Holm grabbed her paw tighter, closed his eyes, and with a mighty shout of, “Lorren!” heaved Quince up and with a scraping of her back paws and another heave from Holm she was into the tunnel as well and they were gone.
Lucerne liked it not, not at all. He liked it so little that by dawn, and once he had got what information he could from the two senior guardmoles to whom he had entrusted the culling of the pups, he had them both snouted on the spot for failing him.
Then, when it was discovered that the mole Quince had escaped as well as Henbane and the pup, he had two more of the garrison guardmoles killed. So mad with anger was he that had he had the means he might have had everymole in the place killed there and then.
How much Terce liked it not was hard to say since when he was taken by Lucerne to see Mallice dead, and Harebell, and their pups all mingled, he said nothing, but stared and blinked. His daughter dead and a father blinks! For such is the training of a Twelfth Keeper!
“Well?” hissed Lucerne. “Henbane gone and with the one surviving pup. The Word speaks strange in this.”
“Yes, Master,” said Terce cautiously.
“To find her myself... or to send others out for her. Which? There is much to do just now in moledom, much to consolidate. I have not time to find her, Terce. You warned that the Stone Mole might become a martyr, and so he might. We must stop that soon.”
But Terce was thinking, and nor was he so sure.
“The pup that survived, Master, it might be thine,” he said slowly. “If it is the mole Harebell’s, then it is still thy kin and a potential threat to us. All the more so in the apostate paws of Henbane.”
Terce watched the seed he planted take root and as he did so he mused upon the supreme power of the Word. With what elegance it was using Henbane to lead Lucerne towards the darkness of divinity! He, Terce, was but the guide along the way.
“She will not kill the pup, Terce,” said Lucerne. “She shall fawn and fondle it, as once she fondled me. She must be found and then the pup will be mine to train.”
“I agree, and it must not be long, Master, before we take her lest she trains the pup to become your enemy. She is a Mistress of such arts. No, I should have pressed you harder to find Henbane when she first fled Whern. Nomole in moledom has greater powers than she, nomole but yourself. Worse by far is the undermining of your authority by the fact of Henbane’s existence, not forgetting that of the pup’s. This will be known, for rumours spread upon the wind of discontent, and discontent there always is where power is fragmented. Master, you must seek Henbane out, you and only you must kill her.”
The rooted seed thrived in the fomenting soil of Lucerne’s jealousy.
“I saw her smile on the mole Harebell,” he said, “and that troubles me. For that alone I will kill her.”
“Master, you must do it.”
“And who shall bear witness of it in moledom? How shall the memory of her be corrupted and its effect neutralised?”
“I shall be with you. I, Terce, thy tutor and Twelfth Keeper shall bear witness for thee to the Keepers and sideem. By powers great shall you kill her, powers... divine.”
“Divine,” whispered Lucerne, eyes narrowed with bitter ambition. “I shall suck her power to me as once I sucked her milk.”
“It is thy right,” said Terce. “Her death shall be a fitting seal upon thy ascendancy to divine power.”
Lucerne’s eyes glittered.
“It might be so,” he conceded, and the rooted seed now began to flourish well. “I must find her, Terce. I must find her.”
“Master, you must, and since the Word guides you, you shall. Nothing is more important to you now.”
“And you, Terce? And Mallice? Can you forgive me that?”
“She betrayed us, Master, and the Word. She is nothing to me.”
“But her pup, if so the one Henbane took proves to be, what then?”
Terce permitted himself a smile.
“Then I shall be... pleased, Master.”
“And I, Twelfth Keeper, pleased for us both. It shall bind us again, and take this chill between us quite away. I like that not.”
“Nor I, Master.”
“Come, let us use our powers to find the former Mistress Henbane.”
He turned away, not seeing that behind him Terce’s eyes were black barbs of hate.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
If a mole would know why it is that beauty and comeliness can sometimes fade so fast in moles as the years go by, let them seek the answer in the opposite: why is it that some moles start life plain, and end it beautiful?
The answer is that true beauty is but slowly made, and rarely quickly born. While in the corrupted mole beauty is soon lost.
Through the many molemonths of early summer that followed the Stone Mole’s barbing at Beechenhill, and Henbane’s escape with an unnamed pup from a burrow of death in the Manifold Valley, Lucerne of Whern lost those looks that once made moles call him beautiful.
Perhaps they were lost in that single bloody night when, on his sole orders, Mallice and Harebell were slain. But more likely, the canker of the Word had long been eating at the inner spirit he might have had, and finally erupted into his eyes and the set of his mouth in those strange obsessional weeks and months when he set off in search of Henbane.
No, he was not beautiful, nor even comely now. Handsome perhaps, powerful certainly, but where once moles warmed to him, and were charmed by the smile he gave, now they were afraid. Small wrinkles of age were on his face, and lines of loneliness, and the acid etchings of a cold, cruel heart whose only love is self. His fur still had its gloss, his talons their shine, his eyes their glitter, but all this dark light was confined now to a body in which something had begun to die.
This was the mole who roamed the valleys and moors around Beechenhill in an endless search for Henbane, knowing that every day that passed was another day lost when that growing stolen pup might have been reared unto his own will.
