Duncton Found

by William Horwood

  “Much improved Bailey,” declared Mayweed as they ascended the slopes towards Seven Barrows, “humble old me feels good to be here, feels right. You should too: a mole who travels to where his kin were born travels closer to his heart.

  “Scholarly Spindle would have been proud to see you here, and I am pleased, in fact I’m even moved, to be here on his behalf and say what a father should say to you.”

  “Which is what?” said Bailey, himself well past middle age.

  “Bailey, be bold at last, discover a task by which all moles shall remember you, make your mark, enjoy! Loss has lingered about your loins too long! Ha! Good that! Humbleness does not lose his touch with words, even at his end.”

  Bailey’s brow furrowed.

  “Your end?” he said.

  “This humble mole’s journey’s end.”

  Mayweed looked around at where the stonefields spread, and to the rising Stones among them. They seemed indistinct, all shimmery in the summer sun. Flying insects buzzed and lazed amongst the taller grasses, and over the small stones an occasional ant ran busily.

  “You’re fitter than I am,” said Bailey, for though the journey had slimmed him down yet thin Mayweed always went faster than him, and much more restlessly.

  “Never been fitter in my mind, Bailey mole, never! But in my body, well! Enough said! Anyway, I have to go somewhere you can’t follow. I don’t think you’ll want to try somehow. Humbleness has a snout for such things, a thin and raddled snout it’s true, but a snout all the same for... such things.”

  “What things?” said Bailey, very concerned now.

  “There’s a mole I love....”

  “Sleekit?”

  “That’s her name, acute Sir. Sleekit.” He fell silent and peered towards the Stones across the fields. Bailey noticed that his head shook a little now, and sometimes when he blinked one of his eyes was slower to open than the other. Age had caught Mayweed up on their journey here, and now it had overtaken him.

  Once, a few weeks past, Bailey had noticed that Mayweed’s old sores had begun to open again.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Mayweed had said, “you are right. Tryfan closed them up with healing love, and later Sleekit kept them closed with her own special love. Without those moles this pathetic and much hurt body that is mine would long since have died. But, well, the Stone was kind to me and put loving moles my way.”

  “It wasn’t the Stone, it was you yourself!” Bailey had burst out. “Nomole is more loved than you, Mayweed, and you know it. You have been... you’ve been like a... like a... I don’t know what you’ve been like!”

  “Blubbering Bailey,” Mayweed had said, his own voice close to tears, “if I’ve been like anything to anymole, I’ve been like a humbleness and, you know, all moles need one of those. But now... my sores have opened because I’m old and because the mole I love is far from me and I fear – I know, Sir, I know – I shall not see her again. I miss her, Bailey, I miss her enough to die.”

  That’s what Mayweed had said on the journey there, and now Bailey saw him staring out towards the Stones. His sores were worse than they had been then, and hurt him (though he would never complain of it), and Bailey knew it was of Sleekit that he was thinking.

  “Yes, Bailey mole, I have to go somewhere now.”

  “Where?” said Bailey.

  “Innumerate mole, how many Stones do you see across those sunny fields?”

  Bailey looked and counted, not once but twice.

  “Six,” he said.

  “There’s seven, Bailey sir. Seven, seven, seven.”

  “I can only see six,” said Bailey firmly. “I can count.”

  Mayweed grinned and said quietly, “Ah, but can you see? It seems not. And that’s why you can’t follow me there. Later perhaps, when you’re old and thin and scabby like me, but not yet. Anyway you’ve got better things to do, haven’t you?”

  “Like what, Mayweed?”

  “Learning to be truly bold. Sometimes, Bailey, humbleness thinks you’re dim, but he imagines that it’s an impression you give because you had a deprived puphood. Not as deprived as mine, but we mustn’t boast. Ha! Mayweed jokes! Ha, ha, ha! Well, before I go, I think I can find time to point you in the direction of the task I think will suit you. Anyway I’m curious myself, always was. Curiosity will kill me. That’s a joke as well, though it’s true enough.”

  Bailey’s eyes drifted off across the fields again, but hard as he tried he could not see where he looked, nor see more than six risen Stones.

