Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  “But when would such a great mole be needed?” asked Whillan.

  “Why, mole,” said Fieldfare quietly, “your mother surely told you that. Or if she did not …” Fieldfare paused, a strange mixed look of puzzlement and understanding on her face. “Surely,” she continued, “Stour will tell us what the old tales say of the coming of the Master of the Delve.”

  “Aye,” said Stour, “and” so I shall. He’ll be needed when that holy day comes that the lost and the last book, the Book of Silence, comes to ground. Though he himself may not know what he is, or what his art may do, only then will he come, brought to us by the Stone. So shall that last Master be reborn again — aye even newborn! — but by then unknown even to himself, awaiting his own awakening. How that will be achieved I am not wise enough to know!”

  “Yet what would he do with the Book?” persisted Whillan, his imagination carried away by Stour’s tales.

  “Maybe make a delving to hold the Book?” offered Chater, who though a journeymole who prided himself on his direct speaking and common sense seemed as much affected by the legends as Whillan.

  Stour shrugged.

  “To hold the Book. To find the Book. To inspire the Book. I know not. It is a strange and half forgotten legend that I have told you. Yet such memories have often the strength of prophecy. Was not the Stone Mole a mere prophetic legend before he came alive, right here in Duncton Wood? Now, most strangely, we have this mole Rooster, given the title Master of the Delve, and not I suspect by himself. A true Master would give himself no title at all. He would not know what he was. Yet out of nothing he comes, out of the north, out of Bleaklow Moor where only outcasts live. And alone of all moles of our generation it seems he has the power to put fear in the hearts of the Newborn moles.

  “This is strange indeed. I would give much to know more of him, for if he is what his title suggests then we may proceed more boldly and with more certainty with the strategy that I have planned. And, too, since such Masters were moles of peace, and were renowned for their unwillingness to defend themselves against anymole, preferring to die than harm another lest the blood of mole should taint their delving, I believe that this is a sign that the peaceful way is the only way forward. If we but knew more of this Rooster!”

  There was silence again, broken only by Fieldfare, restless, uneasy, concerned.

  “Master,” she said hesitantly and not like herself at all, I think there may be a way to know more.”

  “If it were only so, Fieldfare! For this mole is in danger and may need others’ help. If you know a way …?”

  “In my time in the Marsh End, of which Chater has told you something already, I too heard mention of Rooster,” said Fieldfare. “I felt strange at the mention of his name. I felt I had heard it before, as if in a dream, or when I was a pup. As if somemole spoke it once to me. So strange was it, so powerful that I have thought of little else since. It makes a mole restless not being able to quite remember something she knows she’s forgotten. But just now, when Whillan mentioned about this mole being a Delver in the old way, and when you told of it, I realized that I knew of him, Master, I knew of him very well.”

  She had stanced up and her eyes were determined and rather fierce. Above them, in the darkening evening, the north wind blew hard and made the trees fret. Somewhere roots shifted and stressed, and even Fieldfare and Chater’s comfortable and well-made tunnels seemed beset.

  “Master, let me go from this Stancing for a time, and I think I can return with the answers you seek.”

  “I’ll not allow her to go anywhere alone, Master, not without me,” said Chater. “It’s not a night for going out in. And she’ll be afraid and get herself lost again.”

  Fieldfare turned to Chater with the most tender and loving look on her face. She reached out a paw to him and drew him near, and spoke to him so personally that the others there looked away.

  “Beloved,” she said, “I lost my fear in the Marsh End. This is now more than all of us, and I think that this mole Rooster has been coming towards us for a long time. His name awakens something in me. I’ll not be gone long.”

  “I’ll not allow it, Master,” said Chater fiercely.

  “But this is my task,” said Fieldfare, as strong as him, but more gentle. “Master, let me go, and if I must have a mole with me let it be Pumpkin, if he can be found.”

  “He’s nearby these tunnels on my instruction,” said Stour. “Chater, take her to the surface, call out for Pumpkin, and then let them be. The Stone’s Light is on this, she shall be safe.”

