Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  He nodded, staring boldly and proudly at her.

  She looked into his eyes, this mole she knew she loved and did not know how to reach as her innermost being desired that she should. She looked and seemed to see beyond him into time, and to know what he did not, which was that he was Master in the making and was not Master yet. Beyond him, stretching far into a distance of time and circumstance, was the way that he must go, which he could not see.

  “Oh Rooster,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

  He reached out to her again, his eyes troubled. As he took her close to him she said what she knew was truth, dreadful crushing truth, even as the words came to her.

  “When you’re Master, truly Master, then we’ll love each other like moles should.”

  Then, his strength about her, and his puzzlement too, she allowed herself to weep as she had never wept, knowing as his paws and talons held and held and held her, that one day his paws would know how to delve through her tears and find her where she laughed and played and ran. One day he would be there too.

  “Oh Rooster!” she sighed, believing in the joy she felt. “I don’t mind how long it takes.”

  But as she said those words aloud Privet said something else as well; a prayer to the Stone that it wouldn’t be too long. Whilst beyond even that, beyond where her conscious thought went, was the knowledge that it would be long, too long perhaps to bear.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Gaunt grew more pitilessly rigorous in his training of Rooster in the months following the confrontation with the younger moles in their high chamber. He had insisted that each major task that Prime set Rooster was adjudged by himself as well, and no judgement could have been harsher or more cruel. Try as Rooster did, it was never good enough for Gaunt, whose look of disapproval and impatience at the work he tried so hard to do well he grew to dread and hate.

  Dawn after dawn poor Rooster rose, and, denied permission to eat or even groom before he had delved some more, he trekked the long way down into the gloomy Prime Chamber and began the tedious tasks of delving set for him. To begin what others would finish; to clear the mess that others had made; to clean out ancient dead delvings which seemed to have no more use; to wait patiently while others worked — these were his first tasks. Then, when Prime gave permission, to delve a little on his own account — though always under strict supervision — doing the best he could at delves he felt, he knew, had no real purpose or reason.

  “It shows, mole — that you care not for it, nor heed what the Senior Delver says!” rasped Gaunt, drawing a talon across intricate work he had done and ruining it. Therefore, do it again.”

  Again!

  How he grew to loathe that word.

  Again and yet again!

  How his spirit wilted, and his paws ached before the relentless criticism of the mole he felt he had yielded his spirit to and who, it seemed to him now, abused that trust by destroying all he did.

  “But Mentor …”

  “Yes, mole?” said Gaunt sharply to Rooster, staring with distaste at new work he had done which Prime was showing him.

  “I can’t do better. Cannot!”

  “No?” whispered Gaunt malevolently. “Really, Prime? Is this the best the mole can do?”

  Prime looked at the powerfully delineated work that Rooster had done.

  It is not suitable for Prime Chamber,” he sighed, looking at Rooster with a degree of sympathy. “It is, as I said before the Mentor came, rather too strong. Its sound is not subtle enough for our time of the day. Prime Chamber is a place of dawning life, mole, and that is what your delving here must nurture and celebrate.”

  Rooster looked miserably at what he had made. Other Prime delvers did too, sympathetically and with respect, for what the Mentor was dismissing was already better by far than most of them could ever have done.

  “Do it again!” said Gaunt finally, ending the discussion.

  “But …”

  “Yes, mole?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It is well.”

  It was well, and only Prime knew how much. For time after time following these too-public admonitions by Gaunt he had had to impose his will on the raging Rooster, telling him of the importance of obedience, and how if a delver cannot control his spirit he can hardly expect to control his paws.

  “You will obey the Mentor and show him respect. He knows better than any of us.”

  “He can’t delve!” shouted Rooster, his voice booming around the great Chamber which had become his narrow cell. “He can’t even raise his paws any more.”

  Prime fixed Rooster with a terrible gaze.

  “The Mentor taught me to delve,” he said. “The Mentor is the only living mole to have mastered three of the five Chambers, two of them the most difficult, which are Prime and Compline. In his day he was almost Master of the Delve.”

