Duncton Quest (88 page)

Then Paston came out again, ushered Starling forward, and smiling with a touching pride brought her into a chamber where a sweet-looking, gentle-seeming female waited, somewhat apprehensively.

“Myne douchter Feverfew,” he said.

Starling grinned and said a loud, “Hello!”

Feverfew stared and did not seem to know what to say. To Starling’s surprise she
was
quite young looking, and had good fur and a sensible way about her. Her gaze was shy but her eyes intelligent and direct when she had summoned up courage to look at a mole, and she looked fit, as if, unlike the other moles in the system, she spent time in the tunnels and on the surface exploring and keeping herself occupied. She even had some texts in one tidy corner of the burrow and there was evidence of further scribing. A scribemoless!

Starling, a little intimidated by this, said, “Er, glad to meet you. My name’s Starling. Can you understand me?”

Beside Feverfew, Starling felt large and cumbersome, and far too full of good cheer. But she also felt heartily relieved because for the first time in a very long time she was with a female like herself, even if she was older. The others in the system were so old that Starling barely counted them as females at all.

There was a long silence while Feverfew seemed to gather herself together to make a speech, which, finally she did.

“Starling, I recomande me to yow and am in no perell of deth, blessed be the Stane.”

Starling took all this in slowly, but when she had she said, “Well, that’s a relief, I’m glad you’re not going to die. Did you think you were then?”

Feverfew shook her head vigorously, looked at her father, nodded, looked at her father again, and said nothing. An uncomfortable silence ensued in which Starling decided this was no time for males to be about. She had to talk frankly to this Feverfew and get her
moving.

“Look,” said Starling, “two’s company, three’s a crowd...” She turned to Paston and politely made it clear it would be better if he left, for the time being. No harm would befall his beloved daughter, none at all. Starling smiled at him, a charming and winning smile. This overwhelmed him and he made a long speech full of “reverents”, “besechementes” and “hertys desyres” at the end of which Starling shooed him away.

She then turned back to Feverfew who, meanwhile, had relaxed considerably and was smiling shyly. She seemed about to ask a question but instead suddenly darted a paw forward and touched Starling’s fur.

“Yonge, soothe and lustie!” she sang, continuing with a song of very good cheer.

“That’s very nice,” said Starling, quickly coming to the conclusion that she was going to like Feverfew very much indeed.

Starling settled herself comfortably, realising that this was going to take some time, and she said, slowly and clearly, “I am very happy to meet you.”

Then, when Feverfew did not understand this, she repeated it, indicating herself for “I”, giggling to indicate the “happy” and finally touching Feverfew to indicate the “you’. It took time but when Feverfew at last understood what Starling was so patiently trying to get across she said something similar in old mole, waited for Starling to repeat what she had said, and then, quite unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears and she wept as a mole who had waited for years to weep; but as much with relief and discovery that another mole could like her, as with sadness that for so many years nomole had really done so.

So the two chattered on, learning to understand each other, and discovering the joy, pure and unalloyed, of talking to another female in a world of ailing, dithering or too-familiar males.

When, much later, Starling was able to explain that there was a mole in the system called Tryfan and he needed help and herbs and healing, Feverfew smiled and said in a quiet and gentle way that she would come now, and do what she could.

“Hys nam?” she asked.

“Tryfan,” said Starling.

“Ys hee comely?” asked Feverfew shyly.

“Yes!” said Starling, astonished and laughing, yes Tryfan was! It had not occurred to her for one moment that Tryfan might be the object of any female’s interest, but now she came to think of it... And with that they both laughed, and passed out of the burrow and ran up to the surface without a word of explanation to Paston who had waited so long and with much puzzlement at the sound of laughter and talk, which, even if he had understood it he would never, however old and wise he became, have
understood
it.

When they reached the burrow where Tryfan had been put they found him now so weak that though his mouth was open his breath hardly seemed to come at all. “Comely” he may once have been, but not anymore. His right side was swollen and suppurating, and dirty yellow pus leaked from it and congealed on his fur. His flank wounds were an ominous white and grey where the flesh seemed to have began to rot, and smelt of death. His delirium of the journey there had gone now, and he lay still, his eyes half closed. Sometimes he whispered, or tried to, but the words were unintelligible.

Spindle rarely left him, cleaning him as he could, and offering him food which lately he had not touched. Spindle was utterly distressed, trying his best to be calm when he was with Tryfan, but when he allowed himself to be relieved by Mayweed or Starling from that duty, he was restless and unable to sleep or even listen to what another said.

The older moles who plagued him he now utterly ignored, and nomole could comfort him. His friend was dying, and he, Spindle of Seven Barrows, who had been charged by Boswell himself to watch over Tryfan’s wellbeing, felt he had failed. His last hope had been that a meeting of these wretched squabbly medieval moles would produce somemole to help,
anymole
; but all Mayweed had come back to tell him was that Starling had shouted at them and gone off by herself looking for a “healer’. Too much to hope for such a thing
here.

Now he was up on the surface, Mayweed having relieved him, and was looking this way and that wishing he knew what to do or what to say. It was there that Starling found him, exhausted and muttering to himself in a distressed way, and said firmly, “Spindle, I want you to say hello to this mole and be very nice to her as she is extremely shy.”

“Not another one come to...” Spindle began, until, looking up, he saw Feverfew before him. He stopped his protest: she was younger than the others at least, that was something, and, what was more, she looked intelligent.

