Duncton Rising (11 page)

Not surprisingly, it was in Bourton that the three moles gathered the clearest evidence that the Newborns were ready to advance from the major systems such as Duncton into areas which, like the Wolds, were off the main communal routes of moledom.

“Aye, they’ve been sending whipper-snapper missionaries up to turn our minds,” said Stow, Bourton’s tough senior elder, “but we’ve been giving them short shrift here, and sending them packing. A wheedly lot, the Newborns, but not to be underestimated. They’ve already taken over a couple of the bigger systems along the vales of the Cherwell and Evenlode, which lie east of us, and they’ll be back again to tell us what to think before long. One of their strongholds is the Evesham system which lies beyond the Wolds, near which you’ll have to go on your way to Caradoc. Perhaps you should have taken a tougher stance in Duncton Wood!”

“Maybe,” replied Maple, “but I think not. Our tradition is one of tolerance, and until a mole or a sect shows their true colours we shouldn’t deny them the right to express themselves. That’s doing to them what we don’t want them to do to us. The trouble is that the Newborns are well led by Thripp, and he’s bided his time.”

“Aye, he may have judged it well...” said Stow, and several of the powerful Bourton moles about him nodded sombrely. Whillan and Privet noticed that in such company Maple seemed to gain in authority, and to command respect out of proportion to his proven experience, or even his age. He carried himself as a mole of integrity, the kind others would think twice about crossing.

There’s consolation for moles like us in the history of wars in moledom, both ancient and modern,” said Maple seriously, his words the more authoritative because of the long study he had made of moledom’s military history. “We may seem late in getting started in opposition, because it’s in our nature to give others a chance, even if we suspect them of malevolence and evil-doing, as some of us have long suspected the Newborns. But at least we know that when we do decide to resist them, and fight for what is right, the majority of moles whose voices are rarely heard will be behind us, and support us. It has always been so in moments of moledom’s greatest darkness, for it’s then the Stone sends forth a leader to show us all the way.”

“That’s well thought, and well said!” declared Stow. “You may rest assured, Maple of Duncton, that if ever a call goes out for support for just resistance to the Newborns, our moles here in Bourton will not be found wanting in courage or loyalty. As for others in the Wolds, especially those peaceable tradition-loving moles in the systems in the High Wolds west of us amongst whom you’ll soon be travelling, I reckon that you can always count on their support as well.

“There’s something dark and dingy about the Newborns, however reasonable and fall of the Stone’s praise their words may be. Well, we’ve not fallen for it here in Bourton and we never will – send the word. Maple, and we’ll be alongflank you before you can say “Perish the Newborns!” Mind you, I expect you’ve heard that the Newborns aren’t having it all their own way?”

“No?” said Maple. “Some of your moles have crossed their path and had the better of it?”

“Oh, not
here,
not here. We’ve merely avoided trouble so far. No, I’m talking of that mole up north they call Rooster.”

The three Duncton moles were suddenly silent and attentive at this unexpected mention of Rooster’s name, which Stow noticed and misinterpreted.

“You know something of him then? Where he is and what he’s at?”

“No more than what we had heard before we left Duncton in October – that he had been taken by the Newborns and was held somewhere in captivity,” replied Maple evenly. “It was something we hoped perhaps to hear more of at the Convocation in Caradoc.”

“Oh, no,” said Stow, “we’ve heard something since then.”

“Aye,” said one of his colleagues eagerly, “we’ve heard that the stories of Rooster being taken prisoner were put about by the Newborns, to put others off any idea of following or supporting him. He’s said to be where he always was.”

“The Moors?” asked Privet quietly.

“The Moors?” repeated Stow, shaking his head. “That’s not a system I know about, if it
is
a system. As far as we’ve heard it. Rooster’s stronghold is Beechenhill, which is why the Newborns don’t take kindly to him. That system was a centre for resistance against moles of the Word.”

“Where did you hear he was not held by them?” asked Whillan.

“From a mole you’ll likely meet in the next few days as you climb up into the High Wolds. In fact, he’s only been gone from us a couple of days, and as he’s got a snout for news and interesting moles and the tales they tell, I’ll warrant he’ll make his way to you before long. His name is Weeth. He’s a talkative bugger, but that’s his way.”

“Whatmole is he?”

“A good question. He’s from Evesham, but since that became Newborn through and through he’s been wandering about looking for somewhere else to use his restless paws. He’s well known up in the Wolds, mainly because he
is
restless, and always going here and there poking his snout in where he shouldn’t and getting into trouble.”

“He’s not a Newborn spy then?” asked Maple.

“The thought had crossed my mind,” said Stow, “and he might very well be in a sense. Certainly he seems not to get caught by them. But we gave him a heavy going-over when he first appeared and came to the conclusion he’s all right. He’s too individual to be Newborn, if you see what I mean. And you
will
see what I mean! As for what he had to say about Rooster, he got
that
recently from the Newborns over in Evenlode Valley – said they were abuzz with it and that, in fact, the latest rumour is that Rooster’s on his way to Caer Caradoc as part of a delegation of moles representing Beechenhill. Very confusing.”

At which starting news Privet must have been much shaken, but she contrived not to show it then, nor later did she want to talk about it. Rooster seemed so long ago in her past that rumours such as this, and the possibility of meeting him again, much beloved as he once had been by her, were too much for her to contemplate.

“Why did this Weeth go up into the High Wolds?” continued Maple.

Stow shrugged. “Looking for what he calls “opportunity”. That’s his creed and watchword. Believes there’s a mole will give him opportunity. Naturally he wouldn’t say which mole, but then Weeth likes making a mystery of things. He’ll tell us next time we see him.”