  “Almost!” growled Rooster.

  “Silence!”

  “Almost!”

  “Obedience, mole! Your unruliness and arrogance does me dishonour.”

  “You, Senior Delver? Not you! You I like. You fair! But the Mentor …”

  “The Mentor is the living Stone amongst us, mole. Learn to obey him and you will learn to obey life,” said Prime softly.

  Rooster was silent for a long time before he turned and went away up to the surface. Next day he returned.

  “Will try again,” he said.

  But Rooster was not without friendship, support and love. For one thing he found it amongst the delvers in Prime Chamber, whose quiet presence and persistence at the tasks they voluntarily undertook was a comfort; their occasional nods and winks, whispered words of encouragement, and even compliments at work he did, gave him the will to continue.

  Never known Gaunt to be so hard on a mole in all my life!” he heard them say, and perhaps Rooster understood that if it were true it was a kind of compliment, as if Gaunt sensed that he could and would take the relentless criticism.

  There was sympathy of a different kind from his mother Samphire and Drumlin. These two were now firm friends, and though they were rarely seen in the delvings, except on certain healing missions their skills enabled them to perform, Rooster saw them on or near the surface, and passed what few idle moments he was allowed with them.

  Not that Samphire ever talked of delving to him. But her touch, her smile, her silent sharing of his pleasures of the freedom of the surface, with its distant unreachable skies, and the flying of the ravens amongst the fissures of the cliffs above, meant much to him.

  So too did her evident new-found happiness, which was of a quality he had never known in her before. He was puzzled at its source, for she had seemed a worried mole when he was a pup, and one always remembering the distant past in Chieveley Dale, before Red Ratcher had taken her. Now she seemed immured in the present, and content to be so, but why he could not tell.

  The explanation came from the third, and most potent, source of comfort to him — his two friends Glee and Humlock. Here, at least, normality had continued, since they were allowed to share the same tunnels and chambers as they had when they first came, and cheerful Hume continued to keep an eye on them, and offer them a consoling ear through the trials and tribulations of their introduction to the Charnel.

  For Rooster was not the only one suffering at the paws of authority — Glee was as well. Attached as she now was to None, her role was more as personal helper to her Senior Delver, a female who, like Gaunt, suffered from a wasting disease, though her strength was more than his, as was her voice. Despite her handicaps she maintained the near-legendary good cheer of the None Chamber, executing delves of the brightest and most attractive kind and bringing, through sound and sight, the illusion of bright and happy light into the darkest of her Chamber’s corners. But woe betide poor Glee if she put a paw wrong, was late, was slovenly, or spoke out of turn, for then None’s smile turned to disapproval, and her gentle voice to one of harsh disdain.

  Glee’s normally sharp and h
appy attitude changed for a long time to one of haunted gloom and self-doubt, which only increased Rooster’s anger and confusion about the situation they found themselves in. Indeed, matters might have so provoked him that he would have been driven to abuse of those around him had not Hume, on the one paw, and Humlock, on the other, been sources of calm and restraint. Hume’s good influence was already recognized, but Humlock’s was as unexpected as it was welcome. For as time went by Humlock’s emergence from his silent world continued, and under the benign authority of the mole Compline he seemed to blossom forth.

  Not that he could talk, of course, that would never be; nor ‘hear’ as a normal mole could. But there was something about the Compline Chamber, where the quietest of the delvers saw day into dusk, and dusk into night, with delvings of a subtle and gentle kind, that caught some spirit locked inside Humlock’s huge body, and brought it out. He found his confidence, and learnt to touch and snout about and find his way hither and yon in a system where none would harm him, or even try.

  His interest was not in delving as such, for there the only task he fulfilled was clearing debris away to places others had only to guide him to once before he learned them, and, later as his confidence increased, to cleaning the dust from delvings already made, and moving about in his hulking silent way to tidy things up, and make all right.