  “She is there, you know, and she and I will watch others come and stay until the seventh comes,” whispered Mayweed. “Humbleness won’t be humble then, nor anything else; but just himself with those he has loved so much... He drifts in thought, he doesn’t want to leave you but he thinks he ought to go... He’s said that before! Humbleness must be very near his end if he’s repeating himself! Quick, quick, quick....”

  Mayweed, leering, grabbed Bailey’s paw and hurried him from the stonefields and began snouting about the Seven Barrows themselves.

  “Nearly bold Bailey, stay there! Mayweed, that’s me, has to remember what Spindle told him once, corroborated by great Tryfan... yes! No! Tum-te-tum-te-tum...” He wandered off and Bailey stanced down patiently, looking about and trying to imagine his father Spindle as a young mole here. Did he run up and down the barrow slopes? Did he venture out into the stonefields? Did he ever think that life would take him so far from where he was born?

  His reverie was interrupted not by Mayweed but by the arrival of a worried-looking mole with unkempt fur who wandered up short-sightedly and stopped suddenly.

  “Mole?” he said.

  “Yes, Bailey’s the name.”

  “That’s a relief. You looked like a vole from a distance. There’s another one about, I can hear him.”

  “That’s Mayweed.”

  “Humph! What are you doing here?”

  “I’m not sure really. I’ve sort of come along with Mayweed.”

  “‘Sort of come along’. What’s that mean?”

  Mayweed joined them suddenly, saying, “It means, untidiness, that our friend Bailey here is a sloppy mole when it come to speech. Mayweed’s the name, being humble is the game. Whatmole are you?”

  “Furze. Live south of here. Came because I wanted to.”

  “To what?”

  “Celebrate. But didn’t think I’d meet another mole, let alone two.”

  “Share, share, share, exasperating Furze.”

  “Lucerne’s dead. Henbane’s dead. Heard it yesterday.”

  After a very long pause Mayweed said, “That’s it, is it, investigative Furze?”

  “Yes,” said Furze. “It’s enough. It’s more than enough I should have thought.”

  “How did the deceased die, a mole might wonder?

  Whatmole did the deed? And where? These are questions that spring to mind.”

  “Well they don’t spring to mine. Humble. What springs to my mind is good riddance.”

  “Ha! He calls me Humble and he thinks ‘good riddance’ – learn from him, Bailey. Learn. Furze, share a worm with us!”

  And so he did, all evening and all night, and they chatted of much and especially living alone, and they discovered that Furze had seen Mistle and a mole call Cuddesdon pass by moleyears before.

  That night Mayweed spoke of what he knew of Seven Barrows, and told Bailey and Furze the story of the Stillstones, and how Tryfan and Spindle had come to this very place, and with great difficulty, hurled the seven Stillstones out across the stonefields, where they lay, even now, waiting to be found by moles who would be part of moledom’s discovery of Silence.

  Bailey was spellbound, but Furze said, “Humph! Moles of the Stone are a superstitious lot.”

  “Moledom needs more moles like you, unfuddled Furze,” said Mayweed, “but not too many. Mayweed asks if you have a task?”

  “Minding my own business mainly,” said Furze.

  “Want a better one?” said Mayw
eed with a friendly grin.

  “Wouldn’t mind,” admitted Furze.

  “Bailey will find you one before he leaves,” said Mayweed.

  “But...!”

  “Oops! The first ‘but’ in months, Bailey.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Ask him when I’ve gone,” said Mayweed.

  “Ridiculous,” said Furze, but Bailey noticed he looked pleased. Moles like to have a task, that he knew. What then was his now? Mayweed began to talk some more....

  Furze left the following morning and promised to return the next day. Late nights did not suit him. But they seemed to suit Mayweed, for the moment Furze was gone he leapt up and hurried to show Bailey what he had found just before Furze had arrived.

  Without a word he led Bailey in among some thick tufts of grass and thence down past a half buried piece of flint and into an old tunnel. The soil was dry and smelt clean, and the windsounds were deep.

