Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  He turned back to the group, went to an old female there, and said in a loud voice that suggested she was somewhat hard of hearing, “Myrtle, it’s Sward the Scholar. Aye, Sward! And he’s not come to harm us, not him. Why, you remember he came before?”

  Remember? The two old moles forgot everything in remembering their dim and distant former meeting — the rain, the Moors, their companions, the gathering night. Never would Privet have believed her father could grow young again, but young he suddenly became. As she watched him talk to the old grike, and heard his laughter, and saw the interest and sympathy he showed for the sorry story they soon told him, she felt again that sense she had had earlier that for the first time she was understanding what Sward had once been.

  Then, when she was brought forward at last and introduced to this ‘old friend’ as ‘my daughter Privet’ she felt proud of that introduction. Proud too of the affectionate way Sward introduced Hamble, and humbled by the deep respect Sward showed these poor, half-starved grikes, stranded by life and circumstance in this forgotten and desolate part of moledom.

  The old grike’s name was Turrell, and if first impressions last longest, and the Stone’s Light shines on all moles, then to Privet and Hamble these were worthy representatives indeed of the grikes.

  What little food they had they offered to share with a mole and his kin (for they included Hamble in Sward’s family) for memory’s sake, and such dank and cramped quarters as they had they made over to their visitors, with gruff apologies and humble pleas that times were hard, worms scarce, and their strength low.

  “But it’ll get better, Sward, it will,” said Turrell hopefully, looking round with concern at the four young moles with him. They were not his kin, but the surviving young from two families the rest of whom had died of plague in the bitter molemonths just past.

  “That, and the Ratcher clan’s predations on us — they took the only young female who had her full health back to Charnel Clough — have brought us close to ruin and extinction in these parts,” Turrell went on. “You go higher up the Withens and you’ll see moles worse off than us.”

  Once they were rested, and before night came, Hamble and Privet set off back downstream to a wormful spot they had noticed and soon brought back some food for the others. Three trips they made, while Sward helped Turrell delve a drier chamber, and the youngsters, too shy to speak, visibly perked up.

  The rain got heavier and all the moles settled down for a night of talking and exchange, in which Turrell and Myrtle told of the troubled years they had had. When the grikes heard that the trio had come direct from Crowden they were interested indeed, and grew positively voluble when they discovered that it was for Rooster they had come.

  “You know of him then?” asked Privet.

  “Know of him lass?” said Turrell in his rough, accented voice. “You’ll not find a mole on the Moors who doesn’t these days. Know him and admire him, for so far at least he’s got the better of Red Ratcher, and he’s the first mole in generations who’s brought hope to this forsaken place. There have been others no doubt, but they’ve gone or have died and we’ve been put back to what we’ve always been. But Rooster, by these old talons of mine, he’s a mole like nomole I’ve ever heard of before.”

  “Do you know where we’ll find him?” asked Hamble.

  “I’ve an idea where he lives, but you’ll not find him easily, that’s for sure. If you could, a stranger to these parts, then Ratcher’s mob could too. Mind, you’ve rascally old Sward here and he’s a legend too in his own way.”

  “Tell us what you know of this Rooster then,” suggested Sward, shoving the fattest worm he could see towards Turrell, adding as he did so, “though I should warn you that my daughter Privet is a scribe and scholar like me and will scribe down all you say one of these days!”

  Turrell laughed and looked round at his mate, and the youngsters.

  “It does my heart good to see moles gathered like this again and yarning. Aye, it does me good!” He munched the worm for a while, settled close to the scraggy form of Myrtle, and finally said, “So, it’s Rooster you want to know about. Well, I’ll, tell you what I’ve heard — it’s a tale will do anymole good on a night like this! But I’d best begin with Red Ratcher, for he’s the start of it and will be the ending of it one way or t’other.”

  “Red” Ratcher was so called from the fact that when the sun struck his coarse fur it took on an unsavoury russet or reddish tinge, particularly about his short thick neck and massive shoulders, an effect increased by the untoward redness of his eyes.