  To ‘make all right’ was indeed his strength, for at Compline’s flank Humlock seemed to find a peacefulness that others recognized and were influenced by. His very existence, silent as it was, brought faith and hope and charity to the hearts of moles he went among, and the chambers he honoured with his presence.

  Not least was this power felt by Rooster and Glee, suffering as they were the pressures of learning to delve, to whom he returned each day, bringing his calming influence. There was no doubt that with these two he was happiest — his frowning blinded face growing positively benign at Glee’s loving touch, and at Rooster’s, why, he actually smiled; even laughed indeed, though few moles who did not know him well would have recognized the strange grunting moans he made as sounds of pleasure and delight.

  Though delving as such was not his skill, yet to say he was no delver would not have been quite right, for Humlock seemed to have a special understanding of the vibrations that delvings made. This had been plain enough from the time of his first meeting with Gaunt when he had seemed to ‘hear’ Glee’s touch upon the delvings on the wall. Perhaps Gaunt had understood from the beginning how important Humlock’s ability was, or would become, and certainly his decision to place the mole in the Compline Chamber, which most accepted held the subtlest and profoundest of the delves, was significant.

  Compline himself soon understood this well, and so did his fellow-delvers, who were astounded by Humlock’s ability to recognize them by their touch — not of himself, though that soon came, but of the walls and roofs they delved. More than that, Humlock had an unerring ‘ear’ for the delving balance of a Chamber, that elusive shifting place where the spiritual centre of a Chamber is, which changes with the slightest delve on wall or adjacent tunnel. Humlock, it seemed, could ‘hear’ more perfectly than any-mole alive.

  “But what of real Dark Sound?” asked Glee of Hume one day, as they talked with the old mole in their tunnels, her paw resting on Humlock’s in the gentle friendly way he liked.

  “Aye, ’tis a mystery, that!” said Hume, looking at Humlock. Dark Sound might not be a grave problem in the Charnel, where Hilbert had committed moles to the kenning of good sound through right delving, but all knew that the difference between proper delving and that which produced Dark Sound was slim, and the slightest mistake could produce sound that was uncomfortable. In addition to which it was part of the delving art to create Dark Sound to protect certain places from improperly prying moles, as in ancient days the Masters of the Delve were said to have protected the most holy sites of moledom by surrounding them with tunnels and chambers of Dark Sound, impenetrable to all but the most spiritually enlightened of moles.

  Such Dark Sound existed here and there in the Charnel, and was not pleasant to any mole, and most hurried by, snouts low, praying aloud against the mounting confusions and doubts Dark Sound — which is no more nor less than the reflection of their darker selves — put into them.

  But Humlock seemed nearly unaffected by such places and on occasion had been found happily resting and chewing a worm in places where no other mole would linger for long at all, not even the Mentor himself.

  “Perhaps he’s able to deafen that inner ear which “hears” the vibrations of the delvings and listen only with his outer, truly deaf ear,” said Hume.

  “That’s it!” said Glee.

  “Or it’s because he’s perfect!” said Rooster gloomily. “Eh, Humlock?” he added, digging his friend in the ribs. “We’re saying you’re perfect!” Humlock grinned and pushed Rooster’s great paw away with his own huge one, and then laughed in his strange disturbing way as if he understood — which perhaps he did.

  “He’s a mole and a half, he is!” said Hume. “What he could tell us if he could talk!”

  “He can, in his own way,” said Glee, ever defensive of the mole she loved so dearly.

  But the comforts of intimacy are inclined, from time to time, to bring the discomforts of revelation, and to Rooster’s already stressed world came the news, from Glee by way of her mother Drumlin, that Samphire had grown close to the mole he had come to dread and dislike, Gaunt. This was not something Samphire talked of, nor something a mole like Rooster would have been likely to notice; and nor was Glee’s information passed on maliciously. Few moles were ever as innocent of such flaws as those three moles. No, in the spirit of curiosity combined with pleasure at what seemed Samphire’s happiness, Glee cheerfully informed Rooster that his mother was, to all intents and purposes, sharing quarters with Gaunt.

