Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  Shire’s gaunt face grew gaunter by the hour, and since she had not eaten for days it seemed that her body withered and grew thin before their eyes. As for her eyes and face, they expressed more and more that worry and fear they had held all her life, as if whatever it was she had feared had come now to visit her.

  Yet suddenly all changed and her face relaxed, and her eyes gained a lightness, even a joy, Privet could never have guessed could be there.

  “Are you taking me back to the Moors?” she said, her voice soft and trusting like a pup’s. The question was asked of Privet, to whom throughout her illness as throughout her life she had always been unpleasant, showing not the slightest gratitude for anything she had done.

  But now all was changed. She reached out for Privet’s paw for the first time Privet could remember, and when she found it her touch, so unfamiliar to her daughter, was as light as the look in her eyes.

  “Are you?” she said.

  Privet hesitated, looked at Sward who nodded, and she said, “Yes …”

  Shire spoke in whispers, of places, it seemed, she remembered as a pup; some of them she liked and others she feared, but in all of them she felt safe in the company of the mole to whom she thought she spoke.

  “It’s the Eldrene Wort,” whispered Sward, during a time when Shire slept fretfully, “she thinks you’re Wort. So speak to her as if you are. She cannot have long now and it cannot hurt. If you are willing, that is … Stone knows she has done little enough for thee.”

  A look of resignation came over Privet’s face and she said, “I’ll try, but I don’t know how Wort spoke, or what of. I never knew her, Father.”

  “Didn’t you?” he said vaguely.

  Shire stirred and smiled and closed her eyes again, her paw in Privet’s.

  “You didn’t either,” said Privet.

  “Oh, but I did in a way,” he said suddenly, “yes, I did. I …’ and he grinned and said, “I won’t be long. I have something for you now. Yes, I have. For you, now, this is the right time. It has long troubled me.”

  He left her and seemed gone for hours, so long indeed that when Shire next woke, her mind wandering across the Moors, crying sometimes for some long-forgotten hurt, giggling too, Privet felt she might slip away from her at any moment. But then, as well, when Shire asked her some puppish question Privet felt curiously like a mother, like Wort herself might have felt at such a moment perhaps.

  Privet felt the cycle of life turning, and the growing up that had been upon her since the autumn came seemed now near its end. She felt guilty to be at once so involved with her mother’s sickness and yet so removed from it. When Shire slipped away into sleep again, she thought calmly to herself that with her mother’s death her life could then begin.

  Sward returned, bringing with him a text which she saw was scribed in his own untidy paw.

  “For you, mole,” he said, giving it her quickly as if that were the only way he could part with it.

  “For you.” She was conscious of him watching her as she took her paw gently from her mother’s so she could look at the text.

  “I’m afraid,” said Shire, suddenly starting out of sleep again, and in acute distress at some imagined danger. “I’m scared.”

  “It’s all right,” said Privet instinctively like a mother, “I’m here and I won’t go away.”

  “You will,” said Shire. Then opening her eyes she stared at Privet almost wildly and trying to rise shouted out, “You are!”

  She fell back immediately and closed her eyes, her rapid breathing slowing towards sleep once more.

  Privet opened the text at last and ran her paws over its first words; “‘I have found the sanctuary of the Stones again and I am thinking what it is I must say to you. You whose name I do not know, you whose life was all my purpose, you for whom my little love was meant …’ What text is this, Father?” she said, interrupting herself and flicking expertly through its remaining folios for some general clues to what it was about.

  “Why have you brought this here to me now, when —” But she stopped, for she had turned to the last folio and seen that he had written there, “ALL I REMEMBER OF WORT’S TESTIMONY”. Privet stared at it, and then at Sward, in silence.

  “What is this?” she whispered in an awed voice.