  He and his clan had as their base the obscure but wormful valley called Charnel Clough, discovered and used as a hiding-place by their ancestors in the decades after Whern’s fall to the Stone. This narrow and forbidding gorge, some three days’ journey north-east of Crowden Vale, could only be reached by a narrow valley between cruel juts and overhangs of rock which seemed always to threaten anymole who hurried by underneath. A place impregnable and easily over-watched by guards, though few would be so foolhardy as to risk venturing there. A peat-stained torrent of a river, the Reap, plunged down a succession of straits and waterfalls through the Clough, from whose obscure and dangerous depths spray blew up dank and cold and assaulted a mole whichever way he turned.

  This perpetual wet combined with a trick of geology to produce a lush vegetation of ferns and other shade-loving plants, as well as many places of worm-rich soil. The only other creatures which inhabited the place were rabbits in the grassy lower slopes, and the ravens that fed on them from the cliffs above.

  The system itself was in one of the higher, more secret parts of the Clough, where after steep falls down from the Moors it opened out into a strange flat area hemmed in by cliffs. At its upper end the Reap stream tumbled down until it entered into a narrow cleft that dissected the plateau in which the system was delved.

  The northern of the two resulting halves was called the Charnel, the southern was the Reapside, and they were connected only by a treacherous arch of rock, the Span, which was perpetually wet and slippery and at whose steep sides, in clefts, wet ferns and mosses hung. Since the way out of the system and down the Clough was on the Reapside, anymole that had crossed the Span into the Charnel must come back that way, unless he cared to risk climbing the heights of the Creeds, the raven-infested cliffs, to the Moors above. Some had tried; none succeeded, few survived.

  Through the years the Ratcher clan had grown infertile and in-bred, so that it had an unusually high number of deformed and idiot moles, and a line of females who had goitres disfiguring their necks, and the short and running snortle snout to which such moles are prone.

  These unfortunates were banished to the Charnel side of the system to join the small and desolate community of moles already there — all disfigured, mostly diseased — who were said to be the original occupants of Charnel Clough. These miserable moles kept themselves to themselves — but for the occasional sacrifice of their offspring into the Reap — and the Ratcher moles stayed well clear of them, fearful of the diseases they suffered, and the vile and ugly primitiveness of their lives in so enshadowed a place.

  Meanwhile, from the grim facts of Ratcher interbreeding and consequent sterility had come an awareness of the need for fresh blood from moles outside. It was the habit of the fitter males to raid neighbouring systems in late summer and early spring and find moles for breeding purposes.

  Red Ratcher was pure grike, and won his place as head of the clan by fighting his father to the death, and unceremoniously hurling his two brothers down into the foaming Reap. He was formidable, though no more so than any petty tyrant who rules a system and a region for a time before his own advancing age and the youth of others displaces him. He had no subtlety of intellect and his intelligence was of the crude and cunning kind that knows most moles are biddable under intimidation and fear.

  So Red Ratcher — or Ratcher as he became universally known — gained the ascendancy, though still unknown to anymole outside tha
t dreadful area. The only real insight he ever had came during his first raid to get a mate, when his group were stranded for some weeks to the south of Saddleworth on Bleaklow Moor, during which time they made merry with the few poor local moles they found, and much enjoyed themselves.

  From this brief encounter with the world outside it occurred to Red Ratcher that the system might expand a little and put out some of its members to breed in other places, and so spread the Ratcher blood about.

  This he did, though not with any real strategic forethought. But since this small expansion coincided with Ashop’s demise and nomole held sway across the Moors, Ratcher’s moles found it easy to establish themselves here and there. From small beginnings do larger evils grow.

