Duncton Stone (33 page)

“Maple?”

It was Ystwelyn come to discuss several pressing matters.

“Yes?” muttered Maple vacantly.

“You look concerned, mole. What ails you? Eh?” Ystwelyn had never seen the vulnerable side of Maple before.

“What do you know of Rooster of Charnel Clough?” asked Maple.

“A brave mole, but a strange one. Might have been a Master of the Delve, but was drowned at Wildenhope. Why?” Ystwelyn spoke quickly, his deep Welsh voice betraying his impatience to get on with urgent matters; yet he was puzzled at Maple’s mood, and by the question he had asked.

“It could just be,” said Maple, “that Rooster is alive.”

“Alive?” repeated the Welsh mole, surprised. His gaze sharpened and he asked, “And free? Available to us?”

Maple nodded and stared at Ystwelyn. Both were suddenly calculating what this might mean.

“Aye,” said Maple giving no more away, “he may be alive and, as you put it, “available to us”. And if he is...”

“And if he is,” continued Ystwelyn, “there’s not a free mole in moledom will not be cheered and inspired to hear it. Why, if he is...”

“
If he
is,” concluded Maple, “and we can keep him alive, there’s no Newborn force, however large, will be able to stop us. Ideas are impossible to defeat. Indeed, the Newborns may already have lost, just when they must be thinking they have won.”

Ystwelyn stared at the Duncton mole, thinking, as often in recent days, that anymole would want to follow one so confident of success and convinced of the justice of their cause.

“Mind you,” said Maple a little ruefully, “if Rooster
is
alive and joins us you’ll not find him an easy mole to know, nor one who’s comfortable to live with. As for letting us protect him...”

“Let’s worry about that when he’s with us, Maple! Now we’re going to have to move on.”

“Not for a few days. We must wait, it’s the least we can do.”

“Wait for Rooster to show his snout? That could be a long wait!”

“It has been already,” said Maple. “But having waited for centuries for the coming of the Master of the Delve, moledom and ourselves can surely wait patiently for a few more days!”

But a “few more days” turned into ten long ones before Weeth returned, and when he did it was in a Weeth-like way – quietly, unexpectedly, with few even detecting that he had come back.

Down into the great chamber where Maple and some others were discussing their next move he came, hardly noticed by anymole before his mischievous eyes and much-loved snout appeared at Maple’s flank.

“Mission accomplished, sir!” said Weeth with a grin.

“Weeth!” roared Maple, taking the smaller mole in his paws in a great hug, a gesture that delighted his fellow rebels who liked to see their leader relaxed and content once in a while.

“Well, you secretive mole? Well?”

“Well! A bit of a to-do it was, but he’s here safe and sound, along with his friend. He’s up on the surface, contemplating the stars. He does a lot of that these days.”

“Whatmole’s he talking about?” cried out one of the Siabod moles.

“Rooster, Master of the Delve,” said Weeth with mock self-importance.

“
Here
?” said Ystwelyn, scarcely able to believe his ears. A rush of excited chatter went among the assembled moles, arid it seemed that others outside had already heard the extraordinary news, for they came crowding in at various entrances.

“There!” announced Weeth with a flourish, pointing at one of the portals.

And there was Rooster, as massive as ever, making those about him seem smaller than they were. At his flank was a young mole, muddy from journeying. Rooster’s eyes were bright, the shaggy fur of his face and shoulders was glossy with health, and he seemed somehow trimmer, or leaner, and thereby even more powerful-looking than ever before. But older, too.

“Rooster!” cried out Maple, rising from his stance and meeting him in the centre of the chamber.

“Have come!” said Rooster unnecessarily. “Saw all clearly: past, present, and future. Saw all could be well. Saw how it could be.”

“When?” asked Maple; “and where?”

“In water, looking back at Wildenhope. Saw it all and understood. Now have come, with Weeth, and with a friend. Will tell you about
him
later.” Rooster laughed and suddenly grabbed Maple in the kind of hug that mole gave Weeth moments before. “Have missed you, Maple, like Weeth. Have missed all I love. But future’s coming and we must delve it. We must make all right, so that Privet can bring the Book of Silence to Duncton Wood.”