“But is she a healer?” he asked.

“I really don’t know,” said Starling a little defensively. “She knows about herbs and I expect if you’re nice to her and encourage her she’ll do her best.”

Feverfew looked at each of them in turn, not quite sure what they were saying. Spindle managed a weak smile and said rather brusquely, “Well, thank you. Um, hello! Better come along then, see what you can do.”

“As I am of the blessid Stane, so wyll I doo for youer welbiloved Tryfan,” she said quietly, laying a paw on his and staring into his eyes.

“Well now,” said Spindle, suddenly rather shy, for the only female that had ever touched him closely apart from Thyme was Starling, and
she
was more or less a daughter to them all! But
this
mole’s touch, why, there was something almost too direct and intimate about it for Spindle’s comfort.

“Er, thank you,” he said again. Then, suddenly feeling better than he had for days, he added unnecessarily, “Yes! Yes! Good! Let’s go then!”

They brought Feverfew down to Tryfan’s burrow and she went into its smelly interior without flinching, and was briefly introduced to Mayweed. All she did at first was to indicate to the others to stay back while she examined him.

She crouched down and stared at him, making no sound but for a quite audible and sympathetic sigh and then, as she circled him, snouting closer here and there, she whispered occasionally to herself, and made more sighs, some medieval equivalents of “Oh!” and “You poor thing!” and then, as her examination went on she concluded with, “This is terrible” and finally, “This will not do!”

Mayweed looked around at the others and nodded vigorously as if to say, “Spindle Sir and Magical Miss, this mole is impressing me, Mayweed, your humble friend, already! She is!”

Then Feverfew went closer still and, laying a paw on Tryfan’s flank, whispered the following gentle prayer:

Dere Mowlitwerpe

Wee are nere thee.

For laik of Symmer with his flouris

For wintere’s nycht with haill and schouris

Your herte semes dirk and drublie

Dere Tryfan mowle

Hav curage now

Listen! Lyf ys gude

And thou art welbiloved and frended

And we to heill are cum to thee.

Perhaps Tryfan stirred at the sound of her lovely voice, perhaps he did not. Certainly story-tellers now, recounting this moment of first meeting between Tryfan of Duncton and Feverfew, a mole who would change his life, and that of all moledom’s in time, naturally like to report that Tryfan stirred, and opened his eyes and saw that mole so near to him. Some versions even go so far as to suggest that he spoke to her.

Spindle’s account is less romantic than that, but probably the nearest of all to the truth, and it records simply that Feverfew turned from where Tryfan lay with an energy and purpose about her that she had not seemed to have had before, as if the very weakness of Tryfan then was her ensuing strength.

“Conne yew to holpyn hym to heele?” asked Spindle, hoping his attempt at old mole would make sense to Feverfew.

She smiled at his words, and said, “I know nat yet, but trust hym by the blessid Stane’s grace to be clene hole of hys hurttys by sevennyght, by wyche tym we maye truste to have gud tydyngys.”

But now we begin to do as Spindle did and record her speech in mole.

She examined Tryfan further and decreed that he must be moved, and soon, to a place where he would have a better chance of recovery.

“He’s too ill to move,” said Spindle.

“The Stone wyl ministere yts beste wen mowlitwerpe ys putte best whay,” said Feverfew.

“Er, which way should an ill mole face?” asked Spindle.

“For word of pawe or word of flanke be weste. For hertis peyne to rysyng sone.”

“Well,” said Spindle doubtfully.

“Stop being so fussy and
old
,” said Starling irritably, “you’re getting as bad as the other moles in this system. It’s perfectly obvious that Feverfew knows what she’s talking about and the sooner we do exactly what she says the better in my opinion. Don’t you agree, Mayweed?”

“Marvellous amazing Miss...” began Mayweed.

“Yes or no?” said Starling, cutting him short.

“Yes,” said Mayweed, with enormous difficulty. “Definitely so.”

“Where shall we move him then?”

“To burowe myn,” said Feverfew, with just a touch of shyness.

Which they did, much to the amazement of the other moles, almost carrying Tryfan through the system and down to the west side of the hill, putting Tryfan in Feverfew’s warm and sweet-scented burrow where, gently, she began tending to him, making him lie west-facing, and getting the others to help him to the surface at night, to snout weakly to the west where the great Stones lay, the nearest of which was Duncton Wood.

Lurid the great sky of the Wen, distant the roaring of the owls, muffled the pounding of the twofoots: but sometimes in those clear, cold days of that January when Tryfan lay so near to death, it seemed the moon was so strong that it overcame the lights of the Wen, and made a far-off horizon clear, where a hill rose to a high wood, as if to bring the Stone that stood in the high wood a little nearer. Slowly Tryfan of Duncton settled, and his crisis passed, his pain eased, and there came about him a peace and quietness that comes to a mole who hears something distant which he has waited to hear all his life but has needed another to show him.

So Tryfan began to hear the sound of Silence, and to make a journey through his illness which was harder by far than that long journey which started, so long before, at Uffington. And at his side was a mole he did not know, but whose sweet voice he could sometimes hear out of the chaos about him, and whose touch he could sometimes feel so tender among the pain that was his body; and whose spirit he could sometimes sense was like his own: uncertain and troubled and as yet unfulfilled, but holding on, even in the darkest hour, to its love for the Stone.