Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  “He taught me,” Privet whispered with joy, “Rooster taught me, forced me to learn though I did not want to, because he knew one day, one day … yet, how did Whillan know what to search for?”

  “This is the beginning of the Book of Silence” said Stour, ignoring her last question. “It is now shown to you that you may have example and faith to rise up from the fear in which you have lived so long, and go and seek the Book that is not yet. That is your task, Privet.”

  Very tired, at peace, she nodded and said, “It is begun, Master Librarian, begun already, but not only I, but all of us shall finish it.”

  Then they went through the portal and Privet led them to the Books, and touched Pumpkin, and Drubbins and Fieldfare, and called for Maple and Chater to come.

  “The Newborns almost entered,” they said when they came back, “but when the Silence began again, they fell back without us having to raise a paw, almost all of them fell back …”

  But their words faltered and stopped as Privet turned to the last folio, on which she had only partly scribed, in which the last tale was therefore unfinished, or seemed to be; or was it only just begun? Then, with reverence, but with no difficulty, she took it up and there, where she had failed to put a paw before, where the gap between the Six Books of Moledom waited to be filled, she placed the old, worn, scribed, scored and over-scribed folio down, which was the sum, the total, of so many moles’ lives and tales, and made this holy dedication and offering: ‘In your ending, Keeper Husk, who had faith in all the tales, and sought to honour them, is this beginning to the Book of Silence. We will seek the rest of it out and we shall find it, so that we may bring the last Book home to ground; the seventh lost and last Book …”

  Then she placed the solitary ragged folio on the ground and completed the circle, the sound of Silence was all about as, at her command, each one of the moles placed their paw on hers to mark their acceptance of their part in the coming task.

  “Come now,” said Maple at last, and boldly. “Come while the Silence protects us and the Newborns are confused …”

  “Aye, go now, moles. Go as I have commanded you, for I have strength now to fulfill my task, as you have,” said Stour.

  With last embraces, each whispered their farewell to the Master Librarian who had given them, and moledom, all his life. Then each through the portal back towards the Library went, with Whillan at the last. He looked back one last time, as he had up in the clearing, to see where Husk lay. What he saw there he never forgot.

  Just an old mole, pale of fur, wizened with age, who looked smaller still for the dark light that engulfed him, and the huge portal that rose above him into the ancient system. Whillan watched as Stour bent down painfully, and with enormous effort he turned towards it and took up the completed Book of Tales and began, step by slow step, breath by panting breath, to seek a place where nomole could find it, and where it would be for ever safe. But that was just the first: how could anymole survive more, let alone carry The Six Books of Moledom?

  “Stone, protect him, give him all thy love,” whispered Whillan, as the returning Dark Sound reached out to claw him into itself and a paw reached from the portal at which he had paused and pulled him out of that wild darkness to safety once more.

  There at least, and in the study cell beyond, the sound of Silence lingered on, gentle and balmy, safe as summer air.

  “Look!” warned Maple, still hidden with the others inside the portal and pointing down the slipway to where, amazed, dumbfounded, nearly frightened, a mass of Newborns stanced uncertain still. At their head and coming up the slipway, was Snyde on the side near the wall, and Bantam on the other, near where the slipway fell sheer to the Library below; leading them was a dark mole, purposeful.

  “What mole is that?” asked Privet.

  “It’s the one they call Chervil.” whispered Fieldfare.

  “Come!” said Privet.

  Even as their forms darkened the portal, substantial but not yet identifiable, the Newborns saw them, and seemed to see monsters. For theirs was a cry of alarm, a turning of panicked moles, for after the Dark Sound, after the Silence, came forth moles touched by Silence, and the Newborns were afraid.

  Snyde turned first, hiding his face in the indentations made by generations on the slipway and covering his distorted ears; the mass below turned next, on each other, terrified, clawing and stampeding to escape through the Main Chamber and beyond to the Small, and thence, in a thunder of paws, and with books and texts flying all about, up and out into the Wood and downslope away as far as they could get from the Ancient System.

  Finally Sister Bantam, in panic, turned into space, reached out a paw for support, and screaming fell down on to the hard ground below, her snout crushing, that scream the last of many that vile mole made through her destructive life, whether of perverse ecstasy, of gloating triumph or, as now, of fear of the dark void which had taken her at last.

  Only Chervil did not move in fear, and one other mole, below, watching and still: Keeper Sturne.

