It took them some time to work out how the mass of Newborn moles below were organized, but when a hush began to fell and moles seemed to find their places and stop moving about, all became clear. There was a raised area off to their left and towards this most of the moles faced. Behind this platform, which they realized was the focus of attention and the scene for the coming activity, some twelve to fifteen important-looking moles ranged themselves, most having a hint of grey fur, and experience scribed on their faces, all self-confident and formidable. Indeed, the closer a mole looked at them, the more so they seemed.
“Inquisitors,” whispered Boden to Whillan and Maple, frowning in disapproval.
“Don’t let them see you, my dear,” said Arum to Madoc, towards whom, since Rolt had intervened by the Stones, he had been showing protective concern, to which she responded with smiles and nods which made the austere old mole’s snout turn pink with pleasure.
“They’re settling down now,” whispered Rolt, “and soon there’ll be liturgical chants intended to prepare the participants for what’s to come. The Elder Senior Brother had originally intended to make the formal proceedings very simple, and concentrate on discussions and debate, perhaps in smaller groups, but since Brother Quail took matters over things have changed.”
“Won’t be much debate!” said Arum.
“Nor any discussion at all!” declared Boden a little too loudly, but a stare from Rolt silenced him.
“There’ll be a lot of chanting, some of the Inquisitors will no doubt speak and Quail will harangue the gathering in his belligerent and unpleasantly powerful way. Not until this evening will Brother Thripp come forward, but by then it may be too late for his words to have any effect. In his younger days he could have matched Quail at such a meeting at this, but the mood has changed; the younger Newborns don’t want to hear about a way to the Stone’s Silence. No, they’re interested in shedding spiritual blood in the name of the true way by eliminating any obstacles in their path. May the Stone help anymole who puts a paw wrong here today, for they’ll be looking for victims.”
Rolt’s voice dropped as the hush in the great chamber deepened, but for an expectant shuffling of paws and the occasional cough. As the moles below waited some stared up from the empty dais facing them to the enshadowed galleries above and the watching moles suddenly felt very vulnerable, and moved not a single hair lest their movement be seen and their dark forms made out.
For what seemed a long time but was probably only a few moments the hush deepened into complete silence of the kind that held all moles in its thrall, fearful that they would be the one to break it. Then in a firm clear voice one of the Inquisitors, whom Boden explained was Skua, the Chief Inquisitor, intoned these words:
“Almighty Stone,
At this holy Convocation,
Accept our entreaties,
Direct our lives to thy commandments,
Elevate our hearts,
Purify our bodies,
Rectify our thoughts,
Cleanse our base desires,
Heart and body,
Mind and spirit,
Thought and desire.
Reprieve us wholly,
At this holy Convocation,
Almighty Stone.”
This was no sooner spoken than a deep chanting of the land they had witnessed earlier came forth from the rear of the chamber. Peering that way, they could see columns of moles emerging from tunnels at the back, and on the far side – and nearside too no doubt, but that was below their line of vision. Their paws moved in time with their song, whose words none of them could at first make out.
Not that Whillan was trying to, for he was so suddenly and inexplicably overwhelmed by the power of the chant and the spectacle unfolding beneath him. What songs he had heard in Duncton Wood, what few rituals he had witnessed, were nothing compared to the mounting force of the singing below them. The columns moved slowly and methodically through the assembled moles, meeting and massing in the centre, their voices deep and harmonious. The very roof of the chamber seemed to shake at their power, the very walls to tremble.
Then, unexpected again, the other moles, those assembled, let out a strange, brief, haunting sigh, and thumped their right paws on the ground in front of them; then they were silent as the chant continued, the deep voices joined now by the higher falsetto singing of a solitary voice whose source the Duncton moles could not at first locate. The image and feeling the chant had at first evoked was of a marching forward, ever more urgently, with ever greater resolution. But it was a marching of moles without faces or personality – a body in which the individual was subsumed and lost within the mass in the name of a common purpose.
But now the new voice came, strange and haunting, male yet not male in its falsetto soaring, nor in the sense of vulnerability and loss it conveyed to those who heard it. At first the Duncton moles, least of all Whillan, who was the most immediately and profoundly affected by the extraordinary chants coming from the moles below, could not understand how so gentle a single voice could be allowed to run counter to the basic chant, and they wondered if it could be a protest of some kind. Perhaps some individual who had evaded detection by the Newborns, and now sang his defiant counterpoint to their ruthless and dogmatic chant.
It was Madoc who saw the singer first, pointing him out to Privet and then to Rolt and his colleagues (who nodded without taking their eyes off the astonishing scene). Privet turned to Whillan and Maple, who asked who the mole was.
“Squelch!” whispered Madoc, eyes wide in fear as she uttered his loathsome name, but filled with bewilderment as well, for the song he sang in counterpoint to the deep chanting was beautiful, haunting, and profoundly sad. She took Whillan’s paw and directed his gaze across the chamber to a mole who was stanced clear of the others near one of the Inquisitors.
“That’s Squelch, the son of Brother Quail,” she said again. “He sings as no other mole any of us has ever heard sing, but often it’s over his victims...”
Yet foul as he was, there was no denying how moving the mole’s strange song was. Perhaps all the more so for the sight of him, since he was obscenely fat, with folds of furry flesh at neck and haunch, and great flabby paws poking out from beneath his body, like stubby growths. His head was round and bare, turned up towards the roof with eyes shut, as he sang for some life he had lost, or could not have, and wept.
What Whillan found most disturbing about Squelch’s lament was that in the midst of the inexorable advance of the Newborn chant there was room for so powerful a contradiction to it,
and nomole minded.
