Duncton Stone (9 page)

“What did he mean?”

“He meant there’s more ways than one of touching the Stone’s Silence. No one way’s exclusively right.”

“So why are Stone followers like me to be persecuted then?”

“Ah well, you’ve got me there, miss. I mean, I believe the Newborn way is right and that orders have got to be followed. That’s what
we
do. But fairly, and we only get rough if we have to.”

“True Stone followers would say that there’s no need
ever
to “get rough”, as you put it.”

“They might say that, but they would be wrong and no disrespect meant. Before the Elder Senior Brother gave his teachings and proper leadership, moledom was in a right mess.”

“Was it? Not in Duncton Wood it wasn’t.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard, again begging your pardon. He said that the lessons learnt in the War of Word and Stone in our grandparents’ time were being forgotten.”

“And what lessons were those?”

“Tolerance, respect, making time for the Stone, family and kin, keeping a clean snout – that kind of thing.”

“And Thripp taught that?”

“I only heard him once, more’s the pity. When he spoke, you listened. He could make rocks weep and flowers open before their time!”

Privet laughed.

“Oh, I’m serious,” said the guard, mildly offended.

“It’s not you I’m laughing at!” said Privet. “It’s just that I never expected such things from a Newborn guard holding me as a prisoner and taking me to Wildenhope to be judged by Quail.”

“Quail’s a different mole altogether from Thripp,” said the guard darkly. “Why do you think the Brother Commander’s so eager to get away to Cannock? Mind you, it’s obscurity for him, more’s the pity.”

“Obscurity?”

“Well, I shouldn’t say it, but Thorne’s the best we’ve got. You can feed the commanders Quail favours to the roaring owls as far as I’m concerned. Whatmole was it neutralized Siabod? Thorne. Whatmole was it avoided real conflict with Rooster and that not so long? Thorne. Whatmole kept the peace when Quail’s lot wanted violence? Thorne! But since Quail’s taken control things have changed. I reckon he would eliminate Thorne if he dared, but he’s done the next best thing and sent him north to obscurity.”

The guardmole fell silent, taken aback it seemed by his sudden outburst, and peered quizzically at Privet.

“Humph! You make a mole talk, you do! I can see what Fagg meant – you’re a dangerous mole.”

There was a long rumble of distant thunder.

“Here it comes!”

And shortly afterwards the rain did come, heavily and with driving winds so that the two guardmoles squeezed in with Privet for shelter. She had felt strangely comforted by their conversation, and humbled too – some of the Newborns at least were decent moles after all, and their words confirmed the impression of Thripp she had formed at Caer Caradoc: he was not by any means all bad, and nor did she believe he was all finished either. Now each of them must seek to fulfil their task, once they had found out what it was.

“What is my task. Stone?” she wondered.

The storm seemed to circle about them through the night, but the only lightning she saw was distant, and diffused by cloud.

“I know what my task is,” she admitted to herself in the darkness, and she was afraid, terribly afraid, for it was one nomole would help her with, not even Rooster. Her fear completely overrode the apprehension she felt about what was to happen to them at Wildenhope, however terrible it might be. She felt comforted by the warmth of the guardmoles’ flanks on either side of her and sometime between a distant flash of lightning and the dark sound of thunder, she drifted into sleep.

When dawn came, and all the moles were instructed to move off once more, the storm had passed by, but the rain still fell. It was persistent, though not heavy, and it came out of the low grey base of clouds swirling only a little way above the trees of the wood that ran the length of the top of the Edge. The ground was now wet and slippery, and as the day wore on the moles followed one another in silence, tired and depressed, the way ahead seeming interminable.

In the afternoon they turned upslope through a gap in the wood, whose trees dripped dankly on either side of them as the route ran gradually to the crest of the Edge itself As they neared it their ears were assailed by a roaring sound which they took to be wind driving up the escarpment’s face from the west and stirring the trees. Certainly a fresh breeze blew and nagged at their wet fur; it chilled them, and kept them wanting to move.

But the roaring was more than wind: it was the rush of water. Despite the lowering, murky sky the view down to the vale below was clear enough, if grey, and they saw that the river they had crossed much further upstream before ascending the Edge with Maple and Whillan was now white, and full, and angry. In several places along its course temporary streams of flood-water, yellow-white, flowed down into it, swelling it; as they picked their way along the slippery path and could see it more clearly they saw that it grew angrier and more dangerous the further downstream they looked.

One of Privet’s guards stopped momentarily and pointed a talon downvale into the distance, where the river’s torrential flow was lost in rain and what seemed swirling mist in the middle of flat meadowland on the far side of which the landscape rose into wet haze. Sometimes the mist shifted and the dark and lowering line of an ancient river terrace could be seen downstream on the far side of the vale.

“Wildenhope,” muttered the guard; “Stone help us all!”

Chapter Five

It was April and Hamble had reached the last stage of his long journey from Caer Caradoc. But the mole he was with was reluctant for him to leave... “So you’re going to Duncton Wood, Hamble? Well, yes, you’ll not mistake it when you see it! Half a day’s journey and you’ll be in sight of it, and as near the place as you’ll ever wish to be. It rises dark these days, on the far side of a roaring owl way nomole in his right mind would try to cross. What rose glorious in the morning sun when I was a pup is now en-shadowed by moles who are not likely to be removed in my lifetime. No, no, it’s not a place to visit. But you’ll not be the first mole who felt the need to at least go to just look at it, to remind themselves of the great things we have lost and will never find again. Oh, but I shall miss you, mole...”

Hamble listened to the old mole patiently, though he was anxious now to get away and make the final trek to the system he had travelled so long to reach. The time had come to end the journey begun when Privet had sent him away from Caer Caradoc, which had become, he found to his surprise, a kind of personal pilgrimage. How little he had known himself in the days he was with Rooster. How much he had discovered since; how much more there was to find out.

