Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  “What now?” they laughed, throwing her at the base of the biggest of the Stones. Then poking their talons into her they said, “And? Eh? What now?”

  What now? It is what all moles must ask when their fugitive days are done and finally and at last they must turn upon themselves and raise their snouts and seeing what they are must say, “I am nothing.” In saying which a mole begins to be. To this great mystery of life renewed at the moment of the death of self had that suffering female finally come. All ways, all routes, all paths lead finally to this: the Stone, a mole, and nowhere else to flee.

  So then: what now? Slowly she raised her head, looked up at the Stone which rose above, and wept for all she had known and yet denied, all she had done, all she had undone, all of everything that had led her there.

  Watching her pain the aides of Ashop laughed some more, knowing nothing of the new journey that the mole they tortured was about to start.

  “What’s your name, mole? Tell us the real one and we’ll kill you quick instead of slow. Come on, what’s your name?”

  It was then, subjugated and humiliated that she spoke her name at last, not to her tormentors, but to the Stone itself.

  “I am the Eldrene Wort,” she said. And as she did black clouds mounted in the sky, and the very Stones about them darkened and shuddered at her name.

  “Wort!” hissed the aides among themselves, backing off and looking at their talons as if to say, “These have struck a leprous mole, how can they be made clean?”

  “’Tis Wort!”

  So there she stanced, the mole who in the days of Word and Stone had held great power for a time and had been the one to kill a mole whose name was love and whom all moledom might have loved; a mole whose life was dedicated to leading us to Silence.*

  “I am that same Wort,” she whispered to the Stone, unaware of the consternation and fear she created among Ashop’s aides, who until that moment had thought only of tormenting her. Then, harder even than her name to speak, she spoke these words: ‘Forgive me for what I did to thee. Forgive me that I may die at peace.”

  The Stones around her were silent and impassive, the aides staring and impassive too. A fretful breeze troubled the withered heather there.

  *The full story of the Eldrene Wort, former inquisitor for the Word, and murderess, is told in Duncton Found, Part III of the Duncton Chronicles.

  “Wort!” the aides said again, as if to spit a taste that would not leave from out of their mouths.

  Wort! Then anger came to the aides because of the deep self-disgust she made them feel. To a mole they turned back from that dangerous path of self-examination to the safer tunnel of their lord’s instruction: despoil her by the Stones.

  Anger and disgust gave way to insane lust and urging each other on they savagely despoiled the Eldrene Wort, hurting her, taking her, destroying what ragged remnants of self she still had left and besmirching her with their sweaty, loathsome need to forget for their brief panting moment the frightening way towards self-feeling she had exposed them to.

  Then, when each had had their turn at her and she lay unmoving by the Stones, they stole away, wondering why they felt so cursed by what they had done, or been made to do. Guilty. Despairing. Shame. The name which was theirs now.

  But enough of them, for now. If they must journey back into our consciousness let them do it by themselves.

  When they were gone, and night was come, and the Stones were silent, Wort roused herself and pulled her besmirched body to the largest of them and said, “Now I am nothing but what you make of me. My name is Wort and from it I’ll flee no more. Only forgive me and put peace into me and guide me.”

  Did the Stone speak then? To this day many on Bleaklow say it did, believing the hour of Wort’s redemption marked not only the turning point of the Moors away from their dark decades, but of all moledom too. Aye, mightily, with thunder and with lightning, across the benighted sky, in the full majesty of a great storm, the Stone spoke that night to Wort.

  “You are forgiven, mole! You saw Light once long ago and lost it. Now you have found the courage and humility to see Light once more. From you much came, and much is still to come. Be fugitive from our Silence no more and let all who one day hear your story know thereby that all moles may find forgiveness in our Silence. Even she who killed us, even from her may good come out once more.

  “Therefore discover how to help the mole that becomes closest to you, and teach that mole to know the Light. Teach that mole what you have learnt. Bequeath that mole a way to leave this place of darkness, that all moles, wherever they may live, may know that they can turn from the Bleaklow of their hearts and be reborn. Do it for the love you saw and which in me you see again.