  “It is that first part of Wort’s Testimony I discovered on Hilbert’s Top and which I kenned and later scribed down as best I could remember it. I believe, my dear, that it was addressed to some such single mole as thee, or …’ and here he looked at Shire, “perhaps Wort scribed it for Shire, the Shire she knew as a pup before she was forced to part with her, a pup that was lost, but to whom Wort speaks still and for ever more through those words she scribed.”

  As Privet stared down at the copied text once more, her right paw running steadily over the scribing, Shire opened her eyes again, and seemed to see and understand what it was she did, though not of course the nature of the text.

  “Mother,” she whispered like a pup, “what are you doing?”

  “I’m kenning a text,” replied Privet, “a very special text.”

  “Ken it to me. I want you to ken it to me. To me!”

  Her frail old paw reached out and took Privet’s and her look and voice were as near to being a pup’s as an adult’s can be.

  Privet did not look up, but instead nodded and smiled such as a mother might, and whispering at first and then with growing confidence, she said, “My dear, this text is for you, especially for you.”

  Then she began to speak out Wort’s words, scribed down by Sward. For a moment Shire’s eyes opened wide again, a look of pleasure came to her face, and her breathing calmed. Then Privet spoke on, folio after folio, and more and more she spoke the words with gentle confidence, and knew as she did that for a time at least she was becoming Wort, she was Wort, and she was as caring as Wort would have been with Shire, had circumstances allowed, or if by some miracle she were resurrected here and now at her dying daughter’s flank.

  While from the text, through the miracle of words scribed long since, Wort was present again, and poor Shire, abandoned as it had seemed, never discovering true comfort and security since, found at last a comfort in the words Privet spoke out, a comfort only a mother can give, to ease a troubled passage through the final sickness of murrain to the Silence of the Stone.

  While Privet herself found comfort too, in knowing that her grandmother had cared enough to scribe down testimony, and though it was only the first part that Sward had copied, never having kenned more, it was enough, for before its end Shire had slipped away, not to peace, but in peace, and with a smile and a touch that bespoke a faith that her mother truly loved her, and abandonment, and Sans, and all that later life of unhappiness, had never been.

  Something in Privet, too, was healed. There, in that death-burrow Privet herself was reborn, where, as night came, and darkness, Shire died as the text’s last words were spoken. One moment that grip on Privet’s left paw was living, the next she felt the life pause, turn, and leave for somewhere else. And two moles who had not known a mother’s love, knew at last a mother’s touch.

  A long time later, Sward came near. He touched Shire on the face. She who in life had looked so bitter and disagreeable, in death looked serene.

  “It was meant to be so, my dear. Now listen to what I say. You must leave this place. I mean not this burrow but this system. Remember what Tarn said about Duncton Wood and Beechenhill. Those are the kind of places you must try to go to. Saddleworth, Bleaklow, Crowden, they’re not for you, my love, and were never meant to be so. Take this fragment of a text, for perhaps it will give you credence in one of the great libraries of moledom. It will teach moles to know they can be forgiven, as it taught your mother she was loved. The two are the same you see, forgiveness and love. Just the same. You must leave before the murrain takes you, and before the grikes return. Take Hamble with you, for you were meant to be together …”

  Privet shook her head. “He’s like a brother
to me, nothing more.”

  “Well then, as a brother he’ll protect you.”

  “And you, Father? What of you, and of the Library? What protection for it will there be if the grikes come as you say they will? Our system is weaker than it was; Hamble is one of the few strong males left and is needed here, as I am.”

  Sward shook his head, unable to argue but sure that he was right. “You must leave, you will leave, for I sense that in you is a destiny which is for all of us. Your grandmother knew it, you see. I have known it since the night you were conceived.”

  “Known?” repeated Privet, wide-eyed.

  Then there, as they paid their last respects to Shire through the night, he told her in his wild and rambly way all that he had not told and if, towards the end, Hamble quietly joined them he did not mind for surely Hamble was part of it as well. A pattern, a destiny, a purpose, a fulfilment.

