Duncton Found

by William Horwood

  Like Mayweed and Sleekit, they watched the bright night skies, and they wandered the still and frosty mornings when mists made the Thames mysterious; they heard nature’s sounds and knew its austere winter scents and felt at one with themselves and with their world. Reverence was in their every movement; but quietness, too, and fun.

  Historians have picked away at that short time of private love they had, scribing of some detail they’ve grubbed up or guessed, but that is not our way. They had their time, they discovered love, and if in the tunnels that they found or made, or by the whitened riverside they made love, then let us say that we believe it was true love, and leave it be at that.

  If a mole would know how they were then, let he or she remember their first true love, and imagine them to be well blessed by the Stone’s light as well. The Stone made those two as one and let each of us celebrate it as we will without the tittle-tattle of gratuitous surmise.

  At the end of November the skies grew cloudy as the wind veered east, and the rains swept in, driving across the Cumnor Hill and bringing downpours on its western slopes and on to Bablock, where the river ran.

  The frost was gone, the trees dripped, the river changed colour and rose a little, and Beechen said to Mistle, “I think it’s time we went to Bablock now.”

  So, by tunnel and wet surface, the wind driving their fur this way and that, laughing and sharing with pleasure even the rough day, they tumbled like two pups into Bablock Hythe, where Tubney, alerted by the most discreet of watchers, found them.

  “Welcome, Beechen, here at last!” he beamed. “And... a friend?”

  “Mistle,” said Beechen with a smile. “Of Avebury.”

  “Well! Welcome, Mistle of Avebury. What rain! What a turmoil up above!”

  “It’s not so bad,” said Mistle, “once you’re out.”

  “Ah, the young! It’s a lot better once you’re in,” said Tubney. “The others will, I think, be pleased. I say “I think” because you see they have been in Bablock long enough to have forgotten that moles exist outside it.”

  Mistle looked about the tunnels with pleasure, shaking her fur dry and not at all surprised to find that a place she and Beechen had looked down upon from the heath above for the exciting days past should be as pleasant and homely on the inside as it looked from out.

  “Let’s explore!” she said. Which they did, despite the mild protestations of Tubney who thought that perhaps he ought to tell somemole or other that Beechen was in fact here, and had brought with him a most elegant, a most pretty, a most....

  “Tubney?”

  It was the voice of Crocus, and it was to be obeyed.

  “Yes dear, coming.”

  So it was Crocus who was the first to know of their coming, Tubney being discounted in the matter altogether once it was discovered that the Stone Mole Beechen had a female friend with him.

  “Are they together?” Crocus might have been heard asking.

  “Yes, I think so. I mean they seemed to be, they came through the same entrance wetted by the same rain.”

  “Well then —” (a listening mole would have also heard), “we’ll have to find a very different burrow than the one I had in mind. A private burrow, with its own entrance and exit, and with views of the river. Yes. Leave it to me!”

  “My dear, I was intending to....”

  “I shall tell the others myself, immediately I have arranged a burrow for the two young moles, but you can tell Mayweed since you’re the only one who ever knows where he is.”

  “He’s with Sleekit usually, not doing very much.”

  “Well, I don’t know, you might have said..”

  Said what! Tubney did not know, and when Crocus had gone off to be busy he went his leisurely way saying, “Dear me, rush, rush, rush.”

  But Tubney was wrong to think the others had even half-forgotten about Beechen. The moment Sleekit set eyes on him once more, she saw and understood the changes that had overcome him. He stanced more solidly, more proudly, and there was a touching shyness about the way he introduced Mistle to them both.

  “My dear,” said Sleekit warmly, “you are most welcome, most welcome, and I am only sorry that Beechen’s mother Feverfew is not here now to say so as well, for she would be pleased, I know she would, and many times!”

  “Mistle Miss, my name is Mayweed, and humble as I am, a mole of merely slender stature, yet my rejoicing for you both is greater than the greatest mole’s.”