  The deeper implications of this were quite lost on Rooster; it was enough that she was intimate with his tormentor, or as Glee put it in the carelessly sharp way she sometimes had, his Tor-Mentor. Ha, ha!

  Rooster sulked, and refused for a time to talk to Samphire, only going into his work more passionately and taking out his feelings of jealousy and rejection on the walls he was learning to delve. As for Gaunt’s dismissal of his work, he positively reveled in it, and his disdain of rejection, his deep laughter at the words ‘Do it again!” and the energy he found to do what would have caused lesser moles than he to sag and wilt, became the talking-point of the Charnel.

  This response, natural as it was, underestimated the nature of Samphire and Gaunt’s relationship. From the first there had been a natural accord between them, and a deep sense that they had been as one before and now fate had brought them together once again, in new lives and for different tasks. Perhaps they spoke of love, perhaps they were intimate in a way that Rooster was mercifully too innocent even to imagine. Perhaps.

  It is enough to know that in Samphire, the Stone in its ineffable wisdom had provided for Gaunt that new spur to life and energy which with the youngsters’ coming he needed, and without which he could not have done the work with them he did. For nomole understood better than he the nature of the task their coming set him, or guessed better its possible importance for moledom.

  His harsh treatment of Rooster was at first a bone of contention between Samphire and himself, but as the weeks went by and he began to shape and mould the youngster’s near-indomitable will to his own, that he might truly master his genius for delving and make it serve the Stone rather than himself, Samphire began to understand his purpose. She grieved to see her son oppressed, but was proud to see him survive, and excited that he might indeed become the Master Gaunt said he would surely be.

  As for her feelings, her love, for Gaunt, they deepened as time went by until theirs was a sharing of minds such as neither could have dreamed was possible. Two moles, caught in a dreadful place, discovering a harmony of thought and spirit that freed them to travel where they might.

  No wonder, then,
that Samphire should share quarters with Gaunt, nor any wonder either that in so generous a system, with moles dedicated to life and celebrating it as best they could, those around them should be pleased for them, and give them privacy. If envy there was at first, Samphire soon dealt with it by the unstinting help she gave the ailing Gaunt, and the way she supported him, provided for him, and brought back to his kindly eyes and lined face that sparkle and glow for life that the older moles in the Charnel well remembered, and rejoiced to see again. None doubted that with Rooster’s coming something important and most purposeful had come to the Charnel, and when moles saw Samphire’s and Gaunt’s deep love, they declared that whatever it was that had come must be blessed if it brought such happiness, and be of the Stone.

  Yet where it was all going none but Gaunt himself could easily guess, and what its implications were he kept at first to himself. He had caught a glimpse of it and expressed his fears to Samphire when he had seen Rooster’s delvings in the high chamber, warning her that the end to the world of the Charnel was imminent.

  As the months and years of summer went by, and Samphire’s closeness to Gaunt increased, even as Rooster’s prodigious talent showed itself more, the old mole began to understand the grave and tragic nature of the task the Stone had set him. He had discovered love, but in the interests of the Charnel and for the preservation of the life of the young Master who had come among them for training, he must put his love second; worse, he feared he might have to put it aside.

  In late July, Gaunt was summoned once more to Prime Chamber to view Rooster’s latest work — an extraordinary delve of sweet and gentle line, quite unlike the public character Rooster showed, a delve so elegant in its perfection that the delvers of Prime had already surreptitiously invited their peers in other Chambers to view the work, and marvel at it.

  Indeed, the whole of the Charnel seemed to know of it before Gaunt himself, and all waited for his verdict, wondering how the Mentor could possibly fail to find something positive to say this time. As for Rooster, he was more tired than apprehensive, for the main thrust of the delve had been completed in one long night-time session, and its conclusion had run through the whole period of Prime, until, as the delvers of the Terce Chamber came slowly on duty as the first light of the full sun found its way into the deepest parts of the Charnel, Rooster reached a talon out and in one rapid final motion, delved the last mark of all.