  Out into the chill and windy night they went, and Pumpkin came when he was called, seeming almost to expect them.

  “Where are you going to go?” asked Chater, wretched to let her go from him, even for a short time.

  “It’s best you don’t know. It’s best nomole knows, for I may be wrong and if so then the matter can rest. But if I’m right, Chater, my dear, then it is all of a piece. Pray for me!”

  He embraced her, told Pumpkin not to let her out of his sight, and then was gone back underground.

  “Where did she go?” asked Maple.

  “She would not say,” said Chater grimly. “All she said was to ask me to pray for her. In all our lives together she’s never asked that.”

  “Then ’tis best to do it, mole,” said Drubbins.

  “I’m not one for making prayers,” growled Chater.

  “Nomole is until they try,” said Stour. “So try!”

  Chater nodded his head, stared at the chamber’s floor, and slowly, and falteringly, and not like himself at all, began a prayer for his beloved Fieldfare, and ended with a prayer that was for them all.

  “Where are we going?” shouted Pumpkin against the wind, as soon as Chater had gone in.

  “To Rolls, Rhymes and Tales,” said Fieldfare, setting her snout determinedly westward across the slopes, “for I’ve a question to ask of Privet.”

  “She’ll not come here tonight,” said Pumpkin. “I tried and Whillan tried. It is with Husk she’ll stay.”

  “We’ll see,” said Fieldfare, setting a pace through the gloom which poor Pumpkin had to struggle to keep up with. “Yes, we’ll see about that!”

  “You don’t seem in a very good mood, Fieldfare, if I may say so,” said Pumpkin breathlessly.

  ‘Don’t I? Well, I might soon seem in a much worse one, I’ll warn you of that now. As for Newborns I wouldn’t worry about them tonight if I were you, Pumpkin. The mood I’m in I could eat Newborns. Now, hurry up and let’s get on!”

  Yet, for all Fieldfare’s angry energy it was as well Pumpkin was there, for in the gloom of the night, with only the moon’s light shining out between high, racing clouds, it needed his guidance to get them to the obscure clearing beneath which Rolls and Rhymes lay.

  But having got there Fieldfare did not waste time, or approach her errand with much tact.

  “Privet!” she called down sternly into the tunnel. “I know you and Keeper Husk will have heard us so if you’re hiding thinking it’s them, don’t. It’s me, Fieldfare. And Pumpkin, your long suffering aide. Now come on up to the surface because I don’t have time or inclination to flounder about in the murk finding you.”

  Then she added softly for Pumpkin’s benefit. “That’ll get her to hurry up!”

  It did, and to their mutual surprise it brought not only Privet hurrying along, but old Keeper Husk as well, slower, breathless, staring, but there all the same.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “It’s Privet I’ve come to see.”

  “Well?” said Privet, behind Husk, evidently annoyed. “I was asleep!”

  “Well wake up, I’ve got a question to ask.”

  “She’s in a bad mood,” said Pumpkin helpfully.

  “I can hear that,” said Husk. “An irritated kind of mood. There’s a tale in this, that’s for sure.”

  Well?” said Privet coldly again, trying to keep calm and seeming to have no idea at all what Fieldfare wanted.

&nb
sp; “Have you heard of a place called Bleaklow Moor?” asked Fieldfare.

  I have heard of it,” said Privet cautiously, and after a moment’s hesitation.

  “It is part of the Moors, is it not, from which you originally came?”

  “That was a long time ago, Fieldfare. You know I prefer not to …”

  “I no longer mind what you prefer not to talk about, Privet. I am concerned with what you must talk about, if not for your own sake then for the sake of others.”

  “What good will it do anymole for me to talk of my past? I came to Duncton to escape from it, to start a new life, and here with Keeper Husk I have found a task to absorb me. He needs help with his Book of Tales and the Stone has given me the skills to help him … Is that not so?” Privet turned to Husk for support.

