Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  His paw dropped to his flank, he stared at what he had done, grimacing and blinking with fatigue as one of the helpers, sensitive to the moment, had quietly come and offered him food. Rooster ate it absently as he continued to stare at what he had made.

  “Are you not going to sound it, mole?” one of the delvers asked. For once a delve is done, as often during it, a delver will run his talons through it to hear its sound and check out its course.

  But Rooster only shook his head and asked simply that Prime be called. Then Prime had come, and seen the work, and without sounding it had known that it was good: better indeed than any work he had ever seen done before in Prime Chamber.

  “Have you sounded it, mole?”

  But it was one of the other delvers who replied, for Rooster seemed almost dead to their ordinary world, only staring at his work, and seeing how the changing light played on it, and it played back the light; whispering in the recesses of what he had delved from depths he did not know he had, the sound waited, waited to be heard, already almost audible.

  So Gaunt had been summoned, and all the system was abuzz, and if moles in other Chambers delved, it was but half-heartedly, for they waited on news of the Mentor’s word.

  Prime attended Gaunt to the new delve, which Rooster had made not in the main Chamber itself, but in a side tunnel such as beginning delvers used, one which had links with other chambers more ancient; some so old, so ruinous, that their configurations were long since nearly lost, and their floors covered in debris and dust.

  All work in Prime Chamber ended, not simply from the excitement moles felt at Gaunt’s coming, but from a deeper sense that what Rooster had done somehow brought to an end in a rightful way all the work ever done in their Chamber. Try as they might they could not delve more, for their taloned paws hesitated before the walls at which they had been working all their lives, as if they knew that whatever was delved more would only detract from what had already been done.

  Only two moles appeared unaffected by the excitement. One was Gaunt, who pulled himself slowly through the tunnels and chambers with no other expression than the now too-familiar look of doubt he always had about Rooster’s work; the other was Rooster himself, who, having recovered from his earlier fatigue, now waited in an attitude of genuine humility, as if the efforts of the past hours had taken from him all the anger and frustration that he had so often shown and expressed, leaving only a mole who had done his best, and offered it humbly to his Mentor.

  Gaunt came finally before the delve’s central part, stared at it, cocked his head a little to one side to listen to the magical whispers the delve already made, and said, “Well, mole, and is this the best you can do?”

  A shudder of disappointment went among the moles who heard his words, and all eyes were fixed on Rooster who, surely, would now rise in just indignation, and what fellow-delver could blame him, whatmole would …

  “It is the best, Mentor,” said Rooster. Astonishment.

  “Yes …” sighed Gaunt gently. “Sound it for us, mole; sound out the delving you have made.”

  “Another mole should,” mumbled Rooster, his great head low. “Prime said.”

  “Did you, Prime?” said Gaunt.

  “You taught me that yourself, Mentor Gaunt: the true test of a good delving is the sound another’s touch makes upon it.”

  “Yes, yes, so I did.”

  How Gaunt’s eyes shone.

  “Would like you to,” said Rooster.

  “It’s your best is it, Rooster?” said Gaunt again, using Rooster’s name for the first time any of them could remember, but ignoring his bold request that he should sound it.

  Rooster nodded. “Now it is,” he said. “Can’t do more, now. You sound it.”

  “Mole, ’tis not for you to ask the Mentor that!” exclaimed Prime, concerned that Rooster should spoil such a moment.

  But Gaunt smiled faintly and shook his head to indicate he did not mind. “Well then,” he said, raising an arthritic paw with difficulty and pain, “you shall help me, mole.”

  Rooster advanced obediently and reached out his paws to support the Mentor. How huge he seemed, and how small was Gaunt; the one with life before him, the other with life nearly done. The one with dark bristling fur, the other with grey patchy skin, a symptom of his weakness and mortal malady.

  “Just so!” said Gaunt, raised and propped by Rooster.

  His paw reached out, and deep silence fell among the attendant moles; then, gentle as the lightest breeze, Gaunt touched the delving’s central part, and ran his talons first one way and then another. Even at his first touch, the sounding began, gentle at first, but then burgeoning more powerfully, a sound that came not from where he touched, but from far off in an obscure recess of the Chamber, where dust and debris lay. There a delve made by a forgotten mole in ancient time found its long-silent moan in deepest night, when the primal dawn is no more than a momentary frown in sleep.

  In black night it began and from there travelled on through time, first here, then there, all about them, re-discovering ancient echoes of the past, before the dawn when Prime starts, in that benighted hour which presages the light to mole who holds the faith that dawn will come. A time to say farewell to darkness past and turn a snout towards the time to come. That was where Rooster’s delving began, its growing vibration casting off the dust from delvings so obscure that Prime himself did not know that they were there.

  Then on it went, on about them all, finding new places to reverberate, places not of black but grey, where dawn light began, where hopes dared rise, where life quickened once again after the death of night. On and on through the Prime Chamber it went, as an echo travels up a fissure into light, touching one wall and then another, and each time making more joyous and more waking sound; on and on, and with it came the voices, the calls of moles long dead, the brethren of the Charnel whose memorial was here and now, here in the sounding of Rooster’s delving, here when Prime Chamber reached its climax with the light, here where old Gaunt had touched the delving a young mole made, and touched an ending and beginning.

