Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  “You —”

  “Yes, mole?” he said. He was so strong, his fur so good, his presence as good to her as it had always been. She might not feel love, for how can a mole love one who has been almost a brother, but shyness she felt, and curious pride to be talking to him at all. And comfort that she had known him, in a way, so long. And yet …

  “Well?” he said persistently. “You always were the quiet one, Privet. You can say what you were thinking, I won’t bite.”

  “You … looked sad,” she said. “I was thinking it isn’t like you.”

  “No?” he said, a little mournfully.

  “No,” she said very firmly, much surprised at her own daring and hoping that her snout was not going pink.

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  The question was so unexpected, and so apposite, that Privet giggled, which is not something she ever did.

  “It’s not funny,” growled Hamble, settling down comfortably. He seemed so open and trusting that she felt her diffidence leave her and an almost daring relaxation overtake her body. She stanced down near him.

  “It is funny really,” she said, “because I did once love a mole.”

  “Who?” he said.

  It was precisely the question she had hoped he would ask, but now he had, her heart beat faster and she was unsure what to say. But the sun was warm, and his presence good, and thinking it was him she had loved she could not but smile. It was a day for smiling, and for being here. She felt suddenly so tired.

  “You,” she said archly.

  He stared at her astonished. “Me? But you never said! And anyway …”

  Yes, anyway; she was merely Privet. It felt a long time ago.

  “It’s over now,” she said.

  He looked relieved and grinned at her and said, “Just as well, really.”

  She stayed silent, staring, and suddenly knew whatmole it was he loved.

  “It’s Lime!” she said. “Oh dear!”

  He nodded sadly and since she was silent he began to talk. Oh, how she knew the passion he described, how fierce such passions are, how very bright they seem.

  “Will I get over it?” he said at last, for he had told how Lime had laughed at him when he declared himself and called him ‘clod-hopping’, a term she had learnt from Shire.

  “I did, eventually,” said Privet a little unhelpfully. They were silent for a time.

  “Hamble …” she began at last. He had the sense to stay silent. “I never dared say before, and I might never be so bold again. Thank you for what you used to do for me. I …”

  Her eyes filled with tears and suddenly she felt a fool. She stanced up to escape from him and this. Then he did that which once she had so wished that he might do. He reached a paw to hers and said gruffly, “Never did like seeing a mole hurt who couldn’t defend themselves and especially not you, Privet. You’re cleverer than all the rest of us put together and fighting isn’t your way.”

  Me? Cleverer? she thought. He had thought that? But then clever moles are not loved moles, not by males at least, that she knew.

  “Never liked the way your sister treated you,” he said.

  “But you love her, Hamble.”

  “Do I? Do I?” He frowned, his paw still on hers while he thought. “I do, I suppose, but that’s because I can’t help myself. It’s different moles than me she wants …” He named two males who lived at the other end of Crowden, whom Lime seemed to think were more worthy of her. Privet listened patiently and sympathetically, nodding her head now and then but rarely commenting, and never once criticizing Lime.

  “I like your father Sward,” said Hamble suddenly, changing the subject. “He’s told me all about the Moors and said if he was younger he’d take me up there and show me the routes. You’re lucky having a father like him. I envied you that.”

  “But I envied you your parents. I used to wish I could wake up and find Tarn was my father, and Fey my mother, and you …”

  “Me?” grinned Hamble.

  “Well, not my brother,” said Privet coyly. She marvelled at how easy it was to talk like this. “And my mother?” she said. “What did you think of her?”

  He shrugged. “Shire’s Shire, everymole knows that. At least she taught you scribing and that’s a gift to have. You could travel away from here with that. They say there’s other libraries all over moledom.”

  They wouldn’t want a scribe from Bleaklow, or be interested in Whernish, I would think,” she said. She meant it, and looked down modestly at her talons. “I would like to go and see some of the places I’ve heard about but I suppose I never will.”

  “You should!” he said. Her eyes had the far-away look of a mole who had courage only to dream of such things.

  “I’m needed here,” she said. “By my mother and others in the Library. There aren’t so many scribes in this new generation.”

  “What do you do in the Library? I’m not good at that sort of thing. I mean what are texts for?” He looked suddenly vulnerable, as if revealing an ignorance he would prefer nomole to know of, but it was something she had seen in other moles, and she understood.

  Then, slowly, she told him about texts and scribing and how a mole could get quite lost in it.

  “Like thoughts of love?”

  “Better than love,” she smiled, “and more dependable.”

  So they talked as the day went by, and discovered the surprise of mutual trust and dawning friendship. Both found solace in sharing their disappointments; Hamble for a mole who did not want him, and Privet for the love of a mole who was so far no more substantial than a dream, yet for whose presence she felt a growing ache and longing.

  The hours passed by unnoticed as they talked, until the shadows lengthened and Hamble declared with a start that he had to go to a meeting summoned by the elders about renewed threats from the Saddleworth moles; Privet had work to finish in the Library before dark. They went their different ways feeling much the better for having talked, and each looked forward to the next time, for there seemed so much to share.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A pup’s life begins in darkness at his mother’s teat, and only after moleweeks have gone by does he emerge into light and out into the safe confines of a nesting chamber.