His friend’s name was Purvey, and Hamble had found him living alone and frightened among the ruined tunnels of Cuddesdon, to the east of Duncton Wood, a place of prayer and scholarship founded a century before in the glorious days when the followers had defeated the forces of the Word, and made Duncton a centre of reverence and freedom once more.

Instinct had driven Hamble to Cuddesdon after he left Rollright in early spring, and curiosity too. The instinct he no longer tried to fathom or understand, but followed with an easy and wry good humour.

The curiosity arose because a mole – a Newborn indeed – he met along the way mentioned “ruined Cuddesdon’, revealing that “Newborns do not bother to occupy it now, it being wormless and somewhat off the beaten track and quite inconsequential’. But Hamble remembered Privet mentioning it to him when they had talked at Caradoc, and the journeymole Chater had told him a little of Cuddesdon and his last visit there before he had died.

Why, Chater had nearly been killed by the Newborns who had taken it over, and it was said not one of the quiet and ageing scribemoles who lived in a brotherly community had survived. So when Hamble realized he was near it, and knowing he did not yet feel quite ready for the dangers of entry into Duncton Wood, he had made his way to Cuddesdon and climbed its desolate slopes to see the place for himself.

There he had found the mole Purvey, who had survived the Newborn massacre by virtue of being away from Cuddesdon for a few days in a nearby system. He had had the terrible experience of coming back, discovering the mutilated bodies of moles he knew and loved, and then being forced to retreat when he realized that Cuddesdon was occupied. Whatmole knew the terrors he suffered in the moleyears that followed? Like a forlorn pup without a home, he had lurked about the streams and banks of the vales below Cuddesdon, unable to go to the only place he knew, yet without another sanctuary.

Then, that spring, when the Crusades had begun again, Purvey had seen the Newborn Brothers leave in haste; he ascended the slopes of Cuddesdon, and ventured timidly into tunnels that had once echoed to the soft pawfalls and gentle chants of the brothers who had raised him, and taught him all he knew. There, skulking still, fearful of the Newborns’ return yet unwilling to leave the place again, he had lived alone through the spring years, the sun, the high song of the larks, the budding of dog’s mercury and the flowering of yellow celandine all beauties he could not enjoy.

But he had prayed for the Stone’s help, as reverent followers will, for comfort, for strength through his time of trial, and for deliverance, and to occupy himself he had collected what fragments of texts and books the marauding Newborns had left behind. He sealed them up in the deep chambers where over the years the Cuddesdon brothers had hidden away the few texts and folios that told their short history, or which various of their members had been inspired to scribe, along with a few copies of texts that had been donated to them by Master Librarian Stour of Duncton Wood. As the libraries of moledom go this was modest indeed, but it was all Purvey had to guard, to protect, and to give him reason to go on living, and hoping, and praying.

Then one April day he thought the end had come. Up the slopes came a mole fiercer-looking by far than any Newborn he had yet seen: scarred, tired, frowning with the effort of the climb and looking keenly about, as if for a fight.

Purvey had hidden away from him, retreating as the mole expertly quartered the sorry tunnels, snouting about and finding, no doubt, signs of Purvey’s habitation. The old mole had contemplated fleeing, but surveying the vales below, in which he had earlier spent so long hiding, he could not bring himself to do so. This was his home, and here he would stay whatever the consequences. And in any case, was he not guardian of the Cuddesdon texts? Should he not therefore be prepared to stance ready by them, and defend them as best he could, however powerful the mole he faced? So Purvey had turned back from flight, and crept to that secret place where the texts lay hidden; there he waited, shaking with fear, praying, yet determined to do what he could.

There it was Hamble found him, as sorry and fearful a mole as any he had ever seen, a mole he could have cast aside with one paw had he wished.

“Mole,” growled Hamble, “be not afraid of me. I know not whatmole you are, but whether you’re a Newborn hiding from the rigours of the Crusades, or a follower trying to live them out without getting caught up in them, I’m not going to harm you.”

“Not harm me?” Purvey had repeated doubtfully. “Not try to destroy the texts, not —”

“What texts?” asked Hamble, not unreasonably, though texts had been the very last thing on his mind. Food, more like; sleep; and calming down this frightened mole.

“I didn’t mean to mention them!” said the mole, now even more agitated. “I mean to say, I didn’t mention them. There aren’t any. You’re not going to harm me, you say! Hmmph! You don’t look very friendly to me.”

Hamble laughed and said, “Mole, I’m tired and hungry and in no mood to try and persuade another I mean no harm. You’ll just have to find out for yourself, won’t you?” He thought for a moment that he might ask more about the texts which, plain as a hawthorn in blossom, lay beyond the badly sealed portal behind the mole. Not much of a guard, but a brave mole for trying!

“Well then,” muttered the mole, squeezing uneasily past Hamble and leading him up towards the surface, “I’ll find you some food. I expect you’ve a long way to go and won’t be staying long.”

“Nice to feel wanted,” said Hamble, following him. “Nice to feel welcome. I might just settle down here...”

His guide looked back at him, eyes wide, unsure whether he was serious or not. Then he led him back across Cuddesdon’s rutted surface, down through tunnels and then into a chamber that despite the holes in its roof, and the collapsed portions of its walls, looked as if it had once been serviceably delved.

It’s all too much for me to repair, but it’s dry enough, if you know where to avoid the rain. Now, it’s food you want, isn’t it?”

Hamble ate the worms the mole found in silence, frowning, aware that his every move was being watched nervously.

“So this is Cuddesdon?” he said at last. “It seems deserted but for you.”

The two moles looked at each other.

“Relax,” said Hamble, “I’m a follower and whatever you may —”