Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  He stared at the wretched things and nodded his slow head.

  “At dawn I’ll come. Then I must take them from here. The system will expect it. There will be other broods. Remember, there will be more for you to love.”

  Did he understand then that these ones she loved more than the ones before? Perhaps.

  But what she knew he could not know was that there would be no more broods from her, never. The murrain had taken that ability away. She knew it to be so. These poor things, then, were the first and last she could ever call her own, they were the Stone’s gift to her made in love, and in them she must find love by giving it.

  “Teach me,” she whispered up in prayer when he was gone, “teach me to love them through this day and night with all my heart and body. Teach me what I must do.”

  There, to the thunder of the River Reap, in air all dank with its endless spray, with great Ratcher brooding out on the Span, the Stone found an answer to her prayer. Good Samphire rediscovered all the love she had lost, and much more as well. In those few hours that she had, she gave her love to her poor litter, each one encircled in her paws, each one that could suckled at her teats, each one living in the endless moment which is a pup’s consciousness. Each striving to live that soon must die.

  Except the fifth, which lay inert, silent, beyond even her dear love; yet breathing still and only just alive.

  What words of love she whispered to each one of them, what tears she shed, what agony she felt to feel them weaken with the chill advance of dawn, what stabbing pain of loss she began to feel when Ratcher’s shadow crossed her portal once again.

  “One here,” she said immediately, “has not yet known my love. This fifth and last has not stirred for me. Let him stay by me to the very end for perhaps even yet he will know a moment’s consciousness and sense how much he is loved by me.

  “But these others, all nameless, have known my love. Each one is weakening even as we speak, and suffering more, but each has acknowledged its mother’s touch. Take them now, my dear, and give them peace.”

  Then, gently for such a mole, Red Ratcher took each one out into the dawn, carrying it in his great maw before the gaze of other moles. Even as he trod out upon the treacherous Span to throw them off he felt them fade away and die. Not one but died before it was dropped down, and what-mole can say they had not had the happiest of lives, encircled by a mother’s love, carried by a father to their end? Returned to the Silence of the Stone before they were dropped into the oblivion of the Reap below. Who dares say that?

  But when Red Ratcher went down into Samphire’s tunnels for the fifth, she would not let him go.

  “I felt him begin to stir, my dear. I felt him begin to know my love. Let him be with me a little more for he may yet live and be your pride.”

  Red Ratcher stared at her whom he held more beautiful than any mole he ever knew, whose life he had stolen, whose family he had destroyed, then down at the inert pup.

  “He is deformed and must die even if he lives,” he said, “look at his paws! Look at his great strange head! We have made better pups than this before and will again. Let me take this one now.”

  She licked at the pup’s paws, which were large and strange; she nuzzled at his head, which was huge, swollen and wrinkled at once. Yet she felt love for him, and felt deep within his tiny body the first stirrings of real life.

  Watching, Ratcher said, “Tend him a few moments more before I take him then.”

  Desperately she licked her pup, and caressed him, and tried to whisper movement into him enough that Ratcher might relent. But he seemed barely alive at all.

  “I must take him now,” said Ratcher.

  “Yes,” said Samphire blankly, giving up, “yes, take him and may the Stone take him for ever to its care.”

  “The Stone?” said Ratcher uneasily.

  “The Stone.”

  It is not of this system,” growled Ratcher, suddenly angry.

  “It is of everything,” Samphire dared to reply.

  His love was great, but mention of the Stone was too much. Frowning and without another word, Ratcher took up the pup and went out with it to the Span, while Samphire, her moment of defiance gone, lay thinking that with the last pup’s death her life would end. She began to weep for the nameless pup and all the love she had known and lost that day and night just past. As ever, the thunder of the River Reap was sole companion to her despair.

  Meanwhile, as Ratcher crossed the Reapside and set paw upon the Span once more, moles watched him, and stared without compassion at the still form of the ugly pup dangling from his mouth. The Reap was heavy with recent rain, and spray drifted all about. Before and behind the cliffs loomed dark, and juts of rock were stark against the sky.

  As Ratcher went to drop the pup into the void a raven mother’s desperate cry came forth across the Charnel as one of its fledgling young pushed off too soon from its ledge and the downdraughts carried it helpless, straight into the depths below the Span. Several ravens flew up, the mother called out again, but none could help the hapless bird, as spumes of dark-stained spray came up like talons to engulf its feeble wings.

  Ratcher, pup in mouth, stanced still, watching the bird’s last flight, when suddenly a shaft of light which seemed almost too bright for sun came from between the grey, breaking clouds and lit the depths where the bird, its wings still beating frantically, tried to rise. Light shining on the wet gorge sides, surging light in all the spray, greens, blues, yellows, shining greys and blacks, all alive in the gorge right then, as if declaring that life was.

  The fledgling paused in flight, turned on its back as it had seen its parents do, then righting itself, stooped straight towards the raging water just below, opened its wings as wide as it could and with a mighty, flapping, desperate pull, succeeded in halting its fall just above the water’s surface. Then heaving, struggling, fighting, it rose through the spray that tried to drag it down, up and up to the level of the ground once more, and then beyond and up into the fullness of the light, up to safety once again.