  Then he begins to understand that there are pups other than him, and he becomes aware of an entrance to a tunnel, dark and dangerous, of which he is afraid. The moleweeks turn into months, strength comes to his paws, he dares to venture down the tunnel, and the darkness and danger recede to the tunnels and surface beyond.

  The pup grows and explores the further tunnels and the surface too, and bit by hard-won bit the darkness and the danger recede still more, and become less palpable. Yet the fear remains, deep, lurking, a profound constraint.

  The pup matures, learns to defend himself, comes to realize that the darkness and the dangers, though not imaginary, are controllable. According to his strength and intelligence, and his natural boldness or timidity he ventures far, or only near. He turns in sleep, he learns of other moles, he sees suffering and joy, and new darkness comes, new dangers appear, of mind and spirit now, much less of place. He discovers that others, weaker than him in body, are stronger now in spirit and begin to catch him up in life’s endless journey.

  Thus, Hamble, elder son of Tarn, learning of the sufferings of love, grasping something of the joys of friendship, feeling his strengths, yet discovering his weakness. And finding strength and support from Privet, a mole who had only ever seemed weak to him.

  Thus Privet: full of fears and self-doubts, born of a mother who made her feel worthless, living with a low snout and no thoughts of venturing far at all until she made a friend of Hamble one September, and began to dare look up.

  Yet both were still parochial, both reared to a view that Crowden was the only place there was, the safest place, the best. The place they owed their loyalty to, the place they might, as others did, complain of and yet would never leave. Even warrior moles like Hamble
were discouraged from crossing the boundaries of the system until they had lived a full cycle of seasons and were adult. By then their first mating was of greater allure than exploration of a dangerous unknown world, and in this way Crowden secured for itself its succession before its brighter and more enterprising males set forth from their home system to explore, as explore they must.

  Not that many went far — just far enough indeed to realize that the Moors were uninviting, the grikes unpleasant, and the only direction worth going in was west. Except that Crowden needed them, and other systems did not. Most came back soon enough, sadder and wiser for their discoveries, and settled to the life they had been reared to, which was to defend Crowden against the Moorish grikes, the infidels.

  As for Crowden’s females, most were got with pup that first adult spring and so did not have any desire to journey away at all. In fact, Crowden was the place to which moles came to seek sanctuary and, all in all, there could hardly be a better place for a mole to be born, reared, live and to die than there.

  Such was the narrow view shared by Privet and Hamble that September when she turned Hamble into a friend, and by October, when they had learnt to trust each other and share what secrets they had, neither had changed it much, though Hamble was beginning to feel a restlessness. Privet meanwhile was all dreams, all wishes, all half-formed desires, all timidity — and restlessness as well. But hers was of a kind different to Hamble’s — it was the aching need of a mole who had no mother-love, nor real father’s care, who longed to be safe and valued, but most of all to be needed, and was beginning to realize that she would never find such satisfactions in her home system.

  “I need you!” declared Hamble one day when she admitted these things to him.

  She smiled her wan smile, and touched him in friendliness, and looked past him to the Moors.

  “The trouble is you’re like a brother, Hamble, and that’s not what I meant.”

  “I know,” he said, “because sometimes I feel the same.”

  “Will we ever find moles to love, whatever love really is?” she asked.

  “We better!” declared Hamble stoutly.

  “We might,” replied Privet doubtfully.

  In mid-October the closed world of Privet and Hamble and many of their peers was opened up for ever by the renewal of interference from Ratcher’s grikes on Saddleworth. There had already been some slight disturbances in September — Crowden moles venturing beyond the system’s edge had been half-heartedly attacked, and grikes had been seen lurking at dusk across the waters of the Crowden Tarn at the system’s north-eastern boundary. A grike’s body was found, wasted and diseased near one of the defences.

  “Left there to intimidate us!” declared the older males. “Let the rooks take it!” Young males like Hamble had watched silently as all day rooks wheeled and dived upon the corpse. There was growing up in that.

  But not since then had there been anything serious, for Ratcher and his moles had gone quiet, a quiet that had seemed ominous until Crowden heard rumours that the plague of murrain had come to north Saddleworth the previous spring and blighted the mating period, forcing Ratcher to retreat to his home ground and stay there.

  Since spring nothing more had been heard of the grikes until the September incidents, when moles like Hamble had found their duties as watchers and delvers along the boundaries of the system had been increased. Now the grikes were active once more and Crowden was confronted with a crisis from the Moors that would change all their lives.

  Grey weather had come, and the first cold damp winds of winter which affect the Moors sooner than the lowlands to the east and west, and a molemonth or two before more southern parts. As one of the strongest and most dependable of his generation, Hamble had been given the task of night-watching over on the north-western defences.

  One night he saw ominous shifting shadows, moles beyond the perimeter, talons glinting in the stars, eyes staring from afar. Then calls, strange and haunting and carried on the wind. Hamble reported it, and others came and watched. Nomole appeared from out of the dark, but shadows were seen, now here, now there, and an alert was sent out and moles were deployed to the defences. As yet it was nothing too unusual, and the system went through these precautions smoothly, with most moles asleep and not even knowing anything might be apaw.

