Duncton Found

by Duncton Found (retail) (epub)

  ‘The what?’ asked Woodruff.

  ‘The Marsh End Defence, delved by Mayweed and Skint, I believe, and lived in for a long time by Tryfan … it’s on the way, more or less, to Mekkins’ place, so let me show you. It’s easy enough to find when a mole knows how.’

  ‘Whatmole are you that you know all this?’ asked Woodruff, but the mole went ahead of him in the light, and seemed not to hear, and to Woodruff it seemed suddenly best not to ask, but to listen to all the mole told him about Duncton Wood as it had been before the Word came south, before the plagues, just at the time that Bracken was born …

  So Woodruff listened and let himself be led through a system that was filled with light that morning by a mole who seemed to know and love all the moles of Duncton Wood, every one.

  Through the Marsh End they went, across to the Eastside, and thence to the slopes and into the Ancient System, which did not seem quite the same as the Ancient System he knew. Yet what stories Woodruff heard then and how much began to fall into place as he learnt about Bracken’s love for Rebecca, and was shown the places where so much had happened in the past.

  But then, gradually, the old mole began to tire and slow, and his memory seemed to slip and his paw to falter.

  ‘There’s so much, so much …’ he said, his voice a little cracked. ‘Yes, yes, so much for mole to remember, so easy to forget. Now you help me along here, Woodruff, and I’ll see if I can’t show you, since we’re not far from it here, where Comfrey was born. Not many know that now! Why, I might be the only one, and you now! It was here, and his mother’s name was Rue, and she was a love of Bracken’s. Yes, that was it.

  ‘You know, I’m getting rather old for this, rather slow, and I’ve got to go back upslope and that’s a long way.’

  ‘There’s one other place I’d like you to show me,’ said Woodruff, wondering why after so long the sun was still barely risen in the sky.

  ‘What’s that?’ the old mole said.

  ‘I’d like to know where Bracken was born, because I think a lot began with him.’

  ‘Yes, yes it did. But it’s right over on the Westside and I don’t think …’

  ‘I’ll help you there, and help you back. I’d really like to know.’

  ‘Well, come on then.’

  So, slowly, helping the mole along, his weight leaning on Woodruffs strong paw, the mole took him to a spot on the Westside.

  ‘There! Delve down there and see what you find.’

  So Woodruff did, delving down and down, until he found himself in an old and musty tunnel.

  ‘Yes,’ said the mole from the surface, ‘that’s the place. That’s where Bracken was born, and I think you’re right: that’s where it all began.’

  Woodruff bent his head and went along the tunnel and found a family chamber and some burrows off it. So, thought Woodruff, Bracken was born here, and from here he set off when he was older for the Ancient System, and began a quest for Silence that Tryfan had carried on, and then, and then …

  He paused suddenly. There was silence. No sound of mole at all.

  He turned and hurried out, anxious not to lose touch with the old mole, but when he surfaced he saw that he had already gone off limping through the wood upslope. How old he looked, and how the light seemed to shine in his fur.

  ‘Wait!’ Woodruff shouted, running after the mole. ‘I said I’d help you back upslope.’

  ‘You did,’ said the mole, and let Woodruff support him under his withered paw as they went steadily up towards the south-east with the sun in their eyes. A sun that seemed not to have moved higher in the sky from the moment Woodruff had met the mole.

  ‘You know a lot about Duncton, don’t you?’ said Woodruff, feeling a sense of awe coming over him, and a knowledge of who this mole was and surprise that the paw he supported was real and that he could feel it on his own.

  ‘I know about it in the old days but these days my memory goes, and my time here is very nearly done.’

  ‘You’re Boswell, aren’t you?’ whispered Woodruff, not daring to look at the mole at his side.

  ‘I’ve been many moles,’ said Boswell. ‘Yes, yes, many moles and I can’t remember them all. But Boswell? Yes, perhaps I am still him for now.’

  They seemed to have gone right through the southern edge of the High Wood and were coming to the pastures where the sun, not filtered by the trees, was brighter still.