  It is so, so far as it goes,” said Husk. “But if there are things you could tell us that would help others, then you should do so …”

  “What others can I help?” cried out Privet in a voice of growing despair, as if she sensed that even here her past was catching up with her, and she could run no more.

  “There is a mole you can help,” said Fieldfare.

  “What mole?”

  “A mole you loved once long ago.”

  “I do not think I truly loved anymole …”

  “A delver, he was a delver. You told me that yourself.”

  “No!” cried out poor Privet.

  “Was his name Rooster?”

  “I cannot help him, I cannot! He went beyond my help. Don’t make me speak of him!” Her voice had become a wail, a whine, a cry as of a pup who does not want to do what it knows it must.

  “He needs your help, Privet.”

  “No, no! I am not worthy to give him any help. He is, he was … before he knew me he was … he would have been …”

  “A Master of the Delve?”

  Privet cried out in utter despair as Fieldfare said this, and would have collapsed had not Pumpkin and Fieldfare between them, and even old Husk as well, clung on to her.

  “I know nothing of him!” Privet whispered. “I cannot help, I cannot help him …”

  “Mole,” said Fieldfare quietly, “I’ll ask you one last time. After that, if you deny it, I’ll not speak his name ever again, and nor will any but these two you trust know I ever asked you this. It will be like it never was. But you see, Rooster is in trouble now, my dear, and he may need your help.. He’s a mole sent by the Stone, oh I know he is. But the Master thinks that if we are to know best what to do, we need to know more of him and so I’ve come here to ask your help. I know you’ve never spoken his name since whatever happened all those years ago. But, mole, you can’t run for ever from the past, and we may all need you now and what you know.

  “So Privet, my dear, for the final time, and perhaps for all our sakes and his as well, if Rooster was the mole you loved will you speak of it at last?”

  For a moment Privet held back the tears that she had kept at bay so long. But then her hold on Husk’s thin paw tightened, she opened her mouth to speak, and then her tears came, and her weeping started. The tears of a mole who has lost years of a deep love; the tears of a mole wanting to talk at last of what she had run from for so long, the tears of a mole who knows too well what she has lost, perhaps for ever. Tears to cry in Fieldfare’s warm embrace. Tears to share with moles as good and honest as Pumpkin, and Keeper Husk. Tears which must be shed before true feeling can begin again.

  Then, finally, Privet dared to ask what Fieldfare knew of Rooster, and what had happened, and and …

  Quickly Fieldfare told them all she had heard that evening: of the rumours Chater had heard in Cuddesdon, of all that Whillan had learnt in Rollright, and of her own experience of a massing in the Marsh End and so of what Rooster himself might have suffered.

  “One more thing,” said Fieldfare. “In the north they call him a Master of the Delve and that means —”

  “I know what it means,” said Husk urgently and with that same excitement Stour had shown. “If that be true, mole, go now and tell Stour what you know. Moledom’s future may depend on it, and the finding of the Book of Silence.”

  Privet said not a word.

  “You knew that, mole,” said Husk. “You knew it all.”

  She reached out a paw to him and then stared wildly all about the night.

  “He is a Master of the Delve, I know it for I have seen what he can make. He delved once for me. But … but Husk … Fieldfare …”

  “What is it, my dear?” said Fieldfare holding her.

  “Such a mole may never hurt another, never talon another, never kill another …”

  “Mole,” said Keeper Husk sternly, “go to Stour. Tell him what you know. I order it. Go now, and don’t worry about me, for Pumpkin will see to all my needs while you are gone. I have, one more thing to scribe, one more thing and my own task is done. But yours, my dear, begins anew. Turn and face it, be not afraid before it, for the Stone will always give you strength. Now let me hear you go.”

  Then, with a last wild look at him, and a quick embrace, and a whispered farewell, Privet turned with Fieldfare, before her courage fled her, to tell of her tale of Rooster, and her love for him, and all the burden she had borne alone so long.