  “No point in going forth after the bastards,” said the commander of the night, “we’ll wait. If they attack, the defences will slow them down and we all know what to do. You, Hamble, and those with you now stay alert.”

  All night Hamble watched on, but heard only those plaintive calls and saw only grey shadows like frightened moles too timid to approach, not grike warriors at all. Vagrants wanting to get in perhaps, or …

  Then screams out of the darkness, and the sound of moles chased, and then bigger, darker shadows and gruff voices. Screams then, and lingering cries, the sound of moles being killed.

  “They might be some of our own returning,” said Hamble urgently, “or moles seeking asylum, caught by grikes. Couldn’t we go to them?”

  “Ours would not come that way, nor be afraid to enter in. If it’s bloody asylum seekers they can wait until the light of day when ’tis safe for us to go to them. Most likely ’tis grikes’ trouble with their own. Leave them to it!”

  Dawn, which came with the slow rise of light into the wintry sky, was accompanied by the moans and weak cries of a single mole out beyond the system’s edge.

  “Can’t we go to him?” said Hamble, unable to bear the sound.

  “Listen to that sound, youngster, and get used to it. Listen and be strong. That might be you one day if you’re ever weak. Aye, it’s a mole dying, a grike mole no doubt caught trying to get here.”

  “But —”

  “We’ll have a look when the light’s better, and when we’ve made sure there are no grikes about. They have been known to maim one of their own to decoy us out. Or the mole may be putting on his agony. Eh?”

  It could be so, thought Hamble, if the moans had not been so deep, and the sense of despair spreading across the Moors not so strong with the risen dawn. In the time of waiting he went to his burrow and slept, for his watch was done, and when he woke Privet was nearby, waiting for him to tell her what had happened in the night, news of which had travelled quickly round the system.

  He told her, and together they went to the East End, to find that a reconnaissance had been made and moles were just going out to investigate more thoroughly the dead bodies which had been seen.

  “You stay here,” the commander said grimly to Privet, “this isn’t for the likes of librarians. But you, Hamble, follow me. Since you saw the beginning of it, you may as well see the end.”

  But some small spirit of rebellion came to Privet then, and despite Hamble’s protestations, she followed him through the twists and turns of the defences, down one level and then up two and finally out on to the wild Moor beyond. It was the first time she had ever in her life been beyond the system’s bounds, and as she emerged into the grey light of early morning and felt the cold winds across her snout, she felt fear and a surge of freedom all at once.

  “Well, if you must come, keep close by me, Privet,” said Hamble protectively, going on. And so she tried, nervous of doing anything else. Slowly they went among the hags, turning here and there, the watchers calling to each other to keep in touch.

  “Over here, mole! Here!”

  “Aye!” cried out Hamble, “I’m to your left.”

  Then, “Here! A body here!” A call from a mole to the right.

  Privet’s heart seemed to stop inside. Death was not a thing she yet knew.

  “Here, Hamble, look at this!” The voice was horror-struck.

  Privet followed behind Hamble, they turned a corner, saw the mole who had shouted, and there, her view half obscured by Hamble in front of her, Privet caught a glimpse of death. She saw the bloodied open eye, the paws arced back defensively, the brutally-taloned stomach wounds; and the flies already at the
flesh.

  “Go back, Privet, go back!” said Hamble urgently. “Go back, this is not for you!” She saw his eyes were shocked, and without argument she turned back the way she had come. Or thought she had come. For one hag rises brown and dank much like another, a black puddle has many replicas; the Moors delude a mole.

  “Go back!” Hamble had ordered her, but it was to the left she veered, uncertain, running to get away from death. She paused, decided on a different way, turned round another hag and into worse than death.

  Three moles lay slaughtered, their blood thick at a puddle’s edge. One’s head was half submerged; another smaller mole, a youngster, was curled up as if asleep. The blue-white sheening bones of his spine showed bright through his flesh and fur where grikes had broken him. The third was a little beyond these two and Privet would have turned and run away had not the slight movement of that mole’s front paw stopped her.

  She stared, her horror mounting, and saw the mole was still alive. Privet stanced quite still, her heart like thunder in her breast. The mole moved the other paw and tried to turn. A female, and young too. But her fur seemed old, all patched and thin, and from her haunch, blood had flowed and dried and was thick down to her paw.

  Her head shook with effort or with pain, and on the hag above short grass trembled in a breeze that wafted over it. A sound, the moan of pain, and fear was all gone from Privet, and all sense of anything but the need to help the mole who tried so desperately to crawl away.

  “Mole,” whispered Privet, moving at last, past the two bodies to the injured mole’s flank. “Mole …”

  For a moment more the mole tried pathetically to flee, but her frantic front paws soon stilled. She turned her head and stared into Privet’s eyes. Her face was caked with the sweat and blood of death, and vomit was on the hag’s edge nearby. There was a stench.

  Yet though Privet saw and scented all of it, all she knew was that mole’s suffering. The mole opened her mouth and Privet reached a paw to hers.