Duncton Stone (111 page)

“Worry? With Maple? Why that mole gave new life not just to my mate Furrow and me, but to all moledom too. If he’d had contagious murrain it wouldn’t have made any difference at all to me.

“But Weeth explained it was talon worms for which, as allmole knows there’s no known remedy, so we made him as comfortable as we could and started praying – it was all we could do. He only had a day or two to live at most.

“Then, the second evening, like a mole out of mist, only it was out of the evening sunset, there comes this old female called Sister Caldey who founded the Community of Rose years back. She came up to Maple and she laid her paws on his head and started talking to him, soft as petals her voice was. Talked to him and he began to cry like a pup and Sister Caldey said to me ‘Mole, will you help?’ and to Weeth the same.

“Well she led us all to a bright clear stream nearby and we went into it. There we went to him and we laid our paws on him too and then the others who had been afraid came and soon he had all of us touching and praying and weeping, and splashing about. I can’t say how long it went on but he cried out for a long time like thorns were being pulled from all over his body.

“Sister Caldey called out invocations and prayers in the Stone’s name, saying for the Stone to help him as he was grieved with sickness and needed help and then... well and then...”

“Then what, mole?”

“The worms,” said Myrtle grimly. “He was purged of them like sickness from a pup. Out of him they came, from every part of his body, but we kept on in faith and that stream cleaned him and protected us and it took them away. After that he slept.

“Sister Caldey was gone next day as easy as she came and she said as she went, ‘Now you are a community once more, and he whom you healed will be a leader among you and a good one too, for he has suffered worse than most, and understands suffering...’ She came with the sun and she went with it.

“In the molemonths after that Maple recovered and his fur grew back and all his strength. Some stayed in the Community, some didn’t. I decided not to because I had things to see to. Anyway, Maple told me that I should go to Duncton Wood and I could be his messenger, which I hope I have been... So now the the Community of Rose is in good paws, and their work goes on, ministering to the many moles who suffer and are ill, whether of spirit or of body.”

“And Weeth, did you meet him?”

“I did, and liked him a great deal. He told me to tell you, Privet, that he wishes to watch over Maple until he is sure he is settled to his new task and then, as he put it, ‘I will take the first opportunity to return to Duncton, in time for Midsummer I hope!’”

“And you, mole?”

“Well, I wanted to serve in the Community, but Maple said I was not suited to so silent and dedicated a life, and I think he felt I had gone into the Community for the wrong reason.”

“Which was?”

But that Myrtle would not tell, only adding, rather lamely, “Well, that’s all I have to say.”

It was a tale well told, but it left Pumpkin unsatisfied.

“Mole!” he said, calling her over to him, as the evening’s conversation moved on to other things. “What is it you’ve not told us? Whatmole is it you seem to fear, and keep looking over your shoulder for? Is he or she here? Eh?”

“There was a missive went out, asking for the mole to come forward who stanced up for Keeper Sturne; well...”

“You!”

She nodded her head, and her story tumbled out of how she came back to Duncton and tried to seek out Maple and then had been too intimidated by Sturne’s position as Librarian, and, and...

“Well, we had better see about
that
!” said Pumpkin.

“But he’s so important, and I don’t know what to say to him, and all I want to do is see him just once more because, well, things were not quite finished. I —”

“Now!” said Pumpkin.

“Now?” she gasped.

“Now is best,” said Pumpkin. “Follow me and we might get there before nightfall.”

“But he’ll be working.”

“Of course he’ll be working, he does nothing else but work, does Sturne. It’ll do him good to...” and here Pumpkin might have said many things but he confined himself to the tamest of all... “to have a chat to the mole who saved his life. He would want to say thank you!”

“Oh! Well, perhaps it’s best we get it over with. I won’t sleep well until I do.”

Without more ado, and eager to reach the Library before twilight, Pumpkin led Myrtle off by the quickest route he knew.

“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” she said, as they reached an entrance and went down into the echoing tunnels.

“I am. Nomole knows Sturne better than me, not one. This is the very
best
thing to do.”

They ventured into the gloom of the Main Chamber, Myrtle staring up in awe at the great stacks and rows of books, and into the places of study and scholarship.

“Who’s there?” called out Sturne’s voice from the Master Librarian’s gallery. “Speak up, it’s echoey up here and I’m busy.”

“It’s me, Sturne, and I’ve brought a mole to see you.”

“Oh!” said Sturne, still not appearing at his study cell portal. “If it’s some mole or other who wants to study, tell him to come in the morning and I’ll be much obliged.”

For Sturne this was relatively affable, but it was not quite what Pumpkin had in mind.

“It’s not ‘some mole or other’, Sturne,” Pumpkin called up, “it’s a female come to see you.”

“A female? I don’t know any females, not one. Never have, doubt I ever will.”

“Sturne,” called out Pumpkin warningly, “I’m getting on in years, but I tell you if you don’t put down whatever text or folio you’re studying and come down here this instant I shall... I shall... drag you down!”

There was silence, and finally, and slowly, Sturne appeared, looking over the gallery down towards them.

“I can’t see very well from up here.”

“Then come down, mole, for goodness’ sake. Or we’ll be off, this female and me, to have a merry evening together.”

“What female is she that she claims to know me?”

“Sturne, you may be clear-headed with texts, but you are dungle-headed in all else. You met her, you may dimly recall, in the cross-under in November, when she saved your life.”

Sturne was suddenly silent.

“Perhaps we better go and come back another time,” whispered Myrtle, much alarmed by all this.

“Go? You’ll go nowhere! You’ll stay right where you are and he’ll come down here. Won’t you, Sturne?” he called.