  Even as its frantic mother stooped through the air to guide it back to the ledge the watching Ratcher felt the pup he held suddenly stir with life, in the light that seemed brighter than the sun, stir strong, and then he heard it bleat and mew and bleat again.

  Awed by this sudden surge of life Ratcher pulled back from the void and placed the pup down on the slippery Span. In some alarm he stared at it, thinking he must hurl it from him now to death but knowing even as he thought it he could not. And all he could think of was Samphire’s mention of the Stone, the very thought of whose name froze his mind. Caught between desire and incapacity he raised his head and roared out his frustrated rage. The roar seemed only to stir the pup still more, for it rolled on to its paws, stanced up shakily, and blindly crawled forward all unknowing towards the void once more. Its head dropped, the rocky surface gave no grip, its weak paws lost their hold and it began to slide down towards its death.

  Ratcher rushed forward, stooped, and snatched it up again. The watching moles blinked their puzzlement and displeasure at this first show of weakness they had ever seen in their leader. Yet caring not a mite for that but only for the fear and awe he felt, and the sense that the dreaded Stone had sent its Light into this place, Red Ratcher turned back the way he had come, back to where Samphire lay defeated in her birthing nest. From the portal he stared at her, the struggling pup hanging from his mouth.

  She heard him come, but dared not look up for grief, and for fear of what he would do to her because of her earlier mention of the Stone. But then his shadow fell across her face and she scented mole apart from him. Soft scent, sweet scent, fresh as grass in spring. A pup’s scent. Not believing what she knew, she felt a surge of love and joy as she realized it was her own pup’s scent, the last one of all, alive; and then she heard it mewing for her love.

  She turned, looked up, and instinctively reached out her paws to take back what she had trusted to the Stone and what the Stone had
given back to her. She began to cry.

  “Why?” she sobbed in relief and gratitude. “Why?”

  “He stirred,” said Ratcher, helplessly, frowning in puzzlement at himself as he stared down at the scrabbling pup.

  Samphire rose and embraced the rough cruel mole who had robbed her of all joys of life and love and yet, now, granted her this charge. She felt that finally the Stone had heard her cry and answered it.

  “He has no name,” she whispered as she cuddled the pup and Ratcher pulled away from her as if he might be made contaminate. She stanced down again, encircling her last and only pup within her paws, and brought her teats where he could more easily reach them. Already he was seeking one of them out with his strange grotesque head and misshapen paws; oh no, to her his beautiful head, his beautiful paws.

  “My love, my beauty, my only one,” sighed Samphire.

  Perhaps remembering then the roosting ravens that had watched that fledgling fall into the Reap and then emerge again, Ratcher said, “Let him be named Rooster, and whatever he may be he shall not for now be harmed by others here. He is my son.”

  “Ratcher …’ she began, wanting to share her joy with him, to show him what pleasures a pup can give.

  “No,” said Ratcher retreating, his eyes hard, “it is enough I brought him back to you, mole. Be glad of that. No more weakness can I show.”

  “It is not weakness,” she said.

  “It is so!” said Ratcher turning to leave. “It is more than I should have done. But take him this day and raise him on the Charnel side, for you and yours are tainted by something worse than plague now — you are infected by the Stone.”

  “He’ll not be harmed then?” said Samphire, sensing a retreat in Ratcher’s heart and already fighting for her pup’s future.

  “Not by me, that much I promise. But from his siblings I cannot long protect him, for they will not tolerate his deformity or your Stone beliefs. Therefore for my sake and your pup’s leave the Reapside. I cannot be seen to love you more.”

  With that Red Ratcher left, his heart hardening against them both even as he went, and where for so long there had been the warmth of love now came the chill gloaming of no love at all.

  That same day moles saw Samphire, weak and gaunt from the fateful pupping she had made, carry the dark pup over the Span into gloomy Charnel, and thence plod steadily up past the dreary entrances into the tunnels there and climb the slopes beyond to make a place higher than any others dared among the moist scree beneath the cliffs.

  The torrent’s roar was muted up there, and not far above the ravens chuntered to themselves, or croaked loudly as they flew out and turned on the updraughts of the cliffs. Nearby a sudden cracking of rockfall came, loud and clear, but Samphire disregarded it and all else and trekked on upwards until she found a place that suited her.

  There, where no sun shone, nor mole came in kindness, nor mate came to relieve a sleepless midnight hour, Samphire made a home to raise her pup, all deep and dark and secret.

  The night out on Withens Moor had grown wild and rough, and all the youngsters had fallen asleep with Turrell’s tale.

  “They’ve heard it before,” said Myrtle, “and will hear it again before they’re done. Now, you can see our visitors are tired, Turrell, so you can stop talking now and tell the rest another day.”

  It was true enough — Hamble was almost asleep where he stanced, while Sward, whose snout was extended along his grey-furred paws, had in the last short while begun to feel more tired than he had ever felt. Only Privet was bright-eyed and listening attentively, excited by all they had heard and feeling again that sense of destiny that almost from the first the mere mention of Rooster’s name had stirred in her.

  “You will continue tomorrow?” she said quietly.