“When will that be?” asked Maple, thinking it might be worth lingering a few days more in the hope of meeting Weeth.

“You never know with a mole like that. Here today, gone tomorrow and back Stone knows when. Only one thing’s certain: it’s when you least expect it.”

“Well...” said another Bourton mole with a grin.

“Well?” said Maple.

“I’ve noticed that Weeth usually appears just when moles are settling down to eat. It’s a knack he’s got. I don’t suppose he’s gathered a worm for himself in months.”

“I like the sound of Weeth,” said Privet. “Moledom
needs
individuals.”

“Answer me this if you can,” said Stow.

They looked at him expectantly.

“It’s about this mole Rooster, and something Weeth said but couldn’t explain. It’s the sort of thing a Duncton mole might know, seeing as you’re a learned, scribing lot.”

They waited.

“What exactly
is
a Master of the Delve?”

As the three travellers moved on up into the High Wolds other moles of Stow’s tough kind seemed always to seek Maple out, and pledge him their support if ever they were needed – almost as if he intended them to, and was preparing the ground against the day when resistance might indeed need to be organized, and quickly too.

On they went then into regions where isolation had preserved the secret forgotten world of old values; quaintly delved systems, that lie in the upper reaches of the Windrush; through Naunton, past Guiting and on to the High Wold itself, where the Windrush is little more than a boisterous brook, and the moles of Ford and Cutsdean and Taddington speak their Mole with the slow burr of an age gone by. News of their coming travelled ahead of them, and at each of these systems, and many others besides, moles came to greet them, and to invite them to stay a day or two, and share in their food and conversation, and take part in their rituals before the Stone.

Whilst Maple quietly gathered intelligence and support for future resistance to the Newborns, Whillan turned in on himself, as if the moles he was meeting and the values they lived by were things he wished to ponder and assimilate without comment. At this time, to the many who met them, he seemed the weakest and quietest of them all, and on occasion broke free of the little group and spent a day or two by himself, staring over the wide flat tops of the Wolds into the blue distances of moledom beyond, which, perhaps, he was at this time preparing to travel to, as Keeper Husk had suggested he should.

Meanwhile, something deep was happening to Privet as well. Made vulnerable by the revelations of her tale, and keeping quiet through the first part of their journey from Duncton Wood, here in the High Wolds she began to find a new quality of peace and wisdom. It was something those who met her very soon sensed, and when they gathered in the communal chambers of the moles in these systems, it was her words, her tales, her thoughts that others listened to with most attention and respect. Here, they said to themselves, is a true Duncton scribemole;
here
is one who has turned her snout towards the Stone and will not be misled away from it. Here is a mole who carries something of the Stone’s Silence in her paws.

However much Privet shook her head at such suggestions, and smiled in her self-deprecating way, reminding them she was not originally of Duncton at all and explaining that she had many doubts in the Stone – just as the great Master Librarian Stour himself had – with each day that passed she seemed to shed those burdens of her past that had so long weighed her down and had made her seem but a grey scholar with something to hide, to become instead a mole others instinctively knew held secrets of the Stone’s ways and wisdom.

Now it was that she dared speak again those ritual liturgies she had learned so unhappily at her mother Shire’s flanks, saying what a pity it is when dogmatic moles, or those that do not feel love, so often seek to teach great truths without understanding them...

“Moles who feel no love, and have only dogma as a friend, had better say nothing, and listen to the silence of their hearts. There they will hear the great Silence of the Stone, if they listen hard enough, and it will show them the portal that leads out into the light from the darkness and confines of the narrow tunnels they are in...”

Privet professed, when she said such things, to be speaking of the moles of the Word, but few who heard her had any doubt that the Newborn moles were also in her mind. She left her listeners in no doubt that she preferred their way of life to any the Newborns might offer.

“Here, amongst you, day by day, we moles from Duncton have been privileged to see how moles of the Stone should live – and for a short time to witness and be part of communities of a kind which Duncton itself has somehow ceased to be. Aye, it’s true enough! For the best reasons, namely tolerance and letting others live their lives in peace whatever their belief, we have allowed the Newborns to thrive in Duneton, and now they threaten it. Well, if they threaten
our
system, they must threaten many others, and perhaps all moledom itself.

“In communities like yours here, and perhaps in many other “lost” communities of moledom – in the Anglian heights perhaps, which the Stone Mole himself visited, in the southern borderlands of Wales, in those unvisited areas north and west of Beechenhill, even in communities nearer at home like those of the Midlands, and eastward in the shadow of the Wen, where the two-foots live – I believe there must be others like you: silent, unknown, yet the preservers of the values that true communities” sustain.

“Therefore, never say you are moles of no consequence. With the coming of the Newborns, the day may arrive when moledom will see you as most consequential of all, for on you will rest our last hopes that truth and tolerance will prevail... Then you may have to rise up and defend what you have, and show others its true worth.”

Whillan and Maple had left Duncton respecting her, and loving her too perhaps, but now their respect and love changed to a kind of reverence, as if they understood that Privet was becoming a mole who had survived harsh times with her inner spirit intact; a mole who, for a mysterious reason none of them yet knew, had been sent out once more by the Stone itself to face the dangers of moledom, and whom, as best they could, they must protect.

This conversation, during the last of their pauses in the High Wolds, had taken place in the Taddington system, which lies but a short distance from the source of the Windrush. The land beyond continues as gentle, rolling, dry valley and it was up this, the following day, that the Taddington moles accompanied Privet, Whillan and Maple on the last stage of their journey through the Wolds. Northwards was Shenberrow Hill, the highest point of that region, where moles thereabout, on great occasions, congregated from the adjacent systems to praise the Stone and wish each other well.