The watching moles listened in amazement to this, staring at him, for none but those who already knew him could ever have imagined a mole quite like Rooster of Charnel Clough. And many felt then what they were only able to articulate later, that with Rooster’s coming to join Maple’s rebels it was as if some element of the Stone itself, some aspect of its Silence, had found physical form among them, and the mood of faith and confidence was palpable in the chamber.

“There’s a tale in this,” cried out Ystwelyn. “Give them food, stance them down, and let’s hear it from beginning to end!”

“Aye, every bit of it!” cried out many a mole, as food was found, and places too, for Rooster and the quiet youngster he had brought with him.

“Weeth can begin,” said Rooster, as Maple introduced mole after mole to him. “Weeth knows most of it, if not all!”

Weeth grinned and held up a paw for silence.

“It will be my pleasure, fellow rebels with a cause,” he said, “with a little bit of help from my new-found friends, to whom you will be introduced in the proper manner. But I fancy this is only the beginning of the tale you’ll all tell your grandpups when you’re old and grey!”

“Hope you don’t mind answering questions, Weeth, “cos knowing you you’re not likely to tell us the whole tale just like that!” cried out one of the moles.

“There’s only one question I won’t answer,” responded Weeth, “and that’s because I don’t know what the answer is.”

“Which is?” asked Ystwelyn jocularly.

Weeth exchanged a glance with Maple. It was serious, and concerned.

“If you ask me where Privet of Duncton is, then I can’t tell you.”

A hush fell over the moles, for all of them knew of Privet’s retreat, and all wondered how a solitary female, of more than middle age and not especially strong by all accounts, could possibly survive in a moledom dominated by Newborns who were so hostile to her, and unlikely to abide by any edict Quail might have issued that she should be allowed to live. Yet on her, as on Rooster, so much seemed to depend.

“No...” sighed Maple, “no, we know you don’t know
that
.”

“Privet?” said Rooster suddenly, rising and looking around the assembled moles, and then almost benignly on Weeth. “Privet’s where nomole can reach her. Journeying. Nomole can help her. Travelling. Nomole can hurt her there. Privet’s in darkness now. Must pray for her every day. Privet’s journeying for all of us.”

There was absolute silence at this strange and disturbing utterance. Rooster’s presence now, his words, his very thoughts and feelings perhaps inhibited the speech of others. He grinned suddenly and lopsidedly at Weeth.

“Not so bad for us though! Tell them how the Stone helped
me
! Tell them the tale they’re silent to hear. Told
you,
now you tell
them
.”

“I will, strange delving mole,” said Weeth.

There was a collective sigh and the expectant moles relaxed; Rooster grinned and stanced down again: for Privet, the Privet who was on a journey for all of them, could not, it seemed, be so easily harmed.

“Well then,” began Weeth, “I’ll tell you how I found our friend here, and how he came to be where he was when I found him, and what he was doing there.”

“Delving, presumably,” said one of his audience. “... and I’ll tell it, if I may,” continued Weeth with cheerful firmness, “without
too
many more interruptions...”

Chapter Seventeen

Quail and his minions, isolated that spring and early summer in the self-congratulatory world of Caradoc and Wildenhope, might have been slow to react to the damaging effect of Privet’s stance of Silence against them, but they were swift to respond to its consequences, and the growing evidence of resistance of the kind Brother Commander Finial had so starkly reported. Orders were quickly sent out to all Brother Commanders to deal harshly and publicly with any sign of rebellion and by mid-June many lesser systems were already suffering the consequences. Public snoutings of the kind used by moles of the Word in the “bad old days” became all too common once more, as did the murder of young moles by the brothers in front of grieving parents, always an effective tactic to subdue opposition.