  At that same time a grim doubt came to Red Ratcher about his own possible sterility. It was not easy to tell for certain since it was the clan’s brutish way to share their females out like food. The head or master at the time had first choice, but when he had had his way with those females he desired he passed them on and others had them too, according to rank and strength. In that way the true father was never known for certain. However, communities have a snout for such things and the word got out two springs running that not a single pup born was of Ratcher’s spawn — a possibility he liked not one little bit. It dinted his pride. It made him doubt himself. It made for insubordinate laughter. It irked him sorely.

  Therefore he decided to take a female all his own when next he raided forth, and since the eastern population of moles was thin, and Crowden was still too strong a system to risk attacking, it was to the north he went, to a quiet Stone-fearing vale called Chieveley Dale. Little more is known of that raid but that Red Ratcher and his mob found a small and peaceable community of moles, half-grikes, doing their best to keep a low snout and worship the Stone and so escape the thralldom of their past. Ratcher killed them all, except for a solitary female, dark, molish, civilized, and one he intended to call his own.

  Her name was Samphire, and she was a mole of exceptional grace and beauty, who was of the Stone and in intelligence and common sense far more than Ratcher’s equal. But without friends or kin she had no chance, and it is easy to imagine her terror after her abduction by such moles, as the sheer cliffs of the Charnel Clough closed in on her and she began to realize escape would be nigh impossible. More than that, that her role was consort to the infamous and loathsome Ratcher, whose rude attentions spring and autumn would surely make the prospect of never escaping from the Charnel Clough more like a living death.

  Added to this was an experience she had soon after she arrived on the Reapside, so horrible, so searing that she shivered at the thought of it for days after. Even had she been able to make sense of it — which later she did — it was not something a mole easily forgets.

  It was this: on a certain day, known to the Reapside moles, they gathered along the Reap in festive mood and chattering and pointing in their rough brutish way, peering through the spray and mist to the other side until, as if on cue, the deformed moles of the Charnel appeared, pushing, carrying, driving some of their young before them to the wet and slippery edge of the Reap itself.

  The adults were bad enough, though the spray made it hard to make out the extent of their deformities. But Samphire saw enough to know that these were almost mutant moles, with split paws, and spaddled snouts, all ulcerous and huge, and swollen eyes that stared as if in fear. Whilst many had goitres at their necks, all round and shining and furless, big as their heads, most horrible.

  Their pups were worst. Did one have two living heads?

  Samphire thought it was so. Was one without limbs at all, yet alert of eye? It seemed to be. Were several huge of limb, bodies without brains? And some thin and furless and ulcerated? They were.

  Then, to Samphire’s undying horror, these pups were one by one pushed into the treacherous Reap, with gesticulations of joy, and strange savage shouts whose muted sound was echoed by the Ratcher moles, who, as the helpless pups fell and bobbed and drowned, laughed at their plight, wagered on how long they would float, and jeered at the monstrous parents of these doomed young.

  All this Red Ratcher much enjoyed, and he grew angry with Samphire when she tried to turn away and angrier still when she dared cry. Ratcher moles should not show such weakness; Ratcher moles had little enough to entertain them and this routine ritual (for so it was) should not be spoilt by the bleating of a consort.

  Somehow Samphire survived these ordeals and got with pup, and as her pregnancy advanced she began to come to terms with the life she must lead and decided on the secret strategy she must adopt. It was based on the astonishing discovery that Ratcher ‘loved’ her, if love it be that is ever-possessive, and seeks to hold for ever the body and the spirit of a mole to ones use.

  This hold on him grew stronger when she bore him a five-pup litter, not one deformed, all large, all strong, thus proving to all the clan that he was a fertile mole. What pride did he feel then! What love for her! What wish of hers would he tumble over himself to satisfy — any but two: her desire to worship the Stone out loud in prayer and ritual as she had been taught, and her wish to leave him and his wretched system for ever and forthwith. Ah, no, those two he could not grant.

  Therefore, to punish him (though it must have hurt her as much) she suckled his young without love, and with coldness watched them grow; with indifference she let them roam from the home burrow, and when two tumbled over the void and into the stream, then let Ratcher grieve for both of them; and if another was blinded in a fight, let Ratcher decide how best to put him out of his misery, for she would not, and did not care.