  “You’re definitely part of it too, Hamble my lad,” he said with a smile, “and you’ll look after Privet, won’t you?”

  Hamble grinned.

  “I always have, Sward, it’s what my father told me to do, look after Privet.”

  “You never said that!” said Privet.

  Hamble shrugged.

  “It’s true all the same. He said it was a promise he had made, the same as he watched over Shire I was to watch over you. I thought I told you that.”

  “You males are always telling me things unexpectedly which you say you told me before! You …” But she was suddenly tired, so tired.

  “Come,” said Hamble, “come to my burrow now and I’ll see to your mother. Come, ’tis best.” So, taking up the text that now meant so much, Privet and Sward followed Hamble, to find another place to sleep.

  Even if Privet had felt inclined to take Sward’s advice to escape from the Dark Peak and seek out a system like Beechenhill to make a new life for herself, the circumstances were against it. With November the weather darkened and the clouds lowered down across the Moors, and the murrain hit hard and plunged the system in crisis and gloom and all healthy moles were needed as helpers or watchers over the Moors.

  The safety of the Library now began to seriously concern Privet, whose position had grown in importance since her mother’s illness and the death of other senior librarians. For all her youth, she seemed now to be the one to whom the others turned, or the only one not so shocked and beset by all that was happening as to be unable to think about risks now the system was so vulnerable. To her concern was added Sward’s, who since Shire’s death and his giving of Wort’s text to Privet, had aged and retreated into himself. The world of the Moors was lost to him now, and of the surface too, for again and again Privet found him sequestered in that cramped corner of the Library to which Shire had consigned his texts, and there he browsed and muttered and grinned to himself, or with furrowed brow warned of the dangers of the grikes, and spoke of how he had brought his texts here for safety, saying they were safe no longer unless something was done.

  “What can be done?” asked Privet, trying to reason with him.

  “Delve!” said Sward grandly. “Delve them so deep that if the grikes come the buggers’ll give up before they reach the texts.”

  “We have few moles strong enough to delve the defences into proper shape,” said Privet, “let alone begin such a work, and none skilled enough.”

  How desperate Sward looked then. “The grikes will destroy all they don’t understand, which means all the texts we have. Only the murrain has saved us from invasion so far but they got it before us and they’ll recover before us. Then’s the danger! Old Sward knows!”

  As if his words were heard somewhere, that very night there was an alarm from the watchers at the East End: ‘Grikes! Lurking grikes!”

  “Lurking fears more like,” said Hamble when he was summoned. By now he had gained rank and respect, as Privet had, and along with other warrior moles stared out into the gloom.

  “Listen to them calling us. ’Tis refugees from Ratcher once again, come for sanctuary. And this time …”

  But there was argument once more, and the night deepened, and the calls came weaker through the dark as Hamble sought to persuade his peers to do their duty by the Stone and give sanctuary when asked.

  “Anyway,” he said, “there may be moles amongst them who can help us, for the grikes may use the coming of the winter to seek better shelter than the Moors, as they did before.” He was referring to a grike campaign generations past, whose heroic memory was kept alive in records in the Library and retold on winter nights.

  There is a time when a warrior mole must stance up to his peers and fight for what he thinks is right, and with that dawn such a moment came to Hamble. He was a stolid mole, and strong, and though not the largest there, by the time dawn came he was easily the most angry. But Hamble was a mole who knew how to curb his talons and his tongue, and that the right stance and the right action at the right time were more powerful than a thousand words or talon thrusts.

  At dawn he suddenly rose powerfully from among the group of moles who had listened to the refugees and without a further word resolutely set off through the defences. None followed him, except with shouted warnings he ignored; all watched and waited. They saw him emerge on to the surface in the gloom and then, with a shout, call to the moles that he was of Crowden and coming among them.

  News of what he had done spread back into the system and moles came hurrying, Lime among the first, to support those who said that no strangers should be allowed in. But then, a little later, others came, including Privet, and all stared apprehensively into the Moors to see if Hamble would come back.