  “Now, Wort, give up the last of thyself to me and be reborn! From the sin and dust of thy poor past life let new life come! Come, mole, speak thy name to me in joy!”

  So did the Stone speak, and the black clouds mounted and broke with thunder and lightning, and rain poured down and cleansed the stricken body of old Wort, cleansed it of all its filth from Ashop’s aides and of all its darkness from the decades past.

  Until at last when dawn came Wort found strength to rise from the shadows into which she had fallen and gazed upon the Stone with love, and raised her paws in adoration as the great light of the eastern sun shone forth and dried the ground and all her tears. As it caught the Eldrene Wort in its brightness, she was reborn and whispered without shame, “Yes, I am Wort as Wort was born. My past is done. My future begins now and is with the Stone. I … am … Wort.” It is given to few moles to speak their name so true.

  Indeed, in truth, sterile Wort (as she had once been known), and Wort (as in appearance she seemed still) was no more either of those things. Life, so vilely made in her by the aides of Ashop was transformed thereby from hate to love within her, and it stirred, and was safe, and was good.

  “Go now, Wort, and bring that life made new in thee to birth, bring it to safety, find a way to nurture and to guide it,” whispered the Stone, whose voice was a spring breeze among the Stones.

  Then the Eldrene Wort turned at last from the Weign Stones, and she made her way through the molemonths that followed among the hidden places of the Moors. Life grew in her and the Stone watched over her and led her to that high wet place on the Moors above Crowden, which moles call Shining Clough. She grew near her time, and crept into a gully there, though few can find it now, so turned and out of the way it is. But there the sun shines warm even on a chilly day, and there did Wort give hirth to three pups. But such was her weakness of body, such had been the hardship of survival these molemonths past, that only one survived. A female pup.

  To it she tried to give love. Tried to teach of suffering; tried to bring joy; until finally, when she grew too weak to take care of it, she took it to a place of safety …

  “That pup …” whispered Privet, whose tale of Wort had so stilled the moles listening to her that they seemed made of stone, “that pup the Eldrene Wort named ‘Shire’.”

  For the first time in all the telling of her tale, a hard glitter came to Privet’s eyes, a coldness born of bitter memory. All stared at her. Not one mole moved.

  “Shire was my mother and the loveless life that I have had as penance for Wort’s shame is my only heritage.”

  “But mole —” began Stour gently, who wished to say for all of them that such a heritage could not be Privet’s personal fault, as she seemed almost to think.

  “Hear me more!” she said, cutting savagely across him, her eyes staring blankly towards the chamber’s entrance as if at memories which were no longer the history of another time, but lurked now, waiting to enter in as part of what had brought her here, and might yet shape them all.

  “Hear a mole whose life is penance for what Wort once did; a mole who came to Duncton Wood in search of that same peace and Silence the Eldrene Wort once sought; a mole who brings trouble and pain to others wherever she goes, whatever she does …”

  Priv
et’s snout was low, her eyes downcast as each of her listeners understood in their own way the depth into which she felt she had been brought, and the courage she needed to speak of it.

  None more so than Whillan, her adopted son, who came closer still as if to support her through the time of trial this telling might yet prove to be.

  “You have not caused us trouble, or pain, Mother,” he said quietly.

  “I may yet do so, my dear,” she whispered miserably, “as I did once to moles I dearly loved.”

  “Tell us this history, mole,” said Stour gently, “and be reminded that you are among friends, and within the orbit of one of moledom’s greatest Stones.”

  Privet nodded silently, and began her tale once more as around them in the chamber the night grew darker, and the winds above more troubled.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was on the eve of Midsummer that the Eldrene Wort, with heavy heart, brought the young Shire to the portal of Crowden and sought to enter in. Rumours of her survival and the birth of Shire had reached the ears of Ashop’s aides and they were in search of her.

  “What would you with us, mole?” the Crowden moles asked, staring suspiciously at the weak old female and the innocent youngster at her flank.