  Down, down they went, this way and that, until, deeper still, they made their way into a great chamber.

  “Be proud, Bailey,” said Mayweed, pointing to the end of the chamber. “Scholars of the future will revere your father’s name and say this was his greatest work! Behold, look, see, and believe: this is what remains of the great library of Uffington.”

  There, stacked carefully, were rows and rows of texts, and fragments of texts, all covered with bark lest dust or grit fall from the chamber’s high roof above.

  They went up to them, and at first barely dared to touch them. Yet they did so eventually, looking through them with increasing interest, snouting them, feeling them.

  “Great Tryfan told me that your father carried each one of these from the ruins of Uffington and that it took him all the moleyears from November to March. A labour of love and courage it certainly was. He also told me that among them.

  But he paused and watched Bailey with a gleam in his eye, for the younger mole had gone on looking among the texts and had come upon a separate row of them, six in number.

  They looked of different ages, and the oldest was old indeed. This one Bailey gingerly took up, and touched a paw to its scribed title.

  “It says ‘Boc aef Erthe’,” he said.

  Mayweed said, “Bold Bailey, you touch my heart. For a moment you looked just like your father. That book you hold, what do you think it is? ‘Boc aef Erthe’ you say. Why, surprised Sir, those six are six of the Seven Books of Mole and Mayweed imagines that this one you hold as if it’s going to bite you may be translated as “‘The Book of Earth’.”

  “We can’t just leave them here.”

  Mayweed laughed wildly and clutched his stomach.

  “Can’t very well move them, can you, Bailey Sir? No, no, no. They’re doing very nicely here, harming nomole. Moles can come here in due time and study them. That’ll keep them occupied! Ha! But no, no, no, your task isn’t here I shouldn’t think. Live the book. Sir, live the book!”

  But Bailey had wandered on and was looking at another text.

  “Strange,” he whispered. He ran his talons over its folios, beetling his brow and scratching his head.

  “Puzzlements? Perplexities? Ponderments?” said Mayweed. Bailey passed the text to him, and Mayweed touched it in his turn. Then he crouched over it, and turned its folios and became more and more intent on it.

  “Live the book, Mayweed! Live the book!” Bailey said, smiling.

  “Bailey is droll,” muttered Mayweed to himself. Then he cried out suddenly. “Ha! I have it! It is an astonishment! It is an utter amazement. A scribemole of the past has done what I imagined could only be done in the future.” He crouched over the strange book some more.

  “Not very well, mind you, not brilliantly, as Mayweed might. But not bad at all, no, not bad at all.”

  “What is is?” asked Bailey, much intrigued.

  “Maps,” said moledom’s greatest route-finder with a sigh. “Maps. My idea snitched from me by a dead mole at the end of my long life.” He leered.

  “What’s a map?”

  “It’s a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional space showing where places are relative to each other, bookish Bailey.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, imagine that this mark here” – he made a mark on the floor – “is Duncton Wood, and this is Whern. Now, where’s Siabod?”

  Bailey frowned, and looked very puzzled.

  “North, east, south or west, dim mole?”

  “North-west of Duncton Wood and south-west of Whern, sort of,” said Bailey.

  “Brill, brill, brill,” said Mayweed. “We have a genius among us. Mark it on the map.”

  Bailey tried to do so.

  “Yes, if you want to send all of moledom into the Wen ‘here’ will do very nicely, thank you.”

  “Here then?”

  “Near enough,” said Mayweed. “Now...” And Mayweed became utterly absorbed, his paw moving here and there, scratching out and scratching in, scribing and de-scribing, and, as it seemed to Bailey, going around the floor in circles.

  “There!” he said proudly when he had finished.

  “What is it?”

  “Mayweed’s Map of Moledom,” said Mayweed.

  Bailey studied it.

  “Do you remember us leaving Whern?” he said, peering at Mayweed’s representation of that place.

  “You were tubby in those days, and unhappy, but Boswell sorted you out.”

  “Yes, he did,” said Bailey. “I miss him sometimes.”