“I must find them, Terce, I must!” was nearly all he said.
While moledom and the Word’s hegemony, and the many matters that the sideem were demanding must be resolved, were left undone, half done or, even worse, when he gave them time, badly done.
Clowder could get no sense from anymole and began to go his own way unrestrained.
Ginnell gave up trying to get sense from Cannock, and began a venture in the southern Marches.
Cannock, under Slighe, became slow and overcautious, and sideem who came there waited for weeks and months on end for answers that never came.
Not that the Word did not seem ascendant. Had not the strikes on the followers succeeded? Were not systems like Beechenhill and Rollright now laid waste of followers, and able to be garrisoned by a mere pawful of guardmoles? They were.
Yet whispers were abroad, whispers heard by guard-moles as well as the seeming few followers who survived. Whispers that the Stone Mole had died, yet now lived again.
Aye, the Word made impotent.
“Master, I beg you to hear these reports,” one brave sideem said, who had risked his snout by venturing north to the obscure place where the Master was lurking believing that the Mistress Henbane was nearby.
“I have heard more reports than you have eaten worms,” was the Master’s sane reply. Except his look was not sane, the look that peered and darted here and there, and made him say, “And did you see an old female and a pup, or youngster now, on your way to me?”
“No, Master, I did not, but these rumours of the Stone Mole are getting dangerous now, and....”
“Now get out!” the Master cried in rage. “Get out! And you as well, Terce, if you cannot help me here!”
In such a situation the Twelfth Keeper was a marvel, considering his age; so tolerant of the Master, so skilled at knowing what to do, so essential now. By creating such impressions Terce now enhanced his reputation, and undermined Lucerne’s, and so moved towards the completion of the scheme whose purpose, though not its detail, R
une had long since devised.
Yet where was Henbane? The search, Terce knew, might yet go on too long.
“Master, we can deal with these trifling reports which the sideem bring even as we draw near to the end of our search,” said Terce.
This phrase “near to the end of our search” was one much used to and by Lucerne in those long molemonths. It seemed to give him encouragement.
“Yes, yes,” said Lucerne absently, “see to it, Terce. Do what is best. Now... any news today?”
“None yet, Master, but more moles are due back soon.”
The system that Lucerne had obsessionally devised to uncover Henbane and the pup was this: a team of guardmoles, organised by Lucerne personally, were searching every valley in all directions from where Henbane had escaped and interrogating anymole they came across for information that might lead to the discovery of the fugitives.
These contacts produced many blanks, the discovery of a number of other fugitives (duly punished) and a large number of false leads which were the result, in Terce’s view, of moles trying to get the interrogators off their backs.
For a time the upper Manifold had looked most promising; then the pursuit switched across the fells to Tissington where, it was discovered (and correctly too), that Henbane had lived secretly for a time, and, claimed a mole, had been seen there a few days after “Beechenhill”, as moles now called that grim incident.
This took the best part of April. In May, a positive sighting came from the Dark Peak. No doubt of it: Henbane had been seen up wormless Grindsbrook Clough below Kinder Scout. To there, with some reluctance, they had gone, and when they reached it a mole with a pup was there all right, except she was not Henbane, and the mole the local guardmole had been keeping such a careful eye on proved to be a vagrant with a lost pup she had found nearby.
Terce might almost have felt pity for Lucerne, for he seemed broken by the disappointment – a response made more extreme by the relative proximity of Whern, and all it represented to the Master of the Word.
“Whern is where we would have gone, Twelfth Keeper, where Mallice and I would be now, if...” He stared bleakly across the Dark Peak and said no more.
But then the urge to find Henbane returned, and the hope that she was north of Kinder Scout – a hope, because it would have taken Lucerne nearer to Whern – was dashed by a report that she had been seen down near Beechenhill again, so back they went.
May brought a pleasant summer, but Lucerne enjoyed little of it. While Terce, beginning now to think they would not find their quarry Lucerne’s way, tried something else.
One day in June, one of the guardmoles routinely brought a follower in and Terce thought to ask him this: “As a fugitive with young, where would you hide?”
The follower, intimidated and scared, and hoping for his freedom back, saw no harm in answering.
“I’d seek the protection of a Stone, especially if I had young I wanted to teach matters of the Stone to. That’s what I’d do, Sir.”
“Then, mole, in exchange for your freedom from our custody I want you to tell me the names of all the places where Stones are in the area around Beechenhill for a distance of...” And Terce named a distance beyond which it seemed unlikely Henbane could have gone with a young pup.
“Don’t know them all, but I know some at least.”
Terce scrivened down the names, and added others as more followers were interrogated and then, without a word to the Master, he devised a scheme by which guardmoles set off to report on each of the Stone sites on the list.
It soon became plain that until then the guardmoles had been avoiding such sites. “Hadn’t thought of them,” they claimed. Afraid of them, Terce thought. The venture soon threw up a disturbing fact: followers were thicker on the ground where the grikes looked least for them. There was hope yet of finding Henbane.
The names meant little to Terce, but one by one the reports came back. No sign of Henbane or her pup.
No sign.
