Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  Snyde’s eyes did not blink as they came back to the Master’s and feigned honesty. “Nothing, Master Librarian.

  Nothing at all. Nothing more than others who follow the old way. They are, perhaps, too … persistent.”

  “Are you Newborn?” said Stour, his voice very, very quiet, and his gaze strong. To a worthy mole, who might have erred, the question offered a way of escape and restitution. But Snyde was not worthy, and nor was he honest, and nor could he tell that in that direct and open question the Master Librarian was giving him a chance.

  He did not take it. Instead he affected a swift dismissive smile, his tongue flicked briefly at his mouth, he shifted his body uneasily, and said, “No, Master, I am not.”

  Stour stared at him a moment longer, smiled, and said, “It is well then. Now, I wish to be alone.”

  And the delegation, Master Librarian?”

  “What of it, Snyde?”

  “What moles will form it? We must decide.”

  “Only worthy moles, Deputy Master, only worthy ones.” As he climbed slowly up the slipway to the privacy of his study cell and gallery he added, “But you of course must go.”

  Unseen behind him Snyde watched him go, his face showing signs of concern and doubt. “Me, Master Librarian? But we cannot both go and I thought —”

  “You’re right,” said Stour wearily, “we cannot both go. Quite right.”

  Snyde’s face relaxed into his habitual look of smug satisfaction. He stared at the shadows into which Stour had retreated.

  “Yes, Master Librarian,” he whispered with the mock obedience of an arrogant mole. Then he told himself, “One day I shall come and take back the texts you have filched and stored away up there, Dark Sound or no, and restore the holy rightful ones to a place where moles of the true way can study them. And it shall be me who cleanses moledom’s greatest Library by directing the excision and destruction of the texts that blaspheme the holy Stone, and bring shame and ignominy in the Senior Brothers’ eyes to this system of ours.”

  So Snyde declared himself only to himself, before he slid away, his going watched from the gallery above by the Master, who shook his head sadly.

  “Stone,” he said, “pity him, be merciful to him, but spare us from him and guide me through the traps he and his like will set.”

  After a long time, when he was sure Snyde was not coming back, Stour went back to the slipway, came quietly down, and found Sturne, his most trusted Keeper.

  “Keeper Sturne, be kind enough to arrange for the aide Pumpkin to be found and sent to me.”

  “He’s off at Rolls and Rhymes, Master, though there’s been little enough from there these few days past.”

  “When he comes back then …”

  “Aye, Master Librarian, I’ll send a mole for him.” He turned and did it, and was back a few moments later.

  “And Sturne, nothing more of this to … anymole.”

  Sturne nodded, his face expressionless. “The Deputy Master was here,” he said, with reference to nothing in particular. But then he added, “I never do say anything about your business or your work to … anymole. Never did, never shall.”

  “I know, Sturne. I know it well.” He came closer to Sturne, and most uncharacteristically reached out a paw and touched him. “Mole, you know why I made him Deputy Master, and not yourself?”

  “I can only guess, Master, I have only the comfort of guessing.”

  Sturne, a thickset mole with a craggy face flecked with white fur, lowered his head a little.

  “Guess,” said Stour.

  “He is a greater scholar than I, Master, that’s for sure. A brilliant scholar perhaps.”

  “Guess,” said Stour again.

  “He is younger than I and energetic. Such a mole may be needed for succession.”

  Stour stared at him. “Guess again, mole. Speak what is in your heart.”

  “The better to watch him,” growled Sturne.

  The faintest of smiles lit Stour’s eyes. “And why did you stay on and suffer his taunts and plaints? Eh, mole? You who —”

  Sturne whispered, “Guess, Master. Forgive me, but you guess now.”

  Stour looked at where Sturne’s great paw rested on the text at which he had been working, and then at the great Collection of texts of which he had been Keeper so long.

  “You did it for love of these texts,” said Stour softly. “Only for that.”

  “They have been a comfort, Master,” said Sturne, much moved. He was quite unable to look at the Master.