  Indeed, so great was their joy to see Beechen, so genuine their delight in her, that tears came to Mistle’s eyes and she turned to Beechen to hold her for a moment and said that she for her part wished Violet was still alive to see how happy she was, and how generous and welcoming moles could be.

  As for Buckram, when he saw Mistle he was protectiveness itself, and took Beechen to task for not bringing her to Bablock sooner lest they had been caught out by grikes.

  “Didn’t see a guardmole once, Buckram, nor anymole.”

  “Well, Stone Mole, ’tis the last time I let you out of my sight!”

  What nights of conversation they all had, what days of shared leisure, and what excitement it was for the Bablock moles to hear the tales Mayweed told and which Sleekit confirmed. How hushed they were at Mistle’s account of her escape from Avebury, and what tears were shed by Crocus when she spoke of Violet. How appalled to hear of Whern, yet wanting to know more....

  Then Buckram would tell them darkly of Fyfield and of Wort, yet make clear as well that not all guardmoles were bad, but rather simply caught by a faith that demanded loyalty before conscience, and by moles who ruled by fear.

  Many a tale was told, and by Tubney, too, who could turn the conversation this way and that, and lighten it when it grew too dark, and make it more serious when they had enough of jokes.

  While all delighted to see the joyful spirits that radiated wherever Beechen and Mistle went, and the way those two moles’ very being spoke of the Stone without mentioning its name.

  December came, the winds changed once more and in place of rains came murk and mists and heavy skies which loomed so low that mist drifted across the top of Duncton Wood off to the north, and obscured its highest trees.

  There came a day when Tubney found Mayweed by himself staring at the dark water of the Thames. It was midday, but the light was poor and all colour had left the grass and trees along the bank.

  “You look downhearted, my good friend,” said Tubney.

  “Mayweed is, but trying not to be. He, his love and his friends have had a time they will never forget here in Bablock Hythe. But the time has come to leave and humbleness does not want to go. Longest Night is coming soon, and he knows that Beechen and his Mistle will wish to celebrate it near a Stone, and Mayweed senses that Rollright is the place.”

  For a long time Tubney said nothing, but stared dolefully at the river flowing past. A moorhen peered out of some reeds, seemed to dislike the world it saw, and disappeared. A cold mallard, its feathers ragged and its colours all faded, drifted sideways down the river past them, looking as if it had lost the will to paddle any more.

  “My dear friend,” said Tubney, “I shall be miserable when you have gone, not happy at all. I have enjoyed every moment of your company because you make me laugh.”

  “Well,” said poor Mayweed, much moved by Tubney’s testimony, “well...” And tears coursed down his face. Then he said, “Mayweed has been lucky to have many friends in his life, but he says this now, having thought about it often during this time in Bablock: of all the friends he’s had, of all the moles he’s loved, there is nomole in all of moledom he would more prefer to sit with by a river and do nothing much with than Tubney of Bablock. Tubney has taught humbleness something many moles find very hard, and wherever he goes he hopes he will have the self-discipline to stance down at least once a day and do nothing much, and when he does he will say a prayer to the Stone for a mole he once knew in Bablock Hythe.”

  The great river flowed then, as it flows still, a
nd the new-found friends stared at it and wept in the December gloom that they should be so soon parted. Then, when they felt they had wept enough, one sniffed and said, “Rotundity, special stoutness, we must go!” And the other sniffed and replied, “Amazing mole, if you must you must, but Bablock will not see your like again.”

  That same evening Mayweed announced that they must leave, and a final night of revelry and cheer brought their stay in Bablock to a fitting close.

  The following morning, early, the moles gathered to set off, and their Bablock friends gathered with them, except for Crocus, too moved it seemed to be able to face saying goodbye in the open.

  Tubney made a speech, and said that never had Bablock known such exciting, interesting and joyful guests, and he hoped they would travel in safety.

  Before he finished he turned to Beechen and said, “As for you, Beechen, and your love Mistle, we here in Bablock have treated you ordinarily, just as we would wish to have been had we been able to come to your system. But we would not wish you to think that because of that there were not many times we would have wished to call you Stone Mole. We too saw your star, we too awaited your coming, and we are honoured by the Stone that you should come here.