  She could not, for she grieved still for the kin she had lost so violently in Chieveley Dale to the mole who now held her as captive in body as she increasingly held him in spirit. But she was clever enough not to be too cold and so, at least, Ratcher permitted her to stay on the sunnier Reapside and abide with him.

  A cycle of seasons turned and she must let him come to her again and make love, so that for the second time she was with pup. Again a five-strong litter, again all healthy, again all fit for a father’s pride. Again and again and again she reared them lovelessly, biding her time until the day might come when the never-mentioned Stone, to whom she whispered her secret prayers of hope, would send her a sign of what to do. The Stone sent her no sign, but subtly it put into her mind this thought: that the third litter she had by Ratcher she would at least try to love. She might have lost her liberty, but could she not inculcate into her future pups thoughts and ambitions that might undermine their father? Aye, she surely could, and surely would try.

  It was in the ensuing moleyears of that following summer that Red Ratcher began to expand his realm, and it was Samphire’s sons who were sent forth to colonize Saddleworth and Bleaklow Moor. These were Ratcher’s mob and they took time to learn their task for they were full of fear and superstition, thinking the Weign Stones a most dangerous place, and Crowden much stronger than it was. Had they but known the truth, how different might moledom’s history be!

  The moleyears of winter wore on and internecine feuds stopped Ratcher’s mob expanding more. Meanwhile, Samphire’s third spring in Charnel Clough began and this time she allowed Red Ratcher to her burrow with a certain joy, thinking she would make a brood to destroy the clan with-out the rapacious Ratcher ever knowing what she intended. There was a certain cruel ecstasy in feeling him touch as gently as he could the body he now worshipped, aged a little, lined as well, but more beautiful and holy to him than it had ever been and him not knowing what the mind that lived in that body thought.

  “Forgive me, Stone,” she whispered when he had done, “forgive me for such hateful thoughts, but without your guidance I can see no other way to fulfill my purpose here.”

  In truth, with that third mating Samphire first felt the fullness of the love Ratcher had for her, and in that she felt a dreadful pity for all he was, and for the confusion such lost moles suffer in their lives.

  “Why ma
ke me pity him, Stone? Why do you make it so hard for me?”

  The Reap’s grim roar was the only reply she heard.

  But her pregnancy was not good. Sickness came, and fevers, and loss of blood, and her worry for her pups grew even worse when over on the Charnel side others made pregnant that same spring began to abort, or worse, give birth to premature deformities that lived until they had to be put down.

  “It is the plague murrain!” moles cried.

  Murrain had come upon the Ratcher clan and history would show that theirs was the first area it reached after beginning a cycle of seasons before in Whern.

  Yet Samphire’s hopes rose as the weeks progressed and she did not abort, while some others gave birth to healthy litters. Fear of the murrain declined, Charnel was safe, all was well, forget what happened earlier.

  But near the end, Samphire knew in her heart that all was not well and when her litter came, though it was five-strong once more, every one was deformed. The first was pawless. The second without snout or eyes. The third had an open back like one great wound. The fourth was shrivelled-up and old. The fifth was dark, ugly, odd of face, deformed of paw, and still, quite still except for the shallowest breathing she had ever known. He could not last the day.

  “All must die, Samphire,” said Red Ratcher, peering at these deformities. “You know it must be so.” He spoke gently, as even such a mole will do when he has found it in his rough, closed heart to love.

  She stared at him, weak with the pupping she had made, but knowing what he said seemed true. And yet, as she stared down at the pathetic things, she still felt that love for them she had from the very first, and which she had never felt for those perfect ones she had borne before.

  “My dear,” she said …

  “It must be so.”

  “Great Ratcher,” she said, determined not to give up while there was still life within her pups, “grant me only this. Give me one day and night with them, that I may give them all my love before you take them out to die. Grant me only that as a reward for all I have given you, and all the good pups I have made.”