  Minutes seemed hours to Privet when nomole came, nor any sound was heard. But then, as dawn lightened across the sky, they saw Hamble lead back a group of bedraggled-looking moles from among the peat hags, before they dropped down into the defence tunnels out of sight.

  “He’s not bringing them into Crowden!” roared one of the more belligerent moles.

  But he was and he did. Boldly he led them through, and when he emerged on the safe side and his fellow-watchers ranged before him to prevent them coming on, Hamble thrust through the grike refugees and said fiercely, “If there’s any here who wishes to strike them they’ll have to strike me first. These moles are not diseased at all. These are survivors of the murrain, but they have been besieged and starved by Ratcher’s moles. Ten of them left Chieveley Dale to come here and five have got through and now come to ask for help, as those others did before them.

  “As the Stone is my witness, ours is not the right to deny, but the duty to give them help and sanctuary. The Stone will be good to those who protect its own.”

  But one of the belligerent ones came forward and with a great shout to the others to attack, talon-thrust at Hamble. But so quick was Hamble in moving to one side, and so resolute in talon-thrusting back, that the mole was off-balance and at Hamble’s mercy before any could blink; and not another mole there had time to do a thing.

  “You’d leave these moles to the mercy of Ratcher’s crowd?” said Hamble, staring them all out. “Look at them and see what you yourselves might be!”

  There were five refugees: two adult males, a female, and two frightened and shivering youngsters. All gaunt and thin, and with near-defeat about the way they stanced, as if they expected that life which had dealt with them so hard would not forgive them now. Clustered about Hamble as if he were the only thing between life and death, they stared pathetically at the Crowden moles.

  Then with a look that combined impatience with contempt Hamble signalled to the leading male among the refugees to go forward.

  “Hold your head high, mole, for what you’ve done was brave. There’s not a mole here will harm you now. May you and your friends and kin teach us all you know that we may the better resist Ratcher when he comes.”

  Then a light of hope and courage came to that mole’s eyes, and turning to one of the youngsters he put his paw on his shoulder encouragingly.

&nb
sp; “Come,” he said gently, in that deep and guttural voice of the Saddleworth moles, “we’re safe now, as Rooster said we would be. Come!”

  With nervous smiles and muttered thanks they advanced among the Crowden moles, none smiling back until Privet dared come forward and with a glance at Hamble said, “Follow me, there’s moles will take care of you and your young and find you a place to eat and rest. Come!”

  Many including Lime muttered and stared venomously at Privet and the strangers, but with Privet bold in front, and Hamble bold behind, none dared question it.

  When they had gone Hamble said quietly, “For Stone’s sake, moles, let this be an end to our rejection of moles who seek our help. Our strength now will be more in the care and mercy we show others than in what we give only to ourselves. Crowden must look beyond itself at last.”

  Hamble was never a mole for speeches, but such words as these he had heard his father say and they seemed to serve the purpose now.

  “Aye! The lad’s right! Moles like this could be our strength!” muttered the others amongst themselves. “These moles have shown courage coming here. Stone knows we would not show as much out upon the Moors, and this place must be as alien to them as the Moors would be to us!”

  It did not escape Privet’s notice that the name of Rooster had been invoked once more and, after all that had happened, how much more she wanted to learn about him! Once again she scribed down all that the strangers told her of him which only confirmed what she had heard before.

  “He is a mole of peace,” they said, “and refuses to fight or hurt another. He came to us from Hilbert’s Top where he has retreated since Samphire’s death. He told us not to hurt another mole, but to turn from Ratcher’s moles and flee and find a place where we could learn of the Stone in peace. He told us to come here, and warn you that the murrain has been and gone in Ratcher’s place. These mole-years of summer past Red Ratcher has travelled north and gathered a great army of grike moles. Come the spring they will descend on Crowden. We cannot stay here after that. This much he believes.”