midsummer has helped prepare us for his parting, and him as well. Now must the parting be. It is a moment all moles who have pups must learn to face with the same trust with which they must learn to face the rising sun.

  “Beechen is our youth, his is the light of the rising sun we saw, he is the love we gave without asking for any in return, he is the gift we give to others. As our communities gave to us so we gave on to him; and if, as I believe, he is the Stone Mole Boswell sent, then he will pass on the spirit of the Rule we made to allmole in its time of greatest need.

  “His teachings, which are our wisdom, shall light moles through the great darkness. He is not more than us, but us ourselves. But as we are weak, so shall he be, and if our strength was not enough in him so then shall darkness prevail.

  “I pray that we have done enough and that Boswell’s trust in us shall be fulfilled.

  “As for this Rule, which is but a dull echo perhaps of what we have put in Beechen’s heart, it might with advantage be placed where the great scribe and cleric Spindle hid the texts we made when he was alive.

  “If the Stone wills it, and moledom survives the deep winter of doubt and dark sound, others will one day find them. It was my brother Comfrey’s greatest wish that pups, or the pups of the pups, of those survivors who escaped Duncton Wood would one day return. I pray they will, and find this Rule, and ken it well, and having kenned it put it to one side and through living by its tenets discover things we knew.

  “Where that place is I do not know, but Mayweed does. He shall choose a mole to take the Rule with him, that another knows as well.”

  “Practical patriarch, I have chosen already!” said Mayweed with a grin. “Bailey is the mole.”

  “But...” Bailey began to protest.

  “Oh but ‘but’ Bailey is I Do we not all agree?” A rumble of good-humoured “Ayes” and “Yeses” and general affirmation greeted this. “The community decides, the Sirs and Madams acting all as one! Incredible. Tryfan’s optimism already proven justified. Relief!”

  Tryfan smiled and held up his paw.

  “But one more thing I shall say, and if I sound too much like a self-appointed leader then gainsay me at once. Let Beechen leave us tomorrow. Let good Mayweed guide him, and Sleekit go with them. With the Stone’s help they shall be enough to get him safely out of Duncton.

  “We who remain shall have a new task now: to face with all the will at our command as a community the trials that lie ahead. Once before when the grikes came here I fled, and now I wish I had not. The whole burden of our Rule is that nomole gains by fleeing darkness.

&nbs
p; “When I returned here with Spindle I told him that I would not leave again. Nor shall I now, though everything suggests that the grikes may soon be upon us once again. This shall be our task, our greatest task, perhaps, old though we are. We shall face the moles of the Word as if they were our returning kin. We shall not strike them. We shall not hurt them. We shall show them what we are, which is a community that strives for nothing other than what it can best make within itself of love and of the Stone.

  “We shall feel fear. We may be hurt. We may well be killed. But if anymole here can tell us now a better way than just to be what we are when they come then I would know it.”

  Nomole spoke, or said that Tryfan spoke anything other than what they felt, fearful though it was.

  “Tomorrow then, at dawn, with the rising sun, we shall accompany Beechen to the south-east slopes and from there, going the dangerous way by the top of the roaring owl way, which Mayweed knows, he and Sleekit shall lead Beechen from us. After that the Stone will guide them all.”

  Tryfan said no more in general, but stanced down, took food, and talked with the many who came to him in the long evening and night that followed. Throughout that time Beechen was with him, and Feverfew, and many came and touched them.

  Until, when it was still dark with night, the moles made their slow way through the wood, some by tunnel and some by surface until they reached the high edge of the wood that faces to the east and south.

  The roaring owl way was quiet, with just an occasional gaze coming along its length. Wind flurried at the undergrowth, beech leaves scattered down, and just before dawn, when the sky was beginning to lighten, Mayweed and Bailey returned from the Ancient System where they had hidden the text.

  They went to where Beechen was stanced, with Tryfan and Feverfew at either flank, and joined them. Then, too, Skint and Smithills, Sleekit and Marram as well, and moles saw that all the seven guardians of Beechen, who had gathered at his birth by the Duncton Stone, were gathered round him once again.

  In the east the sun began to rise and all moledom lightened towards dawn.

  “In the days of Uffington,” said Tryfan then, “it was the tradition in the Holy Burrows for a blessing to be said when a scribemole set off on a journey into moledom. So shall I say that ancient blessing of the Stone now for Beechen, and say it with the love we all here feel.”

  He turned to Beechen and placed his great paw on the younger mole’s right paw and in the whispering silence of the dawn spoke these words of the Stone:

  “May the peace of your power

  Encompass him, going and returning;

  May the peace of the White Mole be his in the travel.

  And may he return home safeguarded..”

  As the moles said their last farewells to Beechen the slopes below them began to glisten with the sun in the morning dew.

  Each of the guardians, but for Mayweed and Sleekit who were going with him, said goodbye. Then Beechen turned to Tryfan and Feverfew and spoke privately to them. Old Tryfan embraced him fiercely, his great body and rough paws clasped tight over Beechen’s shoulders, then Feverfew spoke softly to him last of all and told him never to forget he was “muche-luved, sow muche-luved”.

  Then Mayweed and Sleekit led him away, with Bailey to accompany them a little downslope. The sun’s rays grew ever brighter as they went and the watching moles screwed their eyes up to see them go. But when the sun had risen high enough for them to look again, Sleekit and Mayweed and Beechen had gone.