  “Mole,” said Stour gently, “follow me now for I have something to show thee. Bring that text and talk loudly of it that others think it is for that we go up to my study cell.”

  Sturne looked up at him in surprise and some bewilderment, but when he saw that Stour was already heading back up to his study cell he quickly followed.

  They did not pause at the portal at the top of the slipway, but passed straight through it into the modest chamber, and went immediately across it towards the further portal that led as Sturne guessed, for he had never ventured there, into the deep recesses of the Master’s private library. It was there the originals of moledom’s oldest texts were kept. From there now came that dire wind-sound so many in the Library feared, a rush and a hiss, a dark whisper and a distant crying.

  Stour stopped at this second portal and said, “Say nothing to anymole of what you shall see now, and what I shall tell thee. Remember that though certain others in the system will shortly know something of what I shall show thee, only one will understand it as well as yourself.”

  “Privet?” said Sturne.

  “Aye,” said the Master, “Privet. She is a worthy mole. But none of these moles shall know that you know. Remember that, Sturne, and tell nomole. All must think that you are but subordinate to Deputy Keeper Snyde. But here, and now, I tell thee that you are my appointed successor. You who have been loyal so long, must one day succeed me, and continue that work I have tried to do as best I might. This shall be your task, Keeper Sturne, and worthily will you do it.”

  “But Master, you are …” faltered Sturne.

  “… I am near my end. Or near a retreat from which I may not wish to return as Master Librarian. Today is an ending and a beginning, and our whole destiny is in doubt; a few must be entrusted with our future. For many mole-years I have foreseen and planned for what must begin with tomorrow’s dawn, before the Newborns begin what I fear will be a destructive takeover of our Library and heritage.”

  Sturne made to speak, or protest, or express alarm, but with a gesture Stour silenced him.

  “Listen, Keeper Sturne. One apart from all of them must know what I shall tell thee. None must suspect, and for this did I deny you the Deputy Mastership, to prepare you for the difficult times ahead when your patience, your knowledge and love of our texts, and most important of all your knowledge of the vices and the virtues of our Deputy Master Snyde may be needed.

  “Now, we have little time, for your presence up here will have been observed, so come, and be not afraid of the Dark Sound, for it was made to defend good against evil, and now for a time it may defend our greatest texts against the depredations of the Newborns. Follow me and see what I have done.”

  Stolid, calm, determined, purposeful, good Sturne followed Master Librarian Stour through the dark portal and into those lost tunnels so many feared, which in those days had only ever been visited by Masters alone. Then, at last,

  Sturne learnt those things that helped him understand so much that had puzzled, hurt and sorely tried him for so long.

  Later, as the day began to wane and the sky to grow dark grey with cloud, and Sturne was back down at his post again, Pumpkin returned from Rolls and Rhymes, empty-pawed.

  “Somemole said you were looking for me,” he said.

  “The Master is,” said Keeper Sturne.

  “Trouble?”

  “Were you ever in trouble, Pumpkin? I thought your life was devoted to avoiding it.”

 
Pumpkin grinned, and turned for the slipway.

  He was back down again but a short time later.

  “Trouble?” said Sturne ironically.

  “Change,” said Pumpkin, hurrying on his way.

  “Aye,” said Sturne to himself, “change indeed! Now, what have we here …” and he took up a text that an aide had brought some days earlier, and in his strong and gentle way, turned its folios, and snouted at it, and examined it with love.

  “Trouble?” said Snyde, creeping up as he always did.

  “Mediaeval beauty,” said Sturne, looking up obediently.

  “Ah, yes,” said Snyde, giving the text an indifferent glance. “You stay with that, Keeper Sturne, and just with that, and we shall be well pleased.”

  “I shall, Deputy Master; texts are all that has ever interested me.”

  “Good,” said Snyde, satisfied, going on his bent and crooked way.