  “Longest Night will be on us soon. We shall have our own modest celebration of it here, and think of you and yours on that holy night. Should the day ever come when we can be of service to you, or to your great cause, beyond being faithful to the Stone, then so shall we be.

  “Meanwhile, on those days when the weather is clear, and we can see Duncton Wood, we shall be pleased to think that the Stone Mole was born so near to us, and to know that he found his love across our heaths, and in our little tunnels.

  “Mistle brings light to an indulgent old mole’s heart, but I know she is too good a mole to mind me saying that Sleekit here is the mole this mole will not forget – for her wit, her wisdom and her youthful looks!”

  Tubney beamed and Sleekit smiled with pleasure at this graceful compliment. The others laughed and Mayweed leered around at all of them.

  Then with touching and with tears they left, taking the northern route along the riverbank, among the shrubs and grass and to the sound of a solitary wood pigeon among the trees, and the muffled sobs of Crocus from down below.

  When they had gone the Bablock moles, disconsolate, went their separate ways, and Tubney went down to comfort his beloved. It took some time, but at last her tears were gone.

  Then Tubney re-emerged and looked about the place. Up, down, along, behind. He went to his favourite spot on the riverbank, the very place where Mayweed had first discovered him. He snouted a little at the ground, smoothing the place, setting it back to rights, and then he slowly stanced down. He eased his snout along his comfortable paws, sniffed the winter air, and began to watch the Thames flow by. Bit by slow bit his body relaxed, and slowly, as if after a dull day a setting sun was showing itself once more, a smile spread across his face.

  He whispered a name, and the dark gentle water of the river spoke it back again.

  “Bablock Hythe,” it said.

  How dark the journey of Mayweed and the others to Rollright seemed. Under the rising heights of Duncton Wood, over the dangerous cross-over at Swinford, then on through interminable heathy fields towards the north.

  Mayweed took them to the very spot where, so long before, he and Tryfan had led the Duncton moles under the river with such disastrous results. They stared back over the river, and thought of the friends they had in the rising wood they could see so near but whose trees seemed dark and impenetrable; then Beechen said a blessing in memory of the moles who were no more, and a prayer for those even now in Duncton Wood.

  For a long time Mayweed stared across the river with Sleekit at his flank. His snout was low, and he seemed not to want to leave.

  “It looks so murky by this light,” whispered Mistle.

  “That’s the Marsh End you can see from here,” replied Beechen. “I lived there for a long time with Tryfan. Are you sure you still want to live in Duncton?” Mistle had told him about the fancy she had when she had first seen it from the hill above Bablock.

  “It’s the only place,” whispered Mistle, “but I couldn’t be there without you.”

  “I’ll always be with you,” said Beechen strangely, and his paw touched hers. But she felt his fear.

  “And I with you, always,” she said.

  In front of them Mayweed stirred and looked about himself as Sleekit reached out and touched him.

  “Humbleness is unhappy,” he said, “because he does not like to be so near Tryfan and unable to go to him. A long time ago Mayweed promised himself he would always be near Tryfan when he was needed.”

  “But it was he who wanted you to guide Beechen out, and you have done. After Rollright, my dear, you must return to him.”

  “And you, my lovely love?” said Mayweed, full of foreboding. Beechen had warned them they would part. Sleekit only sighed.

  “Mayweed looks at the trees of Marsh End across the marsh, and he thinks they look beleaguered and upset, waiting. If Mayweed could swim this great river he would go now to Tryfan’s flank. Mayweed may be humble, but he thinks that Tryfan will need him soon.”

  “My love....”

  But Mayweed was not to be comforted or consoled, by Sleekit or any other mole there, and he led them on silently, his normal good cheer not returning until they were far from the place and the mole he had grown to love.

  They journeyed on, and each day that passed seemed a lifetime shed since their stay at Bablock. Roaring owl threatened them, a dog and the twofoot it pulled chased after them, heron flapped and shadowed the December sky.