With that Pumpkin left them, and tempted though he was – very tempted indeed – he did not linger to find out how Sturne made his acquaintance of a female who had occupied his thoughts every day of every molemonth in the long long terrible times since November. But later, through the services of Fieldfare, who heard the story at first paw from Myrtle herself, he learnt what happened.

Sturne came down the slipway from the gallery like a mole about to face his doom. Nothing had ever frightened him so much, and each step was hard to take. But there she was, staring at him, and as frightened as he was.

He reached her and stopped, and stared.

“You!” he said.

“Yes,” she replied.

“I wanted...”

“I wanted...”

What did they both want? They wanted to talk. They wanted not to be alone. They wanted to share.

If getting down to where she stanced was hard enough, words proved nearly impossible.

“I... really... I don’t know what to say, “he said. “Your name?”

“Myrtle,” she blurted out.

“Myrtle,” he muttered.

Why, he thought to himself, it was a lovely name, a beautiful name, the finest name he had ever heard. But could he say such things? He could not.

“I’m Sturne,” he said.

“Master Librarian,” she replied.

If there was a moment when their nascent relationship might have stumbled, and veered into something inconsequential, ending in polite words and a farewell of moles who did not know how to reach each other, that was it.

But some distant sense of what was fitting came to Sturne’s heart and he found the right words to say.

“No, no, not Master Librarian,” he said. “I am... I am just... well, a mole. That’s all I am and all I really ever wanted to be.”

He looked at her then with such appeal in his eyes, as if to say “Help me, for I don’t know what words to say and never have, but now more than anything I want to learn to say them,” that she could only stare, and not care if slow tears trickled from her eyes.

“I came back to see you,” she sniffed, “because after what happened, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and then, well, and then...” and it tumbled out, every bit of it.

“You came back here to Duncton?” he said, dumbfounded. “You slept rough in the Eastside, when I was... well,
nearby
! And I didn’t know!”

She nodded, and she could not doubt from the lost look in his face how welcome she would have been, and how much he had needed her.

“I don’t know what to say, you see,” he said, frowning and really not knowing at all. “I, well, I’m not used to talking to females, I just have never...”

He stopped, unable to go on, as bewildered and lost in the world of feelings as she might well be in the world of texts and folios.

“My dear,” she said, coming to him at last and taking him in her paws, “you need say nothing at all, nothing.”

“But I... I don’t... I... mole... I am so afraid to cry.”

Then poor Sturne, who had so rarely cried, began to cry his heart out as she held him. Tears born not of molemonths but of moleyears past, hard years, when he had been so much alone, and so lost.

Twilight gave way to dusk, and still he cried. Dusk to darkness, and still he sniffled and snuffled. Darkness to night, and finally he stopped.

“We better move,” she said.

“Mmm, we had, I suppose,” he mumbled.

“Can you find the way out?”

“I...” Bump!

“Perhaps...” Crash!

“Take my paw...” Wallop!

Suddenly, in the pitch black of the Library, she found herself in
his
paws.

“I’m lost in my own Library,” he confessed.

“We could stay here until dawn.”

“It wouldn’t be right,” said Sturne, not moving at all.

“It would be very right indeed,” said Myrtle gently. Then, “What are you doing?” For he was doing something.

“I’m smiling,” he said, “I think that’s what it is, at any rate.”

“I can’t see your smile at all,” she said, “it’s too dark.”

And quietly, perhaps a little diffidently, for he was unused to such excess, Sturne dared to laugh in the darkness; and in all his long life the Main Chamber of Duncton Library had never felt so right a place for him to be as it did then with her.

Other strangers came to Duncton who brought happiness to others as Myrtle did, and when Pumpkin heard such tales he was well pleased. This was Duncton after all, and such things
could
happen there, and each one that did made the darker memories of recent moleyears easier to bear.

One such visitor gave him unexpected pleasure, and confirmed his long-held belief that if moles are tolerant, and don’t jump to hasty judgements, the Stone will put things right in its own way. She was dark, and she was most beautiful, and she appeared at Pumpkin’s portal like some exotic creature that floats through a woodland glade on the wings of the summer breeze.

“My name is Morwenna of Siabod, and it’s Whillan that I seek.”

Well, now, here was a thing! Whillan’s mysterious past come to haunt him no doubt, and she not a mole to give a single thing away, but rather, to curl up in a male’s burrow and treat it like her own, and not many males mole enough to stop her!

Of Siabod too!

She waited languorously until Whillan came over from Cuddesdon, and many a mole wanted to be there when they met.

“Well!” said Whillan. “Well!”

She embraced him, her glossy fur making him look almost old, and she whispered to him. Then, with no explanation given – and nomole daring to seek one, for together they made a formidable pair – they set off for the Marsh End.

Later, much was revealed.

“Squelch’s
daughter
?”

Well... what
could
a mole say? Nothing, it seemed.

But away from their stares, down in the dank paths of the Marsh End, she was a different mole, and a nervous one.

“Madoc didn’t want me to come, but I did all the same. Maybe she did really. She loved you, Whillan. Then after she had us she didn’t need to love you any more.”

“Yes,” said Whillan.

“And now?”

They talked with an affection born of having a common bond in Madoc, and the free spirit that such journeyers share. He told her everything, of his past, and of his present happiness. She told him but little, for the past mattered not to her, nor the future.

“How is he?”

Whillan told her Squelch worked and worked at his singing and melodies, and that he had learnt mediaeval notation and made things nomole-else could understand.

“He sings still?” she asked softly, her eyes eager.

He shook his head. “Morwenna, there’s something you should know. The notations he makes, they are for you. I have heard him say as much.”