Duncton Rising (24 page)

“To you?” replied Privet, looking puzzled in her turn.

“Us. Followers. Friends. Kin. But... a Brother Confessor; you might speak to him. Not
might,
you would have to.”

“Have to?” repeated Privet.

“Yes, Sister Privet, or whatever the name was that the Newborns gave you, to your Brother Confessor you must speak the truth.”

“I... was called Sister Crowden...” began Privet faintly, while Whillan and Maple, making as if to interrupt, were stopped by an imperious wave of Weeth’s paw.

“Advance nearer to me. Sister!” he cried out, turning almost savagely on Privet.

“I will, Brother Confessor... I will,” she gasped in a strange voice, sounding much younger, as Whillan and Maple looked on in amazement.

“Then do so,” snarled Weeth as if he addressed an erring pup and not the adult female who had revealed so much of herself with such maturity through the hours just past. Whillan looked angry, whilst Maple seemed about to remonstrate with Weeth.

Yet to their surprise Privet meekly moved forward and stanced before him, snout low. She looked afraid, and all the boldness that had carried her forward in her telling of the journey from the Moors to Beechenhill had gone.

“You have transgressed. Sister Crowden! Is it not so?”

“Brother Confessor Weeth —”

“Do not be so familiar as to use my name, mole,” he snarled at her.

“But Brother —”

“Aye mole! Confess to your Brother Confessor, Speak what is in your heart that the Stone may know the truth!”

By now the change in Weeth was as startling as that in Privet. As he grew ever more threatening and imperious, Privet became ever more cowering and abject, until her voice was a faltering, tearful shadow of what it had been but moments before.

“Brother Confessor... I...”

“You are nothing, mole, nothing before the rituals and majesty of the Stone, nothing but a Confessed Sister who has made vile transgressions of thought against the rules of the Stone, and deserves punishment.”

“But Brother —”

“And who argues even with her Brother Confessor as with others, and has the reprobate thoughts of a mole in whom arrogance and distrust of the Stone’s appointed brothers lingers still.”

“No, Brother Confessor...” she began to plead.

“Yes, menial Sister, oh yes – I see the sinfulness in your heart, and how your will conspires against the Stone.”

“I did not mean —”

“You have transgressed and you must be punished, as a mole not worthy to have young.”

“But my pups —”

“Your pups are the Stone’s pups, mole, not
yours.
Do you think the Stone would have you corrupt ones so young and innocent?”

“You cannot take them!”

Horror was in Privet’s voice, and she was shaking. Maple had to put his paw out to prevent Whillan from rushing to her flank, and assaulting Weeth on the way.

“The Stone shall take them from you...”

Nothing of Privet’s tale they had so far heard compared to the horror and helpless, hopeless sense of betrayal and failure in Privet’s sudden scream.

“Noooo!” was the word she sought to say, but it was lost in the power of the loss it tried to express.

“They shall never be returned to you!” cried Weeth.

“They are barely weaned!”

“You have transgressed, you are punished, you are excommunicate of us and ail your pups, you are —”

“NOOOO!”

“No.. whispered Weeth in a very different voice, as he reached out to Privet, and shaking and crying and beside herself with the memory of loss at which he had so accurately guessed, she went to him and buried her face in his shoulder. “No, dear Sister, no.”

“How did you know?” she said at last.

“Was I right?”

She nodded. “I wanted to tell but the nearer I got the more afraid I became to remember.”

“I know, I know,” said Weeth, excitedly looking round at Whillan and Maple. “I had
heard
what the Brother Confessors of the Newborns do to sisters, but never thought to learn of it directly from a victim. I recognized something in Privet’s hesitation and guessed. You must tell us now. Privet. It is best, for we all need to know the truth of the Newborns’ evil. I know of no female who has been entrapped in one of their systems and survived to tell her tale.”

“Then how did you know who they were and what the Senior Brother said? You’re not...?” She pulled away from him as if she suddenly thought that
he
had been such a Newborn brother.

He smiled wanly and shook his head. “No, no, not me. But guardmoles talk, nothing is secret for ever. Now, for Stone’s sake tell us your tale before you decide not to once more, and I shall tell you how I guessed the way they treated you.”

“Yes,” said Privet meekly, with the ghost of a recovering smile.

Privet’s descent from the White Peak, at the southern end of which Beechenhill lies, to the lower lands due south, was a journey into an accelerating spring. She had learnt enough of travelling to know that at such a time, when moles are mating, and some already pupping, a sensible mole does not cross another’s territory without due warning and many courtesies, but chooses routes which are communal, and avoids occupied systems altogether.

Yet there are always enough moles who, through age, circumstance, or inclination, have not pupped and welcome the exchange of news and views a passing traveller brings. Coming as she did from Beechenhill, a system by then more revered than visited, and being an accredited scholar and scribemole, and one on course for Duncton Wood, Privet met with little hostility, and such as she suffered was short-lived.

She enjoyed the freedom from workaday scholarship the journey brought, and the opportunity it gave her to see for herself some of the landscapes and places in which the recent history of moledom, and its war of Word and Stone, had been made. She soon found that her own concern with matters of Silence was beyond the interests of most moles, and perhaps even over their heads, and those who met her were more bluntly curious about springtime matters, in particular why a female in her prime such as herself was not nested down somewhere having young.

Privet learnt much about ordinary living in these molemonths of her journey, and she was content to travel slowly, and share worms and conversation with whatever moles the Stone put in her way; and if, as sometimes happened, the occasional male suggested that perhaps she should settle down and have a few pups, well, she was not unwilling to feel flattered, even if she firmly chose to do nothing about it.