Forgive me, Twelfth Keeper, but no sign again.
Until Terce began finally to despair.
Until a day in mid-June when a guardmole arrived.
“Guardmole?”
“Twelfth Keeper, I have news.”
“Henbane?”
“It is certain.”
“And her pup?”
“Him too.”
“You know he is a male?”
“I saw him myself.”
“Is she guarded?”
The guardmole shook his head.
“Not in this place, Twelfth Keeper. I felt it best to go by myself. Thought that if I was her I’d find a place and lie low. I think that’s what she’s done, and been there all this time. She did not see me at all. But at night, when she came out, I saw her well enough.”
“And?”
“She is old, Twelfth Keeper. Old and slow. She’ll be no trouble.”
“The pup?”
“The youngster, now! He’s well enough. Stays close by her, closer than a shadow. Not dangerous.”
“Is this place far?”
“Not far.”
“Have you told any other mole?”
“None, Twelfth Keeper.”
“It is well. Tell me the place. Whisper it. In my old age I grow suspicious.”
The guardmole whispered.
“You are sure?” said Terce.
“Certain.”
“I sometimes think that if there was another false report the Master would go mad.”
“I have heard...” The guardmole stopped himself.
“Rumours? Speak freely, I shall not harm you.”
“That the Master is... unwell. Without him in command we are adrift, Twelfth Keeper.”
“Well, mole, this news may change all that. I shall inform him, and we shall leave as soon as he is ready.”
Terce found Lucerne, who was on the surface and staring.
“Have you news, Terce? I need news.”
“Master....”
“You have! I see it in your eye. You have!”
“Master, I think there is a chance.”
“Where is the bitch?”
“She is at a place called Arbor Low.”
Henbane’s flight to the fell above the Manifold might have been encumbered by the mouthful of pup she was carrying but, rather, it was driven by it, as if this limp frail life gave sustenance to her.
Certainly it gave her purpose, just as Lucerne’s birth so many years before had. But that was dark purpose, this was light. This was a last opportunity to give life back something good and sweet, to save life, to make it right. This pup she carried might be the very making and resurrection of her flawed life.
She had run as Holm directed her up the slope and across the rising fells to the east. Her mind was only on escape and survival, and so she did not think yet of the horrors she had seen, though perhaps unconscious thoughts of them drove her on as well to escape the place she saw her lovely daughter, and those pups, crushed and killed.
Grike guardmoles followed her, closer than she ever knew, and forced her sometimes to stop and hide in shadow, stancing over the pup. To keep it warm for one thing. And to be ready to fight with all the strength she had, to the death if need be, to protect it.
Through the night she travelled until, growing tired and fearful for the pup’s safety – for the air was cold, the pup too limp for comfort – she sought safe shelter. She knew it must be somewhere secure and quiet, for the pup would not survive such travel for too long. She must feed it, warm it.
But that first night she found nowhere, and was forced to delve a temporary burrow and use heather for nesting material and dig out a worm or two. These she ate into a pulp, and mushed with spit, and fed as best she could into the pup’s mouth. It seemed that it swallowed nothing, but only mewed and grew weak.
Yet in the morning there he was, curled in the circle of her warmth, pink-grey, his eyes closed, his tiny bones and sinews visible through his nearly transparent skin; su
ddenly beautiful to her. Her own to nurture the very best she could.
Her spit, with a touch of worm, was still all she had to give, and this she did, judging it best to lie still and keep him warm. Only once she left him, and that briefly to gather worms for them both. She bit their heads to keep the worms from straying far.
Grikes came near, the pup mewed when he should not have done. She huddled in the burrow, and nomole heard them.
But the place was not ideal, and the soil was wet. Not a place to bring up young! She knew she must soon move on. The pup was living at least, though pathetic in his desire for milk and questing at her empty teats.
“I can’t suckle you, my dear. I am too old,” she said. Then more spit and worm she gave, and it had to do.
Four days she was there and then when a warm day came she journeyed on, praying to that greater thing, which she refused to call either Word or Stone, that she would be guided well.
Going east, as Holm had said, had served her well at first but now proved slow and arduous with pup in mouth, and so when she came upon a rough stony way – for roaring owl, perhaps, for it had the distant smell of them – she turned north upon it. At its edge the worms were good, and that night, mercifully warm, she slept among the grass, and the way the pup nestled up to her almost made her weep he was so beautiful.
Despite the dangers all about, and what seemed the impossibility of the pup surviving, Henbane felt happy that night: the happiness moles feel when they have good purpose, and their bodies and their minds are stretched and tried and proving strong. The pup was alive, they were warm, the sky was good across the fell.
“You shall live, my dear, and find a happiness I shall never see or know you had. You shall live!”
The way she had found was straight and went on northward. She followed it the next day and it took her to a derelict twofoot place high on the fell where metal rusted and rattled in the wind, and great tunnels were delved into the slopes. The twofoots seemed all gone.
She looked about, she pondered, she found worms aplenty, and water, and no moles at all.
“This might do,” she said, speaking to the pup who lay flat upon the ground, his paws spread out and struggling to make sense of themselves and the body to which they were attached, his mouth mewing and questing once again.
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