  “We all miss him, good Bailey. All of moledom has missed him for a very long time. Mind you, it never occurs to moledom that he might not only miss us but need us. Cryptic that! Most deep! Now, let’s go up to the surface and talk about old times.”

  When they got there they found a whole day had passed and that Mayweed felt tired.

  “Bailey mole, sleep near me tonight,” he said, and with that he curled up in the puplike way he usually did and went to sleep. And soon Bailey followed suit.

  When he awoke again, it was deep night, and Mayweed was still asleep, his breathing heavy and irregular, his body twitching. Bailey stanced up and decided to watch over the old mole for a time.

  He felt at ease with himself, glad to have had the chance to travel with Mayweed, pleased to see the texts his father saved. He stared up at the stars, and thought of the places he had been, and imagined where they might be on Mayweed’s map.

  For now... he looked at the silhouettes of the barrows against the starry sky and decided to go and look at the stonefields beyond, just for a moment, just to see if he could see the Stones at night – all six of them!

  As he moved to go Mayweed stirred, and woke.

  “Insomniac Sir, I’ll come with you.”

  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “It wasn’t you who woke me,” said Mayweed.

  Together they went over the grass, among the barrows and round the last one. The stonefields stretched before them, misty, strange, and Bailey shivered.

  Mayweed looked round at Bailey and said, “Bailey mole, this mole Mayweed, this humbleness, is going to say something he’s not often said. Ahead, over there, across the fields and in the night, rising with light that’s clear enough to him, is the seventh Stone, and Mayweed sees it. But what he says is, he doesn’t think that there’s a route to it he can find. He wonders what Bailey says to that?”

  Bailey stared at him, and felt Mayweed’s strange fear and awe and knew that somewhere here tonight Mayweed would leave him. For Mayweed to ask another mole the way could only mean he was afraid. But to ask him! Bailey!

  “If I could show you the way I would, Mayweed,” he said, “but if it helps I’ll get you started by leading you a little way. I’ll do my best anyway.”

  Mayweed stared into the night and said, “Good Bailey mole, what you’ve just said is the most loving thing you could say, and Mayweed is touched. Me, or Humble as Furze called me, would like it if you led me a little way because I’ve been le
ading moles all my life and now I’m feeling tired. So I say to you again what I’ve said before: be bold, Bailey. Be bold, and lead the way!”

  So then Bailey set off across the stonefield, quite slowly because Mayweed seemed unable to move as fast as he usually did, and bit by bit they put the Seven Barrows behind them and came to the first of the Stones.

  “It’s hard,” whispered Bailey, “but I think I can go a little way more...” And so he led old Mayweed on, turning to him sometimes to make sure he was at his flank.

  On and on they seemed to go, to the second Stone and then the third, turning this way and that, finding their way among the stonefields whose little stones glinted and glistened like stars at their paws. Sometimes Bailey’s paws stumbled, and his eyes seemed unsure of what Stone he saw ahead, and yet he managed to lead Mayweed on.

  “It’s getting harder,” said Bailey, faltering at last, “and I’m not sure I can go much further now, because....”

  “Be bold,” whispered Mayweed at his side, “and you’ll be all right. Get me to the sixth Stone. Go on, just a bit more.”

  Then Bailey told himself to be as bold as he could, and not afraid, and he put his snout forward, peered ahead so his eyes were not distracted by anything on either side, and pushed on; but the stony ground, the misty air, the very stars seemed set against him now, as if they all wanted to push him back.

  “I can’t, I can’t...” he said, and yet he saw the sixth Stone there and by putting one paw in front of the other, one at a time, he just managed to get Mayweed to it.

  Ahead – too far ahead for him, he knew – he saw, or thought he saw, another Stone rising in the dark.

  “I can’t lead you further, Mayweed. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

  “Bailey,” said a voice he knew and had not heard for a very long time, a voice he loved and missed, “I can lead Mayweed on from here. You’ve done well, very well, so now let me lead him on....”

  Bailey saw a mole stancing just ahead. He was old, his fur was grey in the night, his eyes gentle.

  “You’ve been a long time getting here, Mayweed,” he said.