Again and again there were the most violent responses to the most innocent of resistance – a careless joke, an attempt to help some confused old mole, an answer back – all could and did result in the deaths of harmless moles. Fear now began to spread out from the major systems in the wake of the Crusades, and these punitive measures, and deceit and treachery among moles who had only recently been friends, became the order of the day once the Brother Crusaders appeared in a system.

Other historians may dwell upon the tragedies of these times, and describe in detail the many incidents of torture, cruelty and deprivation perpetrated by the Newborns. But here we are more concerned with the triumph that faith in the Stone inspires in the face of such tragedy. Yet even the least scholarly of moles is aware of the vile deaths at Bicester that June, when sixty moles from surrounding systems died; and the valiant defence of the moles of Shepton Mallet, down in the south-west, against their age-old rivals of Frome, spurred on by the brothers, when all but three moles died after an eight-day siege; though perhaps it is the treachery of Fiddick of Shefford, which led to the tragic deaths at the Winstow Massing, that moles remember with most horror.

But only now, as a product of recent scholarship and analysis of the Secret Orders of the Crusade Council, is the true nature of the foul hypocrisy of the sect under Quail’s leadership emerging. No better example being the fourteenth Secret Order, calling upon all Brother Commanders
as a matter of priority
to locate and arrest “the mole Privet, originally of Crowden, latterly of Duncton Wood” whom it describes as a “dangerous blasphemer and sexual minion of the dead reprobate Rooster, perverter of morals, traducer of the young” and so forth. In short, Quail had reneged on the freedom of passage and the pardon granted to Privet at Wildenhope, and was now calling for her capture, and, by implication, her death.

The language of that Secret Order was, incidentally, a lot less foul than that which accompanied its dictation by Quail. According to Snyde’s records Quail was beside himself with fury, his mouth frothing, his eyes bulging, his demeanour nearly insane, when he realized that he had let escape his talons a mole so capable of damaging the Newborn cause.

“I want her,” he screamed, “and I shall personally drown her, and take time about it, the thin hag-like bitch. To mock us all! To raise the spectre of Silence before our snouts! Having killed her son we shall kill her, for she
is
the Snake, she
is
the doubt that entwines our hearts and endangers us. She shall be found...”

Kenning this now a mole shudders to contemplate what Quail had yet to say when he discovered that Rooster was in fact alive...

No matter, by mid-June every Newborn in moledom was on the look-out for Privet and most of these would regard it as their duty and privilege to kill her themselves, or deliver her personally to Quail himself.

But, as we have seen, Newborns were not the only ones who sought Privet. Others did too, many of them harmless moles, not given to bravery or bold doings, but who would certainly have lain down their lives for the Duncton scribe and done all they could to see that she came to no harm.

Among them was the delightful and innocent Hibbott of Ashbourne Chase, whose pilgrimage in search of Privet was well underway by that mid-June when Brother Commanders all over moledom were wondering what more they could do to find the elusive Privet – and hoping, no doubt, that time would not prove that she had crossed
their
territory, and that they were culpable of having missed her.

“I had then,” Hibbott tells us with charming understatement in his
Pilgrimage,
“taken somewhat of a wrong turning upon my journey, and arrived at a
most
inhospitable place. My mistake had been to follow what I thought to be but a modest roaring owl way, from which I found it increasingly difficult to escape as it grew bigger and ever more hostile.

“The dangers were many and varied – hunting kestrel, scavenging rook, malevolent fox, not to mention the heat, the fumes and the roaring owls themselves. The way became unpleasantly elevated, far from soil, or trees, or natural running water. In consequence, to survive I found it necessary to eat what scraps of rotting carrion I could find, and drink the tainted water which I found in the crevices, cracks and conduits of the way itself But I was not despondent! Not I! Did I not have the glorious prospect of meeting Privet of Duncton Wood somewhere on the path before me! Did I not have the Light and Silence of the Stone to comfort me! Did I not have memories of friends and home to divert me, and to encourage me, the prospect of returning to them one day with much to tell? I did! And did I not have my health? I did!