She had not yet recovered from the loss of Rooster and all the horror surrounding her ravaging by Ratcher, and after the numbness she had felt through the winter years at Beechenhill she now had recourse to lightheartedness, as moles with such histories often do. However, balmy spring air, the scent of wild flowers, the busy doings of other mated creatures raising young, are all powerful aphrodisiacs, and inclined to make even the most timid, prudish, and unconfident moles think that they are missing out, and that they might at least fantasize about doing something about it. Privet was never a flirt, but the natural fact is that in spring, given the right circumstances and the right moles, flirtation will always take place, and several times in her journey along the way southward of Beechenhill, Privet enjoyed the thrill of close encounters.

Yet enjoyable though these moments were, they provoked in her an underlying restlessness and dissatisfaction, and unhappy thoughts of Rooster and the pups she had wanted to give him, which she would now surely never have. Mixed with these annoyingly intrusive thoughts were others; jealousy of Lime, and wondering if she and Rooster were still together after the winter years, and if so whether Lime was having pups –
his
pups, pups that should have been hers. Privet was fully aware of the futility of such thoughts but powerless to stop them recurring, and the occasional flirtations she enjoyed – modest things indeed compared to Lime’s fulsome goings-on – served only to provoke them more.

So as the days went by, and the air grew warmer, and the number of tunnels with pups she approached increased, her broodiness increased as well, and her physical desires, so normal but so unwelcome. In short, Privet, scholar, scribe and pilgrim, desired to have young, and had no mole by which she might have them, nor did it seem she had any prospect of finding one.

It was at this point in her journey that Privet first heard of the Newborn moles, and of Blagrove Slide. In those days neither the Newborns nor the name of Blagrove Slide carried any threat to followers – they were known only as overly earnest moles observing a system of faith led by the elusive and charismatic Thripp. She heard of a prayer meeting being held at a Stone upon the Harborough Downs and out of curiosity diverted her journey to attend it. The mole conducting it was young, dark, and male, and so were his acolytes. It did not occur to Privet then that most of those at the meeting, which was held at a communal place equidistant from several thriving systems, were female, young and unpupped; and even if it had, it would not have struck her that
she
was in the same category, and that her attention to the prayers and the whole occasion was made much easier by the attractiveness of the youthful, well-spoken males who conducted it.

Mention of being Newborn in the Stone was gently made, without doctrinal cant or pressure, though even at the time Privet felt as a scholar that these moles – “brothers” they called themselves – were a little over-zealous in their claims of what the Stone might do for mole who gave themselves up to it, and cast off their “wilfulness and self-pride”. But by then Privet had learnt that her liking of scholastic argument and debate did not go down well, and she felt it best, since the moles seemed harmless enough, to keep her reservations to herself and conceal her identity and abilities. Moles worshipped in many different ways, and anyway, she enjoyed their company.

Most of the congregation dispersed when the prayers were done, but some felt inclined to stay, the more so because the brothers had prepared some food to celebrate the Stone’s goodness, and it seemed churlish to refuse it. In fact, six moles stayed, five of them females without attachments or any special need to hurry off anywhere in particular; the remaining mole, a male, was somewhat simple in the head, and Privet noticed that the brothers soon got rid of him. But that was the only doubtful sign she saw.

Naturally the brothers were asked from where they came, and their answer was Blagrove Slide, a system some way to the south to which on the morrow they would be journeying. Their manner was charming yet firm in a reassuring kind of way, and they did not immediately respond to the hints, which one or two of the females ventured, that their system must be well worth visiting. The brothers merely smiled, and contrived to suggest without saying so directly that to visit their system would be a privilege for anymole, and not one given lightly.

“But given to some?”

Privet was ashamed to remember that it was she who asked the question first.

“Given to those who worship the Stone truly, and do not wish to corrupt the minds of the young or the ignorant with false notions of the Stone’s meaning and purpose. We are peaceful moles, who suffered much at the paws of moles of the Word in the times of the war on the Stone, and we ask only that moles abide by the true way.”

In retrospect it is easy to see in this answer the dogma of sectarian moles who have a narrow, unyielding interpretation of the Stone’s meaning and fellowship, but to moles inexperienced in such matters, as Privet and those with her then were, it seemed a reasonable reply.

The following day, when the brothers had intended to leave for Blagrove, they did not go, but lingered and prayed for guidance, inviting the “sisters” to join them. It was pleasant, it was companionable, it was flattering to be looked after by such moles. Even so, two of the “sisters” left, saying there was something they did not like about the brothers – too serious, no fun, too inclined to pray all the time; or something like that, at least. Privet was not one of those who left; she lingered on pleasantly with the others, and after three days the brothers announced that they had received guidance that the three remaining sisters might, perhaps, be “meant” to go to Blagrove... if they wished to, and on certain conditions. Which were – to be obedient especially to the elder brothers’ commands and to be prepared to stay for several days, to help in matters of the routine running of the system.

“It all seemed so convincing and so appealing,” said Privet with a sigh so much later, “and I honestly did not see the harm in it, or in agreeing to the conditions. Nor, as we began to discover that Blagrove was further off than they had said, and that their stops on the way were very brief, did it occur to me to wonder why moles who claimed to be benign should deliberately give us so little time to sleep or even eat...”

Chapter Twelve

“We arrived at Blagrove Slide in a state of exhaustion,” continued Privet, “and it was, I believe, a state deliberately induced in us.”