  Yet on they went, Mayweed leading, Buckram taking up the rear. Few moles but grikes in those derelict parts, little to do but have faith they could reach Rollright by Longest Night. They were glad when the ground began to rise again, and took them off the clay vales of the Thames and back on to more sandy soils once more.

  The days were shorter still, Longest Night was almost on them, they travelled close, as if all the better to keep out the cold.

  One day, two days more and Mayweed took them quickly on until, on the morning of Longest Night sensing at last that Rollright was near, Mayweed grew suddenly cheerful once again.

  “Tum-to, tum, tum, te-dum,” he sang tunelessly as they went along.

  “My love, it’s very annoying for some, your singing,” Sleekit said.

  “But I’m excited. It is Longest Night and we’re here in time. Stones are near, we’re getting there, and that means that though Mayweed has shed an acorn cup full of tears at losing his new-found friend Tubney, he is already thinking positively about the pleasure to come of meeting once again his long-lost friend, not so hapless Holm. Grubbiness himself! Yes, yes, yes!” Then he raised his voice and called out across the heath ahead, “Holm, be happy! Holm, be prepared to speak! Humble me is coming back. Humble me is almost here! Yes!”

  The ground rose ahead, they climbed to its summit, and there, across a shallow vale the ground rose more. Dark and stolid the place, and Mayweed said, “Sirs and Madams, beloveds one and all, see there our destination. Rollright! Danger calls, friends beckon, what will be, will be.”

  With that, and no more said at all, Mayweed led them over the heath towards the system made famous by the Rollright Stones with no sign yet of guardmole grike, or mole at all.

  They approached the first entrance they saw with extreme caution – Mayweed going ahead with Buckram lest there was guardmole trouble. But there was none, none at all. Nor did they find a guardmole at the second entrance they came to, or the third. Then when they entered the tunnels, they were silent but for the echoes of their own paws.

  Mayweed’s brow furrowed and his pace quickened.

  “Sirs, Madams, Mayweed likes it not. No guardmoles, nomole at all, nothing. His snout quivers with apprehension. He stops, he turns and he asks Beechen and Mistle to do as he will ask them.”

  He turned and fa
ced them, and they saw how deep the concern he felt was.

  “But maybe there aren’t any guardmoles on this side of the system,” said Mistle. “Especially on Longest Night.”

  “Maybe, Madam, maybe. Buckram, you stay here with your charges, my love and I will go on and find out what we can. Hide here, do not move, one or other of us shall come back for you.”

  Mayweed and Sleekit went carefully on, but only after they got nearer to the heart of the system, by which time they would normally long since have been challenged, did they hear mole.

  Then... laughing mole, oh most jovial mole!

  “Follower!” whispered Mayweed peering round.

  He and Sleekit came out of the shadows and found a group of five moles having a good time.

  “Greetings, brother!” cried out one. “Hello, sister. Have a worm!”

  “Where is everymole?” asked Sleekit.

  “At the Stones, of course. Readying themselves for Longest Night.”

  “Salivating stranger,” said Mayweed, “forgive my dimness, but where are the guardmoles? Where the eldrene? Where...?”

  “Oh, them! Gone, most of them. They left a token force at the Stones, but they’re just joining in the fun. The eldrene and the others all left days ago. It’s liberty for all. Eat a worm and have fun!”

  “Where have they gone?” said Sleekit urgently.

  The followers looked at them as if they were indeed dim.

  “The bloody fools have gone to Duncton Wood,” said one of them. “The lot of them, grikes, sideem, Master-elect and some of our moles as servers. We warned them of the disease they’d get but the silly bastards went all the same. So for the first time in a long, long time Rollright moles can enjoy the Stones and have a revel and a feast for Longest Night!”

  “A revel,” repeated Sleekit faintly. “A revel?”

  But Mayweed said nothing, but only stared dumbstruck. A revel was one thing, but Longest Night was a holy night and the revels came after the reverence, not before. And grikes and sideem and the Master-elect gone to Duncton?