Duncton Found (98 page)

While Harrow, who had felt lonely in dull Tissington, had never for a moment dreamed as he set off for Beechenhill that his strange journey would bring him into the presence at one and the same time of the famous Squeezebelly, and a mole he could not keep his eyes off called Harebell.

“Harebell,” he had whispered stupidly to himself, “now that’s a lovely name.”

They slowed as they climbed the final slope towards Henbane’s tunnels.

“Did you tell her why you went off to Beechenhill?” whispered Harebell.

“More or less, though it was only a hunch.”

They went on a few more steps before Harebell stopped again.

“I’m
terrified
,” she said. “I’ve never got used to the idea that Henbane was my mother. Was!
Is,
Harrow,
is
! Oh! You’d better stay here and just let me go on....”

Then Harebell went on until the slope eased off and she saw an entrance ahead.

Assuming Henbane was there, she guessed she must have heard them approach, and probably their voices too.

“Hello!” she called out, feeling foolish. Is that what a mole says to the mother she has never seen? Is that what a mole says to she who was once the most powerful mole in moledom?

“Hello,” said a voice.

Even as she heard Henbane’s voice, even then, Harebell knew it would be all right. Something was good about it, something of the Stone was there with them.

She turned a little and saw Henbane stanced on the surface a little to the left of the tunnel entrance among some fallen gorse. A place, she supposed, from which she might have made an escape if it had been necessary.

“Hello!” said Harebell again, too nervous to smile, and feeling too emotional to speak. Harrow had said she was an old mole, but that was because he was male and had not noticed something more important. She was... a most elegant mole. She was nearly beautiful.

“Oh!” said Harebell, surprise in her voice, “I didn’t know what to expect.”

Then a soft smile came to Henbane’s face, and Harebell saw that her mother
was
beautiful. And more than that there was something about the way she stanced, and the presence that she had, that she recognised from the way Wharfe was. It was authority.

“I heard you come with Harrow,” said Henbane. “Whatmole are you?”

“My name is Harebell,” said Harebell. “I am....”

“I think I know whatmole you are,” said Henbane, a slight quaver to her voice.

Which one said “daughter” neither after remembered, but one of them did and both stared, struck dumb, and still, and much moved.

“I...” began Henbane.

“Harrow came to Beechenhill and brought me back here.”

“And your name is Harebell?” said Henbane.

Harebell nodded and still neither mole moved, but each continued to stare at the other as tears came to her eyes.

It was Henbane who looked away, and Henbane who first wept aloud. It was Harebell who moved, and Harebell who came forward and reached out to touch her mother for the first time.

She put a tentative paw to Henbane’s face and gently touched the tears there and said, “The one thing I didn’t expect was that you’d be beautiful.”

Henbane, her face lined, her fur flecked white now, but her gloss still good, looked up with that cracked and vulnerable smile a mole has on her face when she weeps and yet feels safe and released by tears, and said, “My dear, what I have missed in you. How
much
I’ve missed.”

They looked at each other in silence again until, suddenly, Harebell said, “Sleekit brought us up. And Mayweed.”

“Sleekit?” whispered Henbane smiling. “It was the best – the only good – decision of my life to ask her to take you. And she found the courage for it. Is she at Beechenhill then?”

Harebell shook her head.

“No, she went south with Mayweed.”

“There’s so much to ask... so much! The other....”

“Wharfe.”

“He was male?”

“You didn’t know?”

“There was no time, you see... Oh, there’s so much to talk of.”

Harrow came up the slope saying, “Well! There probably is but can’t you do it down in the warmth, and get some food at the same time?”

Henbane laughed. A strange, comfortable, familial laugh, and one she had never laughed before.

She turned to lead them down into the tunnel and Harebell whispered fiercely and excitedly to Harrow, “You didn’t tell me she was beautiful!”

“You’re beautiful, too,” he said irrelevantly, but he was glad he did, very glad, as she turned, laughing, and they followed Henbane down into the warmth below.

For some days none of them was inclined to want to start the trek to Beechenhill. For one thing Harrow was tired, having done the journeys there and back in quick succession. Then, too, the weather remained difficult, the cold staying on, and the slopes icy.

But most of all, having found each other as they had, Harebell and Henbane had no desire to move, but wished to stay where they were and to talk and share the time they had, telling each other of the things in their lives that mattered. But of the Word they did not speak, nor of the Stone.

On good days the two females would stretch their paws over the fell behind Henbane’s tunnel, and Harrow would leave them to it and travel the little distance down to the mole who had first told him of Henbane’s coming and who remained the only one to know that Henbane, and now Harebell, were there. The Stone had chosen well, for he was a trusty mole and one who knew all the news and gossip, Harrow was certain that he would tell nomole of the moles hidden up on Hunger Hill.

As followers they had much to talk about, for in those days the news in Tissington was all of the Stone Mole, and the chances of him being taken by the grikes in Ashbourne.

“No doubt of it, Harrow. If he goes on the way he is their patience will wear thin and he’ll be taken. Dammit, he’s said to be coming nearer this way every day, and our sources tell us there’s a lot of very senior, and very nasty-looking, sideem and guardmoles about in Ashbourne now.”

“Where do you think the Stone Mole’s headed for?”

“The whisper is Beechenhill. But that’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s got a Stone and the place has stood out against the Word all these years. But no way is he going to get into Beechenhill without being attacked or taken.”

“Well, they’ve not taken him yet. Maybe their talk of listening and reconciliation is sincere.”

“Oh yes, Harrow, sure,” said his friend heavily.

A few days later Harrow saw the mole coming quickly up the slope with news.

