Duncton Found (78 page)

“There is no shame in joy,” said Beechen, “unless it be the false joy of those that hide a frightened heart, or mask a fear of their own emptiness. Therefore if you be unafraid, and if your life be full, dance, sing, and I shall join you now.”

He looked about him, first at one mole and then another. He reached out his paws, and smiled. But his smile was bleak. Nomole danced, nomole sang.

“This is moledom’s holiest night,” said Beechen, so softly that it was no louder than a breeze across the face of a wind-smoothed Stone. “It is the night we of the Stone give thanks for what we have, the night we pray for those who need the Stone’s help in the dark winter years ahead, and a night to be reverent of ourselves.”

The moles were utterly still, and one who could not quite see or understand what was going on, muttered, “Who is he? What’s he saying?”

Then Beechen said, “Your brothers and your sisters in Duncton Wood are enshadowed by the Word tonight. Across all moledom darkness has fallen, yet here in Rollright I hear but one prayer spoken tonight.”

Beechen rested a great paw on Holm’s shoulder.

“But how can moles pray for others who are not still themselves? This mole is praying that the Stone forgives him for he feels he has failed it. He has not failed it, for the Stone hears well a prayer from a mole whose voice is weak, whose voice is drowned by a thousand who dance and sing when they should pray. Yes, the Stone hears his prayer well.”

“Who is he?” muttered a mole again.

“What’s he on about?” said another.

“I am what you shall make me,” cried out Beechen suddenly. “I am the Stone Mole come amongst you. Your weakness is my burden, your faithlessness is as talons on me, the shadows you cast are as black to me as the shadow of the Word. Is it then for you I have come?”

A terrible silence had come to the Rollright Stones, and it seemed to have spread to the Whispering Stoats nearby, for the sounds of revelling had ceased there as well and the hurried pattering of pawsteps told that moles were coming to see what was going on.

“It is well that you are quiet. For tonight, the holiest of nights, I shall speak the prayers and rituals of our faith as they have been taught us from Balagan’s time. The liturgy was taught me by Tryfan of Duncton, and they were taught him by his parents, and by Boswell of Uffington who is my father. We shall start our vigil now, and cast out from ourselves the noise that is within us, and discover once more the reverence that should be in a mole before the Stone.

“If there be any here who would not pray with me then let them go in peace.”

There was silence until a mole, an older female, pointed a talon at one of the guardmoles and cried in a strange, half-hysterical voice, “What about him then?
He’s
not one of us, he’s of the Word,
he
is.”

Others began to shout the same thing, pointing towards the other two guardmoles there, who began suddenly to look very afraid. The follower’s cries grew louder and full of hatred, and some of the stronger ones crowded forward to try to strike the guardmoles, and others jeered.

“Strike them and you strike me,” cried out Beechen. “Strike me and you strike the Stone.”

He pointed a talon at the great Stone whose light seemed so strong about them.

Then more gently, his voice calming them, he said, “The mole that strikes the Stone is like a hunted vole and much afraid.” As he said that he quietly moved over to the guardmoles and said, “Would you pray with us?”

One of the guardmoles nodded his head, too afraid it seemed to speak.

“And you, mole, would you pray with us? And you?”

The other guardmoles nodded.

Then Beechen smiled, and to one of those who had been loudest in their shouts said softly, “And you?”

And then, softer still, “And you?”

In the peace of the night the anger was gone. Then Beechen said, “Know that all of us are one in our intent before the Stone, which is to share our sorrow and our joy, to release our fears and find our strengths. Before the Stone it matters not whatmole you are, but only that you truthfully seek to open up your heart. And in
that
silent place what word is there for “Word”? What word for “Stone”? No words at all but only the wordless cry of blind pups caught up in all the confusing fears and wonders of the life they have begun.

“Therefore as you would help a pup to grow, help each other now and know that as you help each other you shall help yourself; and as you love each other you shall love yourself, which is the Stone’s great joy. As a parent would see its pups grow whole, so would the Stone see you grow whole. As a parent flinches and feels the hurt of its pups, so does the Stone feel your hurts and, all the more, your hurting of each other.

“Now, let us begin to rejoice at last, for tonight is most holy.

So began Beechen’s teaching and rituals before the Rollright Stones, and the moles who heard him knew him to be the Stone Mole come among them, and were glad.

Already for days before Longest Night, Skint and Smithills had warned Tryfan that the long-feared move of the grikes into Duncton Wood was imminent.

The few watchers Skint still had available were old now, and nearly all the few who had been active in the summer years had died in the cold of late November. Nevertheless, thin on the ground though the watchers were, they had succeeded in confirming a strengthening of the patrols at the cross-under as December began.

Sometimes now the guardmoles dared come inside the system, and the watchers would peer out at them and wonder at how young the guardmoles seemed, how strong, how formidable a force to keep such old moles confined.

But the guardmoles had not only become more inquisitive and courageous about entering the system, but more aggressive as well. Where once they mocked and chased the old moles in the wood, now they hurt them if they could, as they had hurt Sorrel. In December a “hurting” led to another death, and Tryfan advised that the watching activity cease.