  Turrell, nodded his head and fixed her with a stare.

  “I can see you’re a mole who knows how to listen,” he said. But venturing out on the Moors? A scribemole from Crowden? Seems strange to me.”

  She grinned and looked at her two companions. Hamble was already asleep while Sward was humming to himself with his eyes half closed, some old and tuneless song he remembered from his youth.

  “I’m in good paws,” she said, “and I’m not really scared. I’m glad … I mean …”

  “Glad we’re the first grikes you’ve met?” said Turrell. “Eh, lass? We’re not all bad you know. ’Tis circumstances and missed opportunity degrades a mole, not original malevolence. We grikes were never taught anything but violent ways.”

  “No,” said Privet quietly, humbled that he should see into her thoughts so well.

  “You sleep now, and one way or another I’ll finish off this tale when next we’ve a moment to stance still. Sleep, mole.”

  The last Privet remembered of that night was the racing of wind among the heather, and a mole coming towards her through it, who was no more than a pup and yet had huge paws and a monstrous head, and eyes she could not see.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When Privet awoke next day she lay dozing for a time, knowing it was late, yet unwilling to stir, for the images of the places in the dreams she had had in the night lingered with her still and dark though they were, and troubled though the moles who inhabited them seemed, she was reluctant to leave them for the realities of the journey she must resume.

  When she finally went out on to the surface to groom, she found that the others had been long up and about, and were talking in low voices in the same safe overhang of peat where they had first found Turrell and his group.

  “Were not going to move until late in the morning,” said Hamble, “because Sward thinks we need to rest a bit before the climb up Withens Moor to Twizle Head. But Turrell’s told us how best to reach Chieveley Dale without being seen by grike patrols.”

  “But we won’t delay too long?” said Privet, who was filled with a desire to track Rooster down.

  “Always take the third day of any journey easy, my dear,” said her father, “for it’s when travelling moles are at their most weary and vulnerable. I’m going to show these youngsters how to make a burrow in the molish way … We’ll set off again at noon.”

  He grinned happily as the four youngsters tugged at his old paws and took him off upslope; Privet watched him go, thinking she had never seen him so relaxed and wishing wanly she had been allowed by her mother to get to know him as these youngsters seemed to be doing.

  “Perhaps one day I’ll have young of my own,” she thought, and if I do I’ll tell them stories and teach them things and give them what I never had/She stared at the grim Moors about her, which if anything seemed duller and more desolate even than they had the day before, and was adding to her thoughts the resolution that she would never raise young in such a place and so must leave, when Hamble put a paw to hers.

  “You look sad, Privet. Things will get better now. We’ll find Rooster and bring him back to Crowden and things will improve.”

  Privet nodded vacantly and took up some food and pecked at it in silence.

  “Come on, Turrell,” said Hamble, perhaps guessing at the cause of his friend’s gloom and determined to find a way to cheer her up, “tell us the rest of the tale you started last night. I fell asleep just when —”

  “Just when Rooster was born,” growled Turrell. “A fat lot of good it is telling tales to moles who fall asleep, but at least Privet here heard me out, which fortunately for you, Hamble, was not long after you started snoring. Now …”

  That morning, the unforgettable morning when Privet first heard of the raising of Rooster in the infamous Charnel and the circumstances of his escape from it, went swiftly by. But before she could take stock of what she had been told and begin to ask the questions that occurred to her, Sward came back and the time had come to leave their friends and set off once more into the Moors.

  “Come back this way!” said Turrell. “It’s done us good to see you, and ’tis good for these youngsters to talk to other moles than me.”

  �
��I’ve given them their instructions, old friend!” said Sward, touching his paw to Turrell’s great shoulder, “and sworn them to secrecy too.”

  Turrell laughed and told his wards to accompany ‘the Scholar and his kin some part of the way upslope, as courteous moles should’, and then they were off. Only much later, when Sward had sent the youngsters back to their patch again, did Privet ask what instructions he had given them.

  “Told them that in return for all Turrell’s done for them it would be their task one day to get him off the Moors to a place more amenable to mole. He’ll never go of his own will, but he might if they make him.”

  “Perhaps he’s happy here,” said Hamble, amused.

  Sward did not smile, but looking serious paused in the climb upslope and said to both of them, “He’s happy enough, as moles are when they know no better. But it’s them I’m thinking of. Without a task like that they’d never leave themselves, and it’s time my generation saw that whatever sins first brought moles to the Moors have been expiated, and it’s time moles stopped punishing themselves by living here.

  “Same goes for Privet, as she knows. It’s my great wish she leaves the Moors and goes somewhere where her scribing skills will be appreciated. As for you, Hamble, there’s better things for those talons of yours to see to than matters on the Moors, and better things for your mind to think about.”

  “I’m surprised you agreed to lead us on to the Moors then!” said Privet.

  “Want you to see it while you can, and to meet some of its suffering moles. A mole should know his own place, and learn what there is to love in it, before he ever leaves it. I think there’ll be things you’ll learn on this journey. And anyway, I didn’t want to end my days in Crowden — too safe, too limited for me!”

  “You’ll not be ending your days for a long time yet,” said Hamble.