  “Sanctuary in the name of the Stone, for my daughter and myself.”

  “What is your name?” they asked, though they knew it already, and whisper of her coming had long since reached them.

  “It is Wort,” she said. “But it is for my daughter that I come. I wish her to know the Midsummer ritual. I wish her to be reared to the Stone. I wish —”

  So there they waited, the dark Moors rising behind them, the safe tunnels of Crowden before them, and Wort trembling with illness, her flanks wasted with the effort of raising her pup, her snout low with memories of shame she had felt when Crowden had rejected her before. But now perhaps …

  Returning, the spokesmole for Crowden, the forbidding Librarian Sans, a bitter unpupped female, said, “You are not welcome here, for you are Wort, whose crime all Stone followers know. The Stone shall punish you as it sees fit. We shall not succour you in our tunnels.”

  “I am forgiven,” said Wort, “but if only for my daughter’s sake take us in. I am near my end, Ashop’s guardmoles hunt us, and my daughter will not survive on the Moors alone.”

  Cold eyes appraised young Shire, who sank back into her mother’s flank in fear. Cold whispers. Sans’ snout, long and thin, came out and poked at Shire’s flank and scented her.

  “She is willing to be reared of the Stone?”

  Shire nodded, eyes wide in fear.

  “She is not tainted by Word or Whernish blasphemies?”

  “She is not!” said Wort fiercely.

  “She is obedient?”

  “And clever,” said Wort, “for already she can scribe a little. I have been able to teach her that. I beg you, take us in. I have not long to live and would see her through the Midsummer ritual and know that she shall be reared towards, the Stone’s Silence.”

  “What can you scribe, mole?” the cold female asked of Shire.

  Shire stared, paralysed with fear.

  “Scribe them a word, my dear,” said Wort. “Scribe them what I taught you.”

  Then did Shire scribe down her name in the ground, her scribing puppish and ill-formed. The female stared and ran her talons over it.

  “All moles in Crowden can scribe their name,” said Sans dismissively; ‘what else can you scribe?”

  “I can scribe the names of the seven Ancient Systems of moledom,” she whispered.

  “Do so.”

  Slowly Shire did, scribing them out one by one, and repeating their names as she did so: Uffington, Caer Caradoc, Avebury, Siabod, Fyfield, Rollright …

  “… and Duncton Wood,” she concluded, gaining confidence. Her eyes lost their fear and she said excitedly, “My mother was there once, my mother —”

  “Your mother was in Beechenhill as well,” said cold Sans, hatred in her eyes as she glanced at Wort and made this reference to the place of Wort’s greatest crime and shame.

  “I can scribe that too,” said Shire, not knowing what she said.

  The Crowden moles stared, huddled, and whispered long and hard until at last Sans turned back and said, “We feel it our duty before the Stone to raise the pup, but you, Wort, are a cursed mole. You shall not enter in.”

  “But she is all I have and I —”

  “Decide now or we shall take neither of you in. Decide.”

  “Whatmole will raise her?” whispered the ailing Wort.

  “I shall raise her,” said bitter Sans, vile possessiveness in her grey eyes.

  “I won’t go with her!” cried poor Shire, backing away to her mother’s flank.

  “Decide. There will be no second chance. She shall be reared to the Stone, rest assured of that.”

  What greater agony is there for a parent than that they must part from their only pup for that pup’s good, knowing that in the parting something of the pup may die? How much more is such an agony increased when the pup must be raised by such a mole as Sans!

  “Don’t let them take me,” screamed Shire at the portal of Crowden. Cold eyes on Wort’s eyes of agony, whose light was the bleak despairing love that had brought her there.

  “Take her,” she whispered at last, “but teach her that I loved her.”

  “No!” cried poor Shire.

  “My dear, it is the only way for thee. Soon I shall die alone on the Moors, and then you too would die. One day you will understand. And when you do, leave this place and all these Moors behind. Go to Beechenhill and seek forgiveness for what your mother in her ignorance once did.”