“The Stone Mole,” he gasped, “he’s going to be in Kniveton tomorrow and a lot of us are travelling overnight to support him. You’ve got to come, Harrow, you’ve
got
to. A mole’s come up from the south who has heard him before. He says the only reason the grikes have not taken him is that so many followers travel with him that they dare not. You must come, it’s not a difficult journey.”

“But I want to stay with Harebell and Henbane. We were thinking of taking advantage of this milder weather and making our way to Beechenhill.”

“Bring them!” said the mole recklessly. “I’m setting off shortly. The more the merrier.”

When Henbane heard what the fuss was about she said, “You must go and hear this mole, my dear, the more so because Harrow has been told he is of Duncton Wood. Your father comes from there and spoke so lovingly of it. Perhaps if you could talk to this Stone Mole he would tell you.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” said Harebell reluctantly, for truly she would have liked to hear the Stone Mole preach.

Henbane smiled.

“Oh! I’ll come too! I got this far. A little further won’t hurt me and it’s not a great distance. I would like to hear what such a mole has to say, about the Word as well as the Stone. As for my safety, well... if there are many followers about then there’ll be safety in numbers. Provided I remain anonymous to them and any guardmole who might be near.”

“You’ll be safe enough, Henbane,” said Harrow, always a positive mole. “And I’ll be there at one flank, Harebell at the other. But if we’re going, we’ll need to go soon....”

They journeyed through the night and met up with many other Tissington followers as they went so that, as dawn broke and they climbed up through Kniveton Wood, the slopes were alive with moles. Progress was slow, not because the slopes were steep but because old moles like Henbane had come, aided by family and friends, and moles weak from illness and even a few who were early with pup. Everymole helped the other, and as the sun rose over distant Madge Hill there was the sense of promise and companionship, and abiding faith.

The Stone Mole had come to moledom, and this great day he was coming here to Kniveton Edge, to speak to them and tell them of the Stone.

Yet there was tension, too, for Harrow’s friend was not the only one who had prophesied that soon the Stone Mole would be taken. There was a sense of foreboding in the air, of preordination, a sense almost of helplessness.

As they passed beyond Kniveton Wood they came to a valley that sloped gently eastward and was caught by the sun. This, they were told, was Kniveton Edge. It was pasture ground, and the grass was green and moist, and there was the first distant scent of spring in the air. Moles were already assembling and Harrow found a place for them – though higher up than Harebell wished to go. But Harrow was cautious, and thought that if they needed to hurry away and make themselves scarce then the higher up they were the better.

They had not been stanced down long before they saw a group of moles, perhaps ten in all, coming up the little valley towards them. The sun was in the sky behind them lighting their way ahead, and its brightness made it hard at first to make the moles out.

But on they came, slowly, and a hush fell over the assembled moles, their chattering stopped and they watched in growing anticipation as the group got nearer and the individual moles among them could be made out.

It was quite clear which was the Stone Mole for whatever he did, whether it was to turn to speak to a mole on one side or the other, or come forward or slow down, he always seemed to be at the very centre of the group.

He was in any case a pleasing mole to look on – well made, graceful, and with the kind of fur over which the light played well. If that were not enough to pick him out, a small mole went in front, as odd and grubby a looking mole as Harebell had ever seen; while behind the Stone Mole was a large scarred mole, his paws huge and his manner protective: Holm and Buckram.

As they neared the assembled moles, several of those with them, some of whom Harrow knew to be Kniveton followers, separated and quietly joined the others, and a fourth mole in the Stone Mole’s group, an elderly female, became more visible.

“But surely, Harebell, that mole...” said Henbane in astonishment.

“The female?”

“Do you know her?” whispered Harrow.

“It’s Sleekit,” said Henbane. “Sleekit!”

There had been doubt in Harebell’s face until Henbane said the name, but the moment she heard it she knew it must be the mole who had reared herself and Wharfe so long ago and finally left Beechenhill to travel south with Mayweed.

“We must let her know we’re here,” said Harebell eagerly, but Harrow put a restraining paw on hers.

“No need to draw attention to yourself, or to Henbane, and anyway it looks as if the Stone Mole’s going to speak. I’ll go down and bring Sleekit here when he’s finished.”

It was therefore in a state of surprise and delight that both Henbane and Harebell, their eyes at first more on Sleekit, heard the Stone Mole’s first words.

But if, to start with, this prevented them from attending to what he said, it was not long before his calm assured voice, his radiant manner and the words he spoke began to make them forget Sleekit for a time. Steadily they were drawn, as all the moles assembled there were drawn, into the address that Beechen of Duncton then made.

He spoke first very personally of his own life: of Duncton Wood, of the moles there who had raised him, the moles that he loved, of many things close to his heart. Of Mayweed, of Skint, of Smithills, and many more. Then he spoke of Feverfew, and how it had been that she had met the White Mole Boswell in the light of Comfrey’s Stone.

How magical it seemed to those moles of the southern Peak, this land to the south where great Stones rose, where the Ancient Systems lay, and where the scribemoles in times past had come from. How mysterious.

“I am the son of Boswell, and the son of Feverfew, and through me soon will those who follow the Stone in humility and truth know a new light. Your ancestors called me Stone Mole, and this I am; and they said I would be a saviour, and come among you by the light of an eastern star.”

“You have!” cried out a follower.

“Yes, I have come among you, but not as a saviour who uses talons, or who can save what talons save – which is physical life. I have not come for a fight of the flesh and fur. Like me, those I love who travel with me, who are most close to me —” And here he turned to Buckram, and touched him with a smile – “have renounced that way.

“That mole is stronger by far, and closer to the Stone’s Silence, who, though he has the strength of ten moles, bows down his snout before a pup and hurts no life. That mole is more a saviour who, rather than raise a talon in anger or in fear, lets his own life be taken all for love of the Stone. Yes, such moles shall be much favoured.