  “Come!” cried Privet again, and led the seven moles forth from the Master’s cell, down past Senior Brother Chervil without a word, out of the Main Chamber and through the Small Chamber to go out into the Wood.

  There, with the great beech trees of the High Wood silent about them, Drubbins and Pumpkin took leave of the other five. Their farewells were brief, for what can moles say who have lived through darkness and heard Silence? Nothing, but wish each other the blessings of the Stone, and the final blessings all moles make when they set off on a quest in the Stone’s name.

  “May you return home safeguarded!” said Pumpkin, as cheerfully as he could, running a little after them as they wended their way through the High Wood towards the south-eastern pastures.

  “They’ll go down there and then through the cross-under,” said Pumpkin quietly when he had gone back to where Drubbins stanced solidly down staring after their friends.

  “Aye, mole.”

  “And then their journey will begin, won’t it, Drubbins?”

  “It will, mole.”

  “I’ll … m … miss them,” said Pumpkin. “Hard times are coming and I’m afraid. But the Master …”

  The Master’s safe now, mole, safer than we are! But the Stone will watch out for us all.”

  “We better not linger,” said Pumpkin. “Had we?”

  Nor did they, though the sound of Silence did, about the High Wood, about them both, too, as they went off to begin their task.

  The Silence lingered also, longest of all perhaps, in the Library itself, where Chervil stanced still on the slipway and Snyde, looking up at last, took one final fearful look and crept away.

  “Mole,” said Senior Brother Chervil, turning his head and looking down at where Keeper Sturne stanced. “Are you Newborn of the Stone?”

  Sturne stared up at the Senior Brother and pondered the question, his face impenetrable.

  “I think perhaps I am,” he said without expression, and in view of what he had heard and seen in the hours just past he thought that perhaps he was ‘new’ born, and he told no lie. He hoped that following the Master’s instructions might continue to prove easy as this first lie!

  “Come here then, mole,” said Chervil.

  Sturne mounted the slipway and stared into the cold dark eyes of the Senior Brother.

  “Was Master Librarian Stour among those who passed me just now and left the Library?”

  “‘Just now!’” thought Sturne to himself. “Why, it was an age ago and afternoon has come, and the Brother’s been stanced there utterly bemused. He doesn’t know if it’s day or night. Silence, it seems, does not agree with Newborns!”

  “Well, mole?”

  Now the Silence was almost gone and Chervil’s eye was growing brighter by the second.

  “The Master was among them,” said Sturne, thinking to himself that in spirit the Master surely was and, too, for a dreadful moment that this had been a test for him by Chervil. But it seemed it was
not, and that the Senior Brother had been as confused as the other Newborns by the Dark Sound and the sound of Silence. Yet he alone of all of them had had the strength to stay which, thought Sturne, scholar that he was, was most interesting.

  “Well, mole, there’s no need to linger more, is there?” said Chervil irritably. “So seal it up, seal it up.”

  “Seal what up, Senior Brother?”

  “That study cell, or whatever they call it. Seal it up such that nomole may go there more!”

  He turned suddenly from Sturne back down the slipway, saw Bantam lying dead, and, as if she was mere pile of rubbish left in an old tunnel waiting to be cleared, commanded Sturne in the cold Newborn way to ‘rid the Library of her’.

  He stared about the Library, narrowed his eyes and, to Sturne’s surprise, his face broke into a strange bleak smile.

  “Keeper Sturne! On the morrow the Brother Inquisitors, will come to the Library. You will assist them, will you not?”

  “As far as the Stone enables me, Senior Brother, I will,” said Sturne, with an ambiguity he was beginning to enjoy. He wondered why he had no fear that Privet and the others would be caught, or Stour’s retreat detected, but he did not. Sturne was beginning to wonder at many things.

  “Good,” said Chervil and, thankfully it seemed, he too was gone, leaving Sturne alone in the Library.

  “So,” he said, his eyes narrowing, his body calm, “my task has truly begun at last. Stone, give me strength for it.” He stared up towards the Master’s study cell and whispered to himself, “I must start as the Master bid me start and, Senior Brother Chervil, too. In retreat it seems we and the Newborns can all agree!” He mounted on up the ramp towards the cell.

  “Stone, let him always know thy Silence and see thy Light,” he said as he passed through the portal and entered. Then, his short prayer done, and with a muttered and reluctant, “Now …” Sturne turned to the further portal which led from the Master’s cell into the Ancient System beyond, and methodically and with measured delves, began to seal it up.