  “No!” cried Shire, her screams a torture in Wort’s ears.

  “Take her,” she said, and stumblingly, her old paws scrabbling across the little scribing Shire had made, she began to turn away. But then she paused, and as she looked around again at all the moles who were gathered watching this scene something returned of her old authority to her, mixed with the new-found sense that the Stone was with her in all things, even in this.

  “Moles,” she said, addressing all of them gently as a mother might her pups, “I am old and near death, and have done much wrong. This pup is all I have to leave behind, and the best I have, and she is innocent. She needs only love to grow and blossom. I would not leave her to any other mole to raise from choice, least of all to moles whose minds I do not know, whose natures may be cruel, as mine once was, and whose hearts may be barren, as mine has been. Therefore, if there is one among you who believes the Stone has forgiven me, as I feel it has, watch over my pup with all your love, and one day tell her that her mother gave her up that she might live.”

  “No!” wept Shire.

  But cold paws pulled her into Crowden’s tunnels, and speaking no more words, Wort turned away, and began her final trek up into the Moors.

  But two moles stayed at the portal of Crowden, both males, both young then, who seemed of no consequence at all. The older of the two wept openly for Wort, and stared at the scribing her pup had made. All was broken and scored by Wort’s frantic paws as she had turned to go.

  “Shire”: scored out.

  “Uffington”: scored out.

  Avebury, Rollright and all the others but one scored out.

  That last was untouched and clear, and as the two moles looked down at it a special light caught it and held their gaze,

  “Duncton Wood,” whispered the mole to his younger companion, and as he did so they both saw that its scribing seemed to shine and shimmer even more. “We shall remember. And, too, what she could scribe but was not allowed to: Beechenhill.”

  “We shall remember what her mother said, “whispered the other, a thin mole with wild fur and a roving intelligent look in his eyes that ever gazed up and away from the confined tunnels of Crowden towards the Moors above.

  Then he went a little way after Wort and watched her slow and terrible trek away from the only life
she had ever made, and he said, “Stone, guide her, protect her, and bring her to thy Silence, for surely you have forgiven her. As best I may, I shall heed her final words and watch over her daughter, and one day tell her that her mother loved so much that she gave up what she most loved.”

  “That was well said, mole,” said the older of the two, “very well said.”

  “The older mole’s name was Tarn,” said Privet through tears that the others shared with her at this memory, “a junior in the Library who never gained much rank or respect. Yet what little love there was in my mother’s upbringing in Crowden, what little light, Tarn gave it. And later, when he felt that what he gave Shire was too little, and too late, he gave her something more, for he summoned a vagrant mole from off the Moors and guided him towards a task and a fulfillment.”

  Then a soft smile broke like sunshine across Privet’s face and she nodded to herself with pleasure at Tarn’s memory and what he had once done.

  “Was that the second mole, the younger of the two?” asked Whillan softly.

  Slowly, Privet nodded. Then she smiled again and said in a firmer voice, “Yes, indeed it was. His name was Sward, and he was known as Sward the Scholar. After decades of wandering about the Moors, making a great collection of texts, and recording much that moles told him of those strange dark years, old Tarn got Sward to come back and settle down in Crowden. As I said, Shire was my mother.”

  “And Sward?” said Whillan intensely, as if he already knew.

  Yes, my dear, Sward was my father, and what love, what patience, what good humour I may have had in raising thee.

  I owe to him. But before I tell of that I must tell of Wort’s final act and affirmation before she died, and of how the Stone came to answer Sward’s prayer on her behalf; and I will speak too of Shire’s bitter life, and say more of how I was born.”

  She turned to Stour then and said, “Master Librarian, you have asked me to tell you what I know of Rooster, but I must ask you to be — patient whilst I tell of these things that came before. For I believe that in some strange way, the events of which I was both product and witness all those years ago, were guided by the Stone. What seemed to me then malchance and fell circumstance, and caused suffering to many moles, myself included, was the Stone’s will and of its mysterious pattern for ill and good, for darkness and for grace, of which we are a part.