  Sturne closed the text, his face expressionless. “May the Stone give me patience,” he muttered to himself, “or rather, continue to!” His face cracked into a smile. Then he took up another text, began to browse through it, and soon his sense of calm and peace returned, mixed with a sense of purpose and determination of a quality he had never felt before.

  “She’ll not come, Master Librarian, not yet at any rate,” said Whillan sombrely. “She said she regretted being unable to come here this evening but that though her sorting of the texts is more or less complete, and Pumpkin and other library aides have brought them into your custody in the Main Library, she feels her task is not yet done. The Keeper Husk is near the end of his own great task and wishes her to help see him through it.”

  “But you judge him well enough?”

  “Yes, well enough. Weak, but not near death, if that’s what you mean.”

  Stour was silent for a moment. “May the Stone give me time to go to Husk myself tomorrow before … before everything! I shall strive to see him then.” He seemed relieved to have made this decision and turned his mind back to the urgent task on paw.

  As late afternoon and all the moles of the secret meeting but Privet were gathered in the half-light of Fieldfare’s and Chater’s tunnels once more. Fieldfare looked much recovered from her ordeal in the Marsh End though she had not yet talked about it to anymole but Chater, who was watchful and subdued, much chastened it seemed by what little she had told him.

  Drubbins had been with them some time, and Maple too, for as chance would have it Pumpkin, whose task it had been to discreetly gather the moles together after seeing Stour in his study cell earlier that day, had come upon these two first.

  Whillan was windswept and his fur was damp, for he had been caught by one of the driving showers that had accompanied the day’s changing, cooling weather.

  Then, his face stern, Stour had arrived from the Library, and immediately asked after Privet. When he had earlier been warned by Pumpkin that she was unwilling to come he had asked Whillan to go and find out what the matter was.

  “We shall have to begin without her,” said Stour, “and that being the ease and the weather being as unpleasant as it is, we may as well talk here as in my study cell, as I had originally planned.”

  There was a stir of surprise among the moles, for none of them but Drubbins had ever had that privilege before.

  “We shall go there later, or perhaps at tomorrow’s dawn, and then on into the Ancient System itself so that you may all know what preparations I have made to defend our ancient texts.”

  All of them but Drubbins perhaps were astonished at his casual mention of their imminent entry to the Ancient System. Strange and troubled times indeed!

  “Today,” Stour continued, “I received a visit from a Newborn messenger informing me that Senior Brother Chervil, of whom I suppose all of you by now know, is summoning a second Meeting in Barrow Vale tomorrow. Its supposed purpose is to allow me to declare the names of a delegation we have been invited to send to Caer Caradoc, to attend a Convocation of moles summoned by none other than the Elder Senior Brother Thripp himself. His intention it seems is to discuss proposals to reform moledom’s libraries, whatever that may mean. I think I know!”

  He looked around at them, allowing time for this to sink in and the natural questions to rise in their minds.

  “The delegation will be of all important moles, and I must tell you now that for reasons of my own I believe that Deputy Master Snyde should be one of them. But who else?”

  “Take Chater or myself to give you protection, I beg you,” said Maple.

  “Protection we may need, Maple, though not in the way you mean, but I am grateful for your offer. I doubt that Fieldfare will wish Chater to be counted among those who will leave Duncton Wood!”

  To everymole’s surprise Fieldfare said passionately, “I will disagree with nothing that serves the purpose of obstructing and defeating the Newborns!”

  “Good! But we jump ahead. I have no intention of attending tomorrow’s Meeting in Barrow Vale, but intend instead to retreat once more into the Ancient System, to a place I have already set aside for the defence of our textual heritage. I shall need nomole with me in person, but I shall need your moral support and understanding.”

  “In the Ancient System, Master?” said Maple. “But the tunnels there are not fit for mole to live in.”