  ‘Where are you going now?’ asked Woodruff.

  Boswell seemed to stumble and falter, and then he stopped and stared downslope across grass whose dew was like a hundred thousand golden stars. Beyond they could see the roaring owl way, and on it a few slow roaring owls, their gazes pale in the sun.

  ‘I promised I’d go back to them one day,’ said Boswell, ‘and I think perhaps they need me more than you moles do now. I think my task with you is done.’

  Then he took his paw from Woodruffs and set it down as best he could upon the grass and began, slowly, to move away downslope.

  At first Woodruff felt unable to move, but simply stared as if it was right that Boswell must go now. Yet it did not feel right. It did not look right. It was not …

  ‘Boswell!’ called Woodruff. ‘Boswell!’

  Boswell turned back.

  How old he looks, thought Woodruff, and how alone. That was what was not right.

  ‘Yes, Woodruff?’ Boswell said.

  Woodruff opened his mouth but did not know what to say. He wanted to ask … he wanted to know …

  Boswell began to turn from him once again.

  ‘Boswell?’

  ‘Yes, mole?’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Woodruff gently asked. Then he found he could move, and he did move and he went to where old Boswell stanced so shakily.

  He reached a paw to Boswell and said, ‘You looked a little lost.’

  ‘Did I, mole?’

  Downslope behind him, going north and south, Woodruff saw the roaring owls, and they glinted in the sun.

  ‘Not many moles have asked me if I’m all right,’ said Boswell. ‘Not many at all. Bracken did. And Rebecca. And Tryfan, too. And you, Woodruff, you asked me.’

  ‘Boswell …’

  ‘Yes, mole?’ said Boswell softly.

  ‘Would you wait for a little before you go? Would you promise to wait?’

  Boswell smiled.

  ‘Why, mole, you can’t stop life itself.’

  ‘Just for a little, because there’s a mole here in Duncton Wood, who has waited for you for a long, long time and she’s not far from here. Would you wait for her?’

  ‘For how long, Woodruff?’ Boswell smiled again and looked down at his old paws.

  ‘I’ll find a mole who will talk to you while I go and fetch her. Just wait a little, just a little …’

  Then Woodruff turned and ran back into the wood. Fast and faster, and the first mole he saw was Romney.

  ‘Romney, there’s a mole out on the slopes. Go and stay with him, don’t let him go. Go to him, Romney.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘I think he’s the mole Mistle’s been waiting for. Go to him.’

  But he needed to say no more, for Romney turned and, as best he could, ran into the rising sun and towards the slopes. Then as Woodruff ran towards the Stone, he felt himself crying out, as if to rouse the wood, to rouse everymole in it, to tell them that now was the time when they must show their snouts and stance up for Mistle, for now was what she and they had been waiting for.

  Like the sounding of the Blowing Stone at Uffington his call was across the wood that morning, and moles hurried from their tunnels and burrows and all seemed to know that it was to the High Wood they must go, and fast! Quick! Hurry now! For the light is all across the wood, and moledom waits, and Mistle, who has given them so much, needed all their strength, and all their love.

  So they gather and they hurry upslope through the early morning light, across the dewy leaves, in twos and threes upslope towards the Stone. There they find Woodruff, helping Mist
le, who can barely stance at all now and is muttering and wondering and rather afraid. But her paws and flanks only shake, and she stares uncomprehendingly at him.

  ‘He’s come back for you, Mistle. He’s here, he’s waiting for you,’ says Woodruff, his strong paws about her as the others gather and turn the way he turns her, which is towards the east, towards the rising sun.

  ‘Come on, Mistle. You need your last strength now, but you and he will help each other on from Duncton Wood, because he needs you too.’

  Slowly, bit by bit, tree after tree, Mistle progresses through the wood, Woodruff supporting her, and her snout shakes and her eyes stare, and often her paws stumble. But all the moles are there to lend her their spirit and their strength and urge her on.

  ‘He came back for you, Mistle, because you were the one who had most faith, you were the one who loved him most as mole.’