Yet the guardmole training of Skint and Smithills was too ingrained to let them do nothing at all. A system needs watchers, as a mole needs eyes, they said. But unwilling to embroil other moles with watching they moved their quarters down to the Pasture slopes, and took it in turn to watch the cross-under with only Marram occasionally keeping them company.

Skint said little these days, Smithills was getting slow, but watching was one thing they could do – though what they would do if they saw something threatening neither knew any more.

In truth both hoped, Skint especially, that before their days were done they might one day see the impossible, and a party of grikes come through the cross-under and up the slope to say that the struggle was over now, nomole had won, none lost, the Word was, and the Stone was, be at peace now!

It was old moles’ dreams, no different in quality than the longings they often shared for Grassington, and the River Wharfe, where once they had been pups, and the Word and the Stone were all the same, which meant nothing at all. They had been happy then.

But the truth was very different than the dream, and they knew it. The grikes were massing, the patrols were getting tougher in the way they looked each day. Great trouble was apaw.

Yet concerned though they were for the system, Skint and Smithills were strangely untroubled for themselves by the growing threat. They had begun to tire and to leave fear behind them, and now it was more the anticipation they disliked, rather than any violence yet to come.

Indeed, one said to the other more than once, “Well, old friend, if they come I’ll go down fighting. Let’s take some of the bastards with us!”

To which the other replied, “My feelings too, but don’t let Tryfan hear you say that!”

But in any case, their warnings of the grike threat did not disturb the growing calm that spread throughout Duncton in the wake of Beechen’s departure. Moles talked to moles, worship at the Stone increased, and comfort was given as best it could be to those who were taken by the November cold. A community, Tryfan had told them, cares for its dying as much as for its living.

There was good spirit in the system, and some said that no sight expressed it better than the way grumbling Dodder, a diehard mole of the Word, followed Madder and Flint up to the Stone from time to time, and crouched outside the clearing, watching his friends say their prayers. Afterwards, very slowly, helping each other along, they would pick their way back down through the wood to the Eastside, and resume their noisy but amicable enmity once more.

Tryfan never went back to the Marsh End after his declaration of the Rule, but stayed close by Feverfew in the southern burrows where they had reared Beechen.

How quiet the system was, how old the moles who were left, and how many counted the days to Longest Night, saying with a touching optimism that if only the Stone would spare them until then, they might see the winter through and struggle into spring. But age had caught them up, the young mole who was their triumph and their glory had safely gone, and their wrinkled, weakening eyes could only peer up at the December skies and wonder where he was, and how he was, and pray that the Stone would give him strength.

December seemed so slow, and Longest Night a lifetime away. Some, indeed, fell then, surprise on their faces. Borage died, quite suddenly, and Heather, so gaunt now, cradled and spoke to him to the end, seeming to think he was the pup she never had.

Teasel weakened, and Feverfew hurried to her. Yet the loving old female pulled round, saying
she’d
see Longest Night in if it was the last thing she did.

Rain, mist, cold, clear days, and trees leafless: the very wood itself seemed to have grown old.

In the second third of December, with Longest Night near at last and after Skint had come his frail way up from the south-eastern slopes to warn him that the grikes were massing even more and seemed poised for something, Tryfan went to the Stone once more and kept a vigil there.

Others who came heard him say that should moles of the Word come to Duncton, they must be treated with every courtesy, “even unto death’. So he said, and those who were not nearly senile themselves said that finally age had caught up with him. Yet none dared say so to his ravaged face, nor look in his poor eyes and say what they really felt. Even now, he carried himself with authority, and though his head shook, and sometimes Feverfew had to reach out a paw to stop his paws from their involuntary trembling, there was greatness in his gait. And in his presence a mole felt he or she might do great things.

When the day of Longest Night finally dawned not a mole woke in Duncton who was not glad to be alive. Such a day, grey though it looked, was one to cherish, knowing that its night was holiest of all, and a mole might give thanks for the past and what was to come, and that he could say a prayer at all.

One by one, those still left from the now distant-seeming day when they had said farewell to Beechen, helping each other as they had done then, old, lame, blind, weak, they made their way up to the Stone.

Most were followers of the Stone, but even those few like Dodder who were not came too. A very few might still be called “young” – though “not old” might have been the best description – Hay for one, and Feverfew was younger than some, Bailey younger than any, and these moles helped where they could. Until by dusk-fall all but Skint and Smithills were gathered at the clearing, and hushed, and glad to be together.

“My friends Skint and Smithills will soon be here,” said Tryfan simply, “Marram and Bailey have gone to find them and when they come we shall begin. But until then, let us be quiet unto ourselves, let us give thanks for the good things our lives have brought us.”

Then did the moles of Duncton begin their humble and quavering prayers.

Time and again since she had arrived at Duncton’s cross-under, with but a few days to go before Longest Night, the eldrene Wort, accompanied by her personal henchmoles, had gone up a little way on to the south-eastern slopes and stared up at the mysterious wood that rose beyond the Pastures.

She had looked at it often enough from Cumnor, but from this side, it looked more formidable and its slopes awkward. No wonder Henbane’s guardmoles had had trouble taking it in Wrekin’s day.