  Epilogue

  Mole, I think I’ve grown to love you, for you’ve listened well and almost silently! That’s rare!

  With shy Privet I began and told how she first came to Duncton Wood, a mole shrivelled up with loss, and with the desire to hide from life.

  No hiding for her now! Nor any desire to!

  But me? I’m tired and need to doze a little, and ponder on the things the telling of this tale has stirred inside me: memories of friends and places, memories of ideas won, and held, which I had thought had slipped away again.

  And what of you? You came to Duncton Wood with nothing but hope and faith in your heart, and now, through listening to the tale I’ve told of Privet and the Book of Tales, perhaps you’ve begun to guess whatmole you really are. You’ve said little, and never once spoken out your name. We don’t even know where you’re from, or what you already knew before you came.

  No, no, don’t tell me yet. I’ve a wish to pray before this old Stone of ours, which knows so much and has seen much more. No need to clutter me up with names, other histories, and more concerns. I’ll leave your name with you for now!

  Aye, let me be awhile, let me think; go and find a younger Duncton mole to take you about our lovely Wood, which is at its best of a summer evening such as this. Go over to the Eastside, stare over the pastures the way, as you now know, Privet and her friends went to start their long journey, which was perhaps the greatest moles ever made. Yes, perhaps it was …

  Then linger for a time in the High Wood, as Pumpkin often did, and Drubbins, too. If you’re lucky you’ll find a mole to show you where Rolls and Rhymes once was, and then guide you, by way of the Westside (always a most wormful place) to Barrow Vale. Now there you’ll hear some tales! More dramatic than any I can tell you, more full of action and fighting and all that kind of thing. If you’ve any sense you’ll stay the night in Barrow Vale, and eat, talk and be merry!

  And don’t look so worried — tomorrow I won’t die! Come back up here and you’ll find me dozing in the shade if the sun’s too hot, or stretched out in its rays if it’s shining just right. I won’t be far off, you’ll snout me out. But bring me some food again, flatter me, tell me you never heard such a tale as the one I’ve told you before the Stone this lovely day, encourage me …! Then, and if I’m in the mood — and only if! — I’ll tell you the true tale of how it was that the Book of Silence came to ground. The real version, as it happened to moles I near-enough knew myself, and not as you might ken it from some book scribed by some scribe who was not there. Tales told from experience, and from one heart to another, as I tell my tales to you, are the only tales worth hearing!

  Aye, I’ve a mind to speak of the Book of Silence and its coming, one more time. For here in the Ancient System was its beginning, as you’ve heard, and here too was its ending, here right where we stance now by the Duncton Stone …

  To learn the final truth about the Book of Silence …

  DUNCTON STONE

  William Horwood

  As Privet, scholar and scribemole, and her adopted son Whillan, escape from Duncton Wood in search of the Book of Silence, the Newborn Inquisitors seek to take over the system.

  Only old Stour, Master Librarian, and the timid aide Pumpkin can defend Duncton and the precious holy Books of Moledom against the Newborn moles. But time is running out as Privet journeys in search of the lost and last Book. To find it, she and her friends must go to Caer Caradoc, centre of the Newborns’ power, and face Thripp himself; there, too, she must reveal the secrets of her past and give up all hope of reconciliation with the only mole she has ever truly loved: Rooster, Master of the Delve.

  Yet always the light and Silence of Duncton’s fabled Stone beckons, offering hope to all moles with the courage to confront their faith, and a last chance to discover the truth of the Book of Silence.

  Duncton Stone is the last tale of moles whose task is the discovery of truth, but whose hope is only that one day they may return home safeguarded.

  Duncton Stone will be published by

  Harper CollinsPublishers in 1992.

  The eBook edition will be published Sept, 2011.

  About the Author

  WILLIAM HORWOOD was born in Oxford and grew up on the south coast. After taking a geography degree at Bristol University, he went on to become a journalist. His first novels Duncton Wood, was published in 1980 and was followed by The Stonor Eagles, Callanish, Skallagrigg, Duncton Quest and Duncton Found.

  ISBN 0 00 223676 1

  Cover illustration by John Barber

  Author photograph by Jerry Bauer

  Scan by DeadMan, dmebooks at live.ca

  HaperCollinsPuhlishers