  ‘He came back?’ she whispers, and for the first time she dares let hope be in her eyes.

  ‘It’s not far now, not far …’ And slowly, so slowly, they break out of the wood and into the sunshine beyond.

  Romney is out there on the slopes, and with him is an old mole, waiting, his eyes no more certain than Mistle’s have been.

  Leaving Boswell, Romney comes to her.

  ‘He came back for you as you knew he would, Mistle. Go to him.’

  ‘He’s not Beechen. He’s not young as Beechen was,’ she says.

  ‘I think he’s many moles, and I think if you can find the strength to go to him, my dear, he will know you again and you’ll know him.’

  ‘Then help me, Romney,’ whispers Mistle.

  Romney smiles but shakes his head.

  ‘I am too old now, my dear, to do more than watch you go, but Woodruff will lead you to the light in which Boswell waits.’

  * * *

  Then Woodruff, grandson of great Tryfan, put his paw to Mistle’s and, with all the moles of Duncton Wood urging her on with love and prayers, he helped her make her slow and painful way across the slopes beyond the High Wood to where Boswell stanced waiting for her, near the promontory from which she used to watch the roaring owls.

  The light was behind him, and his face was hard to see, but it seemed that as she came nearer to him he started forward towards her a little, as if he almost knew her. She too, with each step she took, seemed to know him more, and where they were a light was too, greater than the sun, for it filled the air about them all, and held the sound of Silence.

  ‘Beechen?’ they heard her say.

  ‘Mistle?’ he whispered back to her.

  ‘Oh my dear, I’ve missed you so much …’

  Then they touched each other in the light and turned to Woodruff who stanced by them, his snout low.

  ‘Woodruff of Arbor Low,’ said Boswell, ‘you have fulfilled the great task the Stone ordained that you should perform. Born of violence, raised by Henbane, and traveller in pursuit of truth, you are the mole who brought the seventh Stillstone to Duncton Wood. Delve it up, mole, from whence you buried it.’

  Then Woodruff, hardly daring to look at where Boswell and Mistle stanced before him in the light of Silence, delved and found the stone he had buried.

  The watching moles gasped as he took it up from the broken soil and its light was upon them all.

  ‘Now mole, what will you do with what you carried for so long and now show us here?’

  Woodruff took the Stillstone and touched it first to the withered paw of Boswell, and then to Mistle’s beloved face. Its light was great, and whiteness was upon them both, and where they were the moles seemed to see Boswell’s paw grow whole, and he and Mistle grow young again, and both to laugh as surely once she and Beechen had laughed. Then they turned, or seemed to in the light, and began to go down towards where the roaring owls went endlessly.

  ‘They are our task now, they are our task …’ their voices seemed to say. And then, ‘Woodruff of Arbor Low, your restless search is over, for here in Duncton Wood you are and always shall be much loved, so much loved.’

  Then where they had been only Woodruff stanced, and on his lined and once troubled face was the look of a mole who knows that he is loved most true, and who knows at last from where all Silence comes.

  Then he held the Stillstone up that they might see it, and carried it back into the wood, and all of them went with him to the Stone.

  They gathered together to give thanksgiving and make celebration as Woodruff of Arbor Low took the Stillstone down through the Chamber of Roots and placed it with the others about the base of the Stone.

  When he came among them again it seemed that all celebrations were in one that day, and mole touched mole with love, as the sun rose through the trees and they knew at last their Duncton found.

  Epilogue

  Woodruff’s Duncton Chronicles were finally started on the Longest Night following, as a tale told to a community of impatient moles.

  ‘We’re not going to have to wait until you’ve scribed them all down, are we?’ asked one of them.

  He shook his head, smiled, crunched a worm and said, ‘I’m ready to begin it now if you like.’