  “Quite so, they are not. Yet a mole may survive, if he sets his mind to it. And Dark Sound is a great protector of old texts, especially from moles filled with noisy desire to get their paws on them. Believe me, nomole will easily get to where I intend to go, and have indeed already been many times carrying texts. I confess however that I have never been in that great Chamber of Dark Sound, as our predecessors accurately called it, for very long. Meanwhile, I have summoned you here for the second and perhaps the last time, that we may understand each other’s views on a number of matters — some of which I raised when we last met, when, if I am correct, Drubbins and myself were in a minority of two in supporting peaceful resistance as opposed to violent resistance.

  “I welcome to Whillan, whose courage and purpose, of which we may shortly hear more, makes him a mole worthy to join our number in the coming struggle against the Newborns.

  “I do not want to seek your views on that until we have heard each other out, and considered those matters that have occurred since then and for which this is the first opportunity to report …” He paused to look up at the chamber’s roof as a stronger gust of wind than most shook it, and stirred and flurried at the tunnels’ entrances leaving behind the stress and strain of shifting roots and wind-sound.

  “We all want to hear what happened to Fieldfare, and I hope she will be willing to tell us.”

  Fieldfare nodded grimly, and shot a glance at Chater, who looked grimmer still.

  “I hope too that we may prevail on Privet to come and join us before the evening’s out —”

  “I swear she’ll not come, Master Librarian!” said Whillan.

  Stour smiled and said, “She should be here, Whillan, and I have noticed that the Stone has a way, always mysterious to me, of arranging matters as they should be, and not as moles wish them to be. I may incidentally observe that your presence here, Whillan, makes us six, and if, as I believe she will, Privet joins us then that will be seven. Which means we shall form what in more superstitious or possibly more reverent times, was called a Seven Stancing, which is to say seven moles taking council amongst themselves to try, with the Stone’s help, to right some wrong, or prosecute some great and holy purpose. Let us therefore be patient and, meanwhile, hear the rest of your account of your expedition with Chater and Maple to Rollright.”

  “That’s easily told …’ began Whillan; and so it was.

  Once the Duncton moles had got the four they had rescued from the massing by the Stone in the Circle to safety, it was decided that Chater and Maple would go back briefly into the system and talk with one or two moles Chater knew of old.

  “I know the way there,” he said, “and they’ll know
as much as anymole. Meanwhile, you can talk to this lot, Whillan, and establish what you can about the intentions of the Newborns. We’ll meet by or before the new moon at the spot I showed you on our way here, and if we’re not back by then, don’t dawdle — set off to Duncton and tell them what you can.”

  So Chater and Maple bravely went back into Rollright’s tunnels, and were successful in making the contact they sought. They learnt much that confirmed not only Stour’s fears about censorship and destruction of texts, but also accounted for the attack on Cuddesdon which Chater had reported on. It seemed that the Cuddesdon moles had heard of the censorship in Rollright and, foolishly as it turned out, sent a delegation to the Newborn Brothers there to attempt to reason with them. This was interpreted as blasphemy, and in the face of the Cuddesdon moles’ “intransigence” the attack and killings that Chater had seen the evidence of were perpetrated.

  This information gathered, and certain additional facts about Chervil ascertained — namely that he was not himself one of the Brother Inquisitors and had been sent by Thripp to Duncton Wood to keep him out of harm’s way as strife within the Caradocian Order reached a climax — the two moles returned to where they had left Whillan, content that they had gathered sufficient information to make the expedition worthwhile.

  But when they got there Whillan was gone, along with the four rescued moles. It was for Chater and Maple a grim and terrible moment, and their earlier elation gave way to grave doubts and fears. The only consolation, and that but a small one, was that there were no signs of struggle, blood or bodies.

  “We’ll search the tunnels and surface nearby, and if that fails we’ll fall back on our arrangement to meet at that place we stopped at on the way here, and hope that Whillan leads the others there,” said Chater.

  “He’s not a fool,” said Maple, “and he kept his head earlier. The chances are they got disturbed by Newborns searching for them and scarpered.”

  So they made their search, and finding no clues at all, and not wishing to risk more, went to the place where they had agreed to meet and since Whillan was not already there, stanced down in the hope that he would come.