  Here, where the sounding began to fade and silence to begin, greater by far than that which preceded it because it was touched by the living voices of the past, and showed by its depth and light the place where they had gone. From them and to them Rooster’s delving took those awestruck moles.

  Then silence only, and slow forgetting, for nomole can remember such sounding as was then, only the feeling of it and the joy, and the knowledge that it was, and is, and ever more will be so long as moles live on with ears to hear and hearts to feel such things. They had trained Rooster to make a delving to justify their lives; they had witnessed the true birth of a Master of the Delve.

  “Prime,” whispered Gaunt when Rooster, humble and quiet, set him down and made him comfortable again, “this mole honours the teaching you have given him. This mole honours thee. For now.”

  A ripple of pleasure went among the listening moles. Gaunt was satisfied. But then, concern.

  “‘For now’, Mentor?” said Prime, sharing the others’ concern by repeating those last two ambiguous words.

  “Well, Rooster?” said Gaunt.

  “Could do better,” he admitted gruffly. “Not best yet.”

  “Not best yet’! What then would be ‘better’?

  “Well, then, mole, you’d best go on to the Terce Chamber this day and learn what more you can,” said Gaunt lightly.

  A look of delight came to Rooster’s eyes.

  “But I thought … I was beginning here. I …”

  “You are ready to move on,” said Gaunt, reaching a paw to touch him. “You have learned much. Now, learn more. You may have little time.”

  “But I have a lifetime —”

  “Go, mole!” said Gaunt with mock severity. “Go to Terce!”

  It was after this incident that for the first time Gaunt laid bare to Samphire his fears and forebodings at what the future held for each of them.

  �
�I said before that the coming of Rooster marked the end of the Charnel’s usual life, and the beginning of something new. Today, when I heard the sounding of his delve, I knew that it would not be long before your son has done for the other Chambers what he has already done for Prime.”

  Gaunt eased his aching limbs, and winced with the pain of them and with the effort of talking, and Samphire came closer to hold his head in her gentle paws. She knew how hard the time of Rooster’s training had been for Gaunt, and how difficult it had sometimes been for him to be so relentless in his pressure for perfection on a mole who was from the first producing delving of a quality and depth far beyond that which any mole had produced in the Charnel before. Joy had vied with discipline, hope with fear that the dream of the coming of a Master could not last. Now there was foreboding.

  “How little we have talked of matters close to ourselves,” whispered Gaunt, “so close have we become there seemed no need for words. I, who am old and crippled, and close to dying now, could never for a moment have dreamt that so late in my life the Stone would send a mole to me I might love, and who might love me. But you came, Samphire, and your life and strength have prolonged mine, and made possible the last and most important part of my teaching life, which has been and is with Rooster, and, as well, with Glee and Humlock. For those two are part of his Mastership. Their love and friendship are the rock on which his paws are set.”

  “The Stone will provide, my dear,” said Samphire. “As it has brought us joy in this joyless place, so will it help Rooster and his friends.”

  But Gaunt shook his head.

  “No, Samphire, the Stone does not expect such passivity of mole. We must act, that is not only our right but our duty as well. Right action … it is the essence of life as it is at the heart of delving. The miracle of Rooster is that despite all, his sense of right action guides his paw, yes, despite ‘himself’, whatever that might be! In Prime he has learned the techniques of delving, now in Terce he will begin to learn the sanctity of life; but he will not be a true Master until he knows himself.”

  “He knows of the value of life at least, for I have taught it him myself. He knows my history, he knows of the savagery of his father Red Ratcher, he has learnt the gentle way. I know he rages, and fumes, but it is at himself and never at other mole.”

  “Hmmph!” declared Gaunt. “He is as near to violence as any delver I have ever known. It is the dangerous thing in him, and no doubt it comes from Ratcher’s blood. I know not. But I know this: life is sacred. A Master of the Delve must never take it, never even think of taking it, or harming it. This Terce will begin to teach him, and None Chamber more so. But time is running out, and I fear for him. We must take him through all the five Chambers, you see, for then he will at least have glimpsed the ways in which he might master his natural wildness and savagery. Knowledge is all: the mastering can come later! I believe this is something Master Hilbert had to learn, and it was hard for him, very hard. Yet it is that very violence, or passion if you will, that makes a mole rise above the ordinary delver to be a Master.”

  “You say there is little time, my love, and you frown and look away from me.”

  Gaunt fell silent once again, staring sombrely before him, and occasionally squeezing Samphire’s paw, in a way she knew must mean that he was thinking of them both, and their relationship, and that something troubled him greatly. She waited in silence, knowing he would speak of it when he was ready.

  “Samphire,” he began at last, “my Samphire. I never thought I would know such happiness, but if I had I would never have believed that I would be the one who had to end it.”

  Samphire stiffened, suddenly much afraid.

  “My love,” continued Gaunt, “when the time is right we must find a way of getting Rooster out of here. I shall not be able to come, but you —”

  “I will not!”