  Duncton’s eternal enemy, the cruel north wind, which had gathered such force as that fateful day of change in Duncton Wood progressed, grew ever more wrathful and violent as Fieldfare led Privet back across the night-struck slopes.

  It seemed it sensed that in the tale that Privet had now agreed to tell there was a light it did not like, a hope it sought to kill, and a way forward it wished to block.

  “We must hurry, my dear,” shouted Fieldfare against its noise, “for we’ve been longer than I thought and the worse this weather gets the more likely it is that my Chater will fret too much and come out in search of us.”

  So hurry on she did, with Privet at her flank, fur flying in the wind, fighting the hurled wet leaves, scurrying from falling and crashing branches, seeking to avoid the rain and litter that was blown up into their eyes.

  Sometimes the violence in the air was so great, so confusing, that they were brought to a stop by it, and were forced to shelter among the enshadowed surface roots of trees, and clutch on to what support they could find, lest they be blown off their paws and separated.

  At other times it seemed that the wood ahead all changed, its surface sloping to the right instead of to the left even as they peered out into it, and they were thrown into confusion and uncertain which way to go.

  Then once, the worst moment of all in that grim trek back to Fieldfare’s tunnels where the other members of the Stancing waited, it seemed they saw the hurrying spectres of moles pausing to peer out of the confusion at them, poised for a moment to come out and attack them, but then hurrying on. Male moles, dark-furred, half shadows, half substantial in the night.

  “There was something, Fieldfare,” cried Privet in alarm, half turning to look back the way they had come and they had gone, “and I do not like to leave Husk alone on a night like this with only Pumpkin for protection. Let me go back … tomorrow will do as well as tonight to tell what I know of Rooster.”

  “No, Privet!” replied Fieldfare with determination, grabbing her unwilling friend by the paw. “Tonight’s the night. Nomole but us would be fool enough to be out and about.

  Twas the spectres of your own memories and fears you saw! You cannot run from them for ever.”

  So the storm tried to defeat them, but so they conquered it and arrived, staggering, wet, bedraggled, heaving and puffing with the effort of it all, back at Fieldfare’s place where Chater waited at the surface entrance, Maple at his flank.

  “Thank the Stone you’re here!” declared Maple, seeing Fieldfare come out of the night. “I had to stop your mate coming out after you and losing himself in this storm!”

  “Where have you been?” demanded Chater, his sudden anger but his way of being concerned for her.

  “Fetchi
ng Privet,” said Fieldfare turning to her friend as she came out of the dark, “for she’s the one to tell us of Rooster.”

  “You?” said Chater in doubtful surprise on seeing Privet, who was quite unable to say a word in reply.

  “Stop worrying, beloved, and let us in out of this wind. And fetch poor Privet food, for it’s thin fare she’s had with Husk these molemonths past.”

  Then turning to Privet Fieldfare said more gently, “Now, my dear, come down into the warmth and be with friends, and tell them what you must …”

  It was only later in the night, when the wind had abated a little and the rain settled into a steady roar that sent its drips and runs of water down the entrances above, that Privet recovered enough to break her silence.

  “You’re welcome here,” Stour had said, “and welcome back! Fieldfare has told us only that she thinks you may know of the mole Rooster of Bleaklow Moor, also known as Master of the Delve.”

  “She said he was in trouble …” Privet said, worry on her face as Whillan came nearer to comfort her.

  “Aye, it may be so,” Stour had replied. “Let each of us here tell you what little we know and then you tell us what you know, and between us all we may find a way forward from this mystery, or opportunity, or whatever it may be.”

  This they had done, and Privet had listened in silence, distressed and saddened by it all and all the emotions the memories of love, of trial, of loss and of loneliness may bring crossing her thin and sensitive face.

  At last she had heard all they knew, and Stour glanced up at where the muted roar of rainfall came, and round at the largest tunnel out of the chamber, down which the steady sound of dripping came. Sometimes it was lit up with flashes of lightning, and at other times with the slower paler light of the moon as it came out from behind the huge, racing storm clouds of the night.