  All they could see was the roaring owl way, and the dewy tracks of moles in the Pasture grass. And there, stanced still, was Bailey, his right paw raised towards the slopes below.

  Behind them the wind flurried at the great trees, a few leaves scattered across the slopes, and one by one Duncton’s community turned back into the wood, to seek out its tunnels and prepare itself for its time of great trial.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Yet summer still lingered on in Siabod, the first place from which moles might have expected it to be gone. But there it was, with fair winds and bright skies over the mountains, as if to bring a few extra days of ease to a place that might most need their memory in the times of trial to come.

  The Siabod moles, scarcely believing their good luck, were in expansive mood and garrulous as they stanced about in groups at the entrances to the tunnels of high Siabod itself and enjoyed every last moment of the summer’s end.

  Their leader, great Alder from the south, had good reason to be pleased. He had chosen this time as one for a gathering of all the rebel leaders of the Welsh Marches, knowing he took the risk that if the weather was hard fewer moles might come and an opportunity for uniting the rebel Welsh forces before the winter years would be lost. But the Stone granted fair weather, and over twenty leaders had come to represent systems large and small all along the Marches, each with a story to tell, each with hopes to share, each looking for support.

  The high Siabod range of mountains and the neighbouring Carneddau to the north shone with autumnal colour as the persistent sun caught the green lichens on long-exposed rocks, and highlighted the mauve rafts of heather across the moor. Its rays turned black peat hags into rich dark brown, and even the sheer rock faces beyond moles’ reach, wet from earlier rains, reflected the bright sky.

  The idea for the conclave had been wily Caradoc’s, who had trekked the rough way over from his lonely stronghold of Caer Caradoc in the centre of the Marches in August to persuade Alder that such a meeting was needed.

  “Ever since June I’ve been on my paws, trekking first to the south and then back up to the north and now here I am,” he had explained. “I’ve talked to all the rebel leaders you know and some younger ones you don’t, and had word passed on from some I’ve never met at all. They need to come together soon, Alder, or they’ll go back to their retreats in despair and be lost to our cause.

  “They’re isolated, they’re losing hope, and many have but few moles left who’ll follow them. They know that the grikes along the eastern front under Ginnell have not weakened, and still occupy the valleys below Siabod itself.

  “Only two things keep them going now. One is knowledge of what you’ve done in Siabod, and how you’ve taken back the higher tunnels from the grikes so that there are still moles who watch over the holy Stones of Siabod. Pride in your achievement here makes them battle on to defend their own systems.

  “The other is the whisper – no more than a rumoured hope for most – that started when the eastern star shone in spring and moles said that the Stone Mole had come.”

  Alder, a great strong mole, his body creased with effort and worry, but his muscles good and spare and his fur still healthy, eased his paws along the ground. Caradoc was the mole who had greeted him so many years before when he and Marram, sent from Duncton by Tryfan, had first arrived at the Marches, and he was a mole he had come to love and respect.

  Alder knew that sometimes in the dark, long moleyears of struggle in the harsh Siabod wastes the moles he led had lost touch with the very thing they fought for, which was their belief in the Stone. But there was always one mole he could rely on who would remind everymole he met of why it was they fought, and that was Caradoc.

  “Mad Caradoc” some called him, “obsessive” was the word that others used. But that was behind his back or when he was off on one of his lonely treks to seek out some isolated system of moles and bring to them inspiration of the Stone, and tell them that one day peace would come and the Stone’s Silence be known. Given half a chance he would tell them too of Caer Caradoc, and how one day, within his lifetime if the Stone spared him long enough, the Stone Mole would come even there, and the once-great-system, which like Siabod was one of the ancient Seven, would be reborn.

  Alder was a fighting mole, reared to the Word, trained as a guardmole, but converted to the Stone by Tryfan who rightly saw in him the makings of a great commander. That had been a long time ago, and since then his greatest friend Marram had turned his back on fighting and on Si
abod, and had gone south-east once more because he believed the Stone Mole was coming.

  Nothing happened in the winter years that followed but then, just when everymole was giving up hope of any sign at all, that strange star shone again in the spring.

  “I tell you, mole, he is in moledom now,” Caradoc had told him then. “He is here. If we can hold on to our faith he will send guidance to us and we shall have something great to fight for. You’ll see!”

  Caradoc had not been the only one affected by the eastern star. Old Glyder, for long the leader of Siabod, had finally turned his snout towards great Tryfan itself and gone to “touch the Stones” which Alder knew was a Siabod mole’s proud way of saying “to die’. He had been the last of the four sons born to Rebecca of Duncton in the far-off days when she had come to Siabod, and apart from Gowre, the son of one of his dead brothers, no other issue remained, all killed in the long years of fighting the grikes.

  But Gowre, born the previous spring, had matured well and proved a good fighter, and before he left Glyder entrusted this last descendant of Rebecca’s offspring to Alder’s care and the lad had done well and in time might gain the respect of the Siabod moles. Alder hoped it might be so, for he had grown tired this summer past and was ready to pass on the responsibilities of leadership in Siabod to a younger mole.

  Then Caradoc had returned in August and repeated his hopes of the Stone Mole, and Alder had stared at him and heard out his passionate words, half doubtful yet half in wonder, and grateful that the Stone made such moles as Caradoc to remind others of what truly mattered.