  ‘You do that, mole! But wait while we get comfortable.’ So Woodruff did, and started in the traditional way: ‘From my heart to your hearts I tell this tale …’ Then he paused, and smiled again, and began like this: ‘Bracken was born on an April night in a warm dark burrow, deep in the historic system of Duncton Wood, six mole years after Rebecca …’ So began Woodruff’s first telling of the Chronicles of Duncton Wood which took place over the cold wintry weeks that followed his last Longest Night. When it was done, and old Woodruff had told his tale just as he had scribed it, moles noticed that he was silent, and seemed to have little more to say.

  Yet though the scribing of the Chronicles seemed to be his greatest task, yet he left one more gift to moledom.

  For aging though he was, he still found strength to direct others to create a great Library at Duncton Wood, wherein all those texts scattered from Uffington and other places during the war of Word on Stone were joined in safety with those left behind by Spindle, Mayweed, great Tryfan, and holiest of all, by Beechen when he was young.

  At the end of his life Woodruff would often say that nomole’s task is ever complete, and that all he can do is to leave what was left to him ready for those yet to come.

  ‘One day,’ he said, ‘others not yet born will inherit this great Library we have made. To it they will bring new texts, or old texts that our generation has not yet re-discovered. A few texts, and very few perhaps, will be scribed here, using all that we have left behind and the experience gained after.

  ‘Indeed, though the Chronicles are done, one last task seems to remain if the ministry of Beechen, and the work of Tryfan and so many others, is to find permanence, and not be lost through the erosion of time and moles’ forgetfulness.

  ‘Aye, there shall yet be another mole to come out of obscurity and show future generations what the Stone Mole’s teachings were. A great mole shall he or she be. More than scribe, more than a warrior, more than a leader …’

  Strangely, in his last weeks Woodruff spent much of his time in the obscurest part of the Library to which he had contributed so much. There, amongst that collection of texts which librarians call Rolls, Rhymes and Tales, Woodruff found comfort and solace. Those nearest to him spoke out again the tales he loved, and which for one reason or another he had not included in his Chronicles.

  ‘There’s a Book of Tales here,’ he would murmur dreamily, ‘but another must begin to scribe it. And that mole that shall teach others of the Stone Mole’s work, shall come here one distant day, and finish it. Now tell me a tale of the moledom that I love …’

  These were the last words great Woodruff of Arbor Low spoke, for during the telling of that last tale, Woodruff heard the Silence of the Stone, and went into it.

  Some moles say the tale he was being told was never finished and awaits completion still. Others believe its end is to be foun
d in a tale told long after he had gone.

  For the scribing of the Book of Tales which he thought must one day begin, and the coming of the great mole who would complete it, these things came to be as he said they would. Only in that way was Woodruff’s task complete at last, and Tryfan’s too, and Bracken’s before him. For the past becomes the present that we live, and for good or ill, the future lies in the present we pass on. May our lives make a blessing then on the lives of the moles that follow us … and may moles find solace, comfort and inspiration, in the Book of Tales that Woodruff foresaw would one day come…

  Contact William Horwood

  Thank you for reading Duncton Found. William welcomes your comments and thoughts about the Duncton Chronicles, or any of his work, and can be contacted at william@williamhorwood.co.uk.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to the Scottish University Press for permission to quote, and translate into mole language, passages from the graces and invocations in Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica.

  Readers often ask what the sources of the key spiritual and religious elements are in the Duncton books. Although I am no longer a Christian it will be plain that the Gospels are a prime source. Two essentially Buddhist texts have been constant companions in my study and on my travels: Chogyam Trungpa’s Shambhala (Shambhala Publications, 1985) and Matsuo Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa, Penguin, 1966). I have also found M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled (Rider, 1985) and The Different Drum (Rider, 1987) very helpful, the latter especially with Duncton Found.

  A work as long and complex as Duncton Chronicles makes exceptional demands on its publisher, and particularly its editors. My own have done far more than readers can ever know, or perhaps care to believe, to correct my many errors at manuscript stage regarding whatmole was with whom, when, where, and why, and other matters editorial. My warm thanks therefore to Peter Lavery, Ann Suster, Victoria Petrie-Hay, and to Pamela Norris, who between them turned Duncton Found from an idea into a book with such professionalism and good cheer.