  “You must, my love. You are the only one of us with experience of the other side, the only one who can find a way for Hilbert’s prophecy to come true. If Rooster is a Master of the Delve he cannot, he must not, stay here. Moledom has need of him now, that is why the Stone sent him in our time. Through him our task shall be done. You must find a way of setting him free of the Charnel, you —”

  “I cannot, I will not leave you, Gaunt!” said Samphire, hot tears coming from her eyes at the very thought of it.

  “It must be,” said Gaunt gently. “Until then …”

  “It will not be!”

  “Hold me close, my dear,” said the ailing mole, “and let me tell you what being a Master of the Delve may mean for moledom. Against that burden our lives —”

  “Our lives are as our love is, Gaunt, as valued by the Stone as all the Masters of this and Mistresses of that!”

  Gaunt smiled at her passion, and nodded, wanting to agree.

  “So tell me!” she said fiercely, holding him as if she would never ever let him go.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Rooster’s passage through the Chambers succeeding Prime moved apace as if he, like Gaunt, sensed that time was short and soon there would be none left.

  While Glee remained with None, learning all manner of subsidiary skills to aid the delvers, and Humlock continued in Compline to learn to feel his way about by touch as, increasingly, he seemed to learn the meaning of the vibration of the delves, Rooster pressed on rapidly with the major delving skills. Prime had taught him the arts of the preparatory delve, of quarrying and scooping, and the rudiments of adapting present delves to harmonize with ancient forms that others had made before. He had always had a feeling for rock and stone, and now learnt to accommodate his delving to extant strata and rocks, and make the best of the exigencies of light.

  In Terce he began to explore the subtle skills of tunnel formation, and appreciate how in a system of chambers, portals and tunnels a change in one part affects the balance through all the others, and as air flow changes so the nature and potential of sound, whether dark or light, changes as well.

  As everymole knows, these are skills most learnt in only a rudimentary way, as much by absorption of the feel of their parents’ tunnels as from any direct instruction. Indeed, most moles do not begin to think of the Terce or the possible harmony of things until they venture forth from their home burrow and begin to make a life on their own account. But then they are too busy with survival, and with protecting their own young, to do more than repeat what they can remember, and make up the rest as best they can.

  But under Terce, Rooster was forced to ponder the relationship of things, and working in the looser soil that lay nearer the bank of the Reap he created tunnel after tunnel which, having made them, he had progressively to fill in once more, thus learning to make and unmake. It was only slowly that he understood that it was in the unmaking, in the filling-in, that he learnt best what he had failed to do before; and that what a delver does not do is as important as what he does. A non-delve, if properly pondered and decided upon, is just as powerful in its effect as a delve.

  But July seemed barely to have advanced into a sultry August before Terce suddenly announced that Gaunt had decreed that Rooster move on to None Chamber, which, despite his protestations that he had not yet learnt enough, he was forced to do. His humour was not helped by discovering that the mole assigned to teach him was not Senior Delver None, but ‘merely’ Glee. Both found the role embarrassing, and for the first time in their friendship they quarreled.

  “It’s not my fault, Rooster,” said Glee acidly, staring up at him fiercely through angry, narrowed eyes, her white fur seeming almost to shine with fury, “and I don’t like it any more than you do. Everymole knows you’re a real delver and I’m not much more than a helper; and I don’t pretend to be! But if None says I’ve got to show you how things are done round here then you can at least make it easier for me, instead of glowering and grumbling and making me feel terrible.”

  “Want to delve,” said Rooster, “not this …”

  He had discovered that the delving
in None was of a delicate kind, and by the standards of robust Prime and conceptual Terce its practitioners were somewhat airy-fairy in their activity, talking and joking, only occasionally making a dabbing delve in their half-hearted way (as it seemed to him) at the walls of the Chamber, and its light, simple tunnels.

  “This,” said Glee, “is fun. We’re happy moles here. We enjoy life. We make friends of the soil, not carve it up like you’re inclined to, and —”

  “I —”

  “… and what’s more, I don’t believe you can do half the things None can, despite her handicaps.”

  “She’s fat.”

  “But her talons are delicate. Look at yours! Stumpy! Even stumpier than Humlock’s. You’d have to work hard to achieve anything here with those.”

  “Not working with you —”

  “Huh! If I know None that’ll mean you won’t work at all. Stop being so proud, Rooster, in fact I suggest …”

  As she went on and on at him, None and her fellow-delvers listened with a combination of surprise and amusement. Rooster’s coming had been much heralded, and Gaunt’s suggestion that it be Glee who tutored him at first was a considerable puzzlement to everymole.

  “Trouble?” said a quiet voice.

  How was it that Gaunt contrived to arrive at moments of crisis and drama in Rooster’s life?

  Rooster turned and stared at the artful Mentor, who seemed to know how to make him work, and when to drive him on. Rooster no longer hated him, nor feared him, but rather, felt awe and a kind of sinking dread that Gaunt was always ahead of him and understood him better than he did himself.

  “She can’t delve,” he said now, though with sinking heart. He had the feeling that Gaunt had expected this response.