It was surely no simple dogmatic bullying that could produce such subtlety, the like of which he had never experienced in Duncton Wood’s simple, homely rituals.
“What does it mean?” Whillan asked Brother Rolt. “Not just the words, but all of it?”
Rolt stared briefly at him and said, “It means that going forth to fight the fight of faith is not easy, and demands sacrifice. It was the Elder Senior Brother Thripp who made these songs, and he who first encouraged Squelch to sing. He said it might... bring him nearer the Silence.” Rolt threw a look of distaste at Squelch but Whillan did not notice it for he was thinking,
“Thripp?
Made this chant and composed this song?” And he was filled with respect and awe. The Convocation had not started as he had imagined it might, and he was beginning to think it would not continue, or even end, in any way he could predict. Thripp had not been what Whillan expected, and now the Newborn ritual was not either, and he felt his world was under an attack he might not be able to resist.
Squelch’s song ended as suddenly as it began and his snout levelled; sniffing and dabbing at his tears with a forepaw, he stared about him, grinning strangely. His sorrow seemed forgotten and only vileness remained in its place.
As the chanting muted down preparatory to its climax. Brother Rolt whispered to them all, “I must leave you now to join my master. The next time you see me it will be a little later today down there. Arum and Boden will see that you don’t stray, and perhaps can find you food...? There will be much chanting as the day progresses, and eventually after various other speeches and harangues and some confessions, Brother Quail will speak. Listen carefully – very carefully – to what he says, and do not be overwhelmed by how he says it. It is the “what” we must fear, for all he has so far said he would do, he has done.
“Watch and listen too, to Brother Chervil. His intervention may be needed and his father was speaking to him about that when I left at dawn, but Chervil was unwilling. We cannot rely on him for he seems more dogmatic after so long away and he may have less use than we think. As for the Elder Senior Brother, I have advised him against speaking; it will be a great strain on him in his present state. But he will do as he is guided and may perhaps be unable to resist the Convocation if by popular acclaim it asks him to speak. Now, I must leave. Be careful, do not let yourself be seen.”
“Will we see you later?” asked Privet. “And Brother Thripp, I would like to meet him so that I may know for myself what kind of mole he really is.”
“Perhaps...” said Brother Rolt distractedly. “Be careful, listen well, and whatever may happen do not show yourselves.”
The gallery they were in was filling once more with the echoes of the Newborns’ rhythmic chant, which swelled louder and louder until it was thunderous about them, and it almost seemed that in hurrying away Rolt was seeking to escape from it.
The chanters had now all pushed forward to surround the front of the dais. Squelch seemed to be singing and weeping once more, though the chant was too loud now to distinguish his individual voice; then, with one final almighty shout, the singing ended.
There was no more than a moment’s pause before the Chief Inquisitor who had so briefly begun the proceedings earlier moved forward, raised a paw and pointing a black and shining talon towards the gathering, said, “Almighty Stone, thrust your talons of piercing Light into the heart of the sinners among us. Cleanse and purify our number lest our holy gathering be tainted and befouled by doubters and hypocrites. If there are any here, let them stance forth, that they may be forgiven by acclamation here and now; let them cry out their shame, let them weep for their sickness and find forgiveness and acceptance beneath the talons of inquisition and redemption.”
In the silence that followed the watching Duncton moles found their own hearts thumping as there came over them a strange impulse to declare themselves sinners and miscreants. A feeling which, however absurd, only increased when the other Inquisitors came forward a little, all dark and severe of expression, and raised their talons to jab and point all over the chamber, as they spoke a guttural command whose words only became clear when the first among them suddenly screamed, “If you have sinned... if you have doubted... confess before your peers... CONFESS!”
To Whillan’s astonishment there was movement among the Newborns – he no longer glorified them with the name “delegates” – and several moles came slowly down to the dais. One seemed dazed, another terrified, and all trembled. They began, in the hubbub that ensued, to scream out confessions of some kind, of some misdemeanour of act or thought they had committed. The Inquisitors placed their paws hard on the confessing moles’ bodies and as they cried out for the Stone to “accept the sinners’, they stabbed and scored them with their talons. As blood began to. flow. Skua the Chief Inquisitor invited them to exculpate each other’s sins by stabbing at each other. There was chanting, muttering, and the chamber echoed with the ritual sound of suffering and redemption before the confessing moles were allowed to return to their original places.
Then, the most terrifying moment yet. Skua said quietly, “If there are no more willing to come forward may the Stone pursue those who seek to hide their shame and sin from its awesome Light. They shall be known, and their punishment will be by the slow talon, and a life after death without the Stone. Take this warning...”
There was a scream and one last mole came forward to confess, fearing perhaps that the lurid light of shame was so bright upon his face that it would be seen and he be revealed for what he was.
His torturing over – he was dealt with more savagely than the others – he tottered back to his place, weeping loudly. The time of confession was complete but the feeling of relief that followed was not allowed much space before Skua lunged his talons forward once more and declared, “Watch, listen and be on thy guard. The viper is in thy midst. The canker turns in the crab-apple of thy heart. The snake of doubt and wrongful action is twisting and turning at the paws of the innocent and good. If you see it, declare it, that together we may destroy...”
He paused, and so hypnotic were his words that the gathering repeated the word “Destroy” in a ghastly whisper round the great chamber.
“... and destroy again...” Skua’s talon moved slowly right and left, back and forth, even down and then up towards where Whillan, Privet and the others stared down watching this unfolding drama. It was a frightening thing for a mole to find himself staring at the Chief Inquisitor’s talon and into his fierce black eyes, and Whillan felt trickles of sweat coursing down his flanks